Labourers in Art

Abstract

A major purpose of this paper is to focus attention on the way in which institutions of art (academies, art galleries, museums etc.) confer a creative role on some men, whilst denying it to other men. If societies distribute unequal life-chances through their mechanisms of political and economic control, then one important aspect of those life-chances is to do with the production and consumption of art. However, the values of art are so often projected as being fundamentally antagonistic to the core values of industrial living, that their function as agents of social and cultural differentiation is usually obscured. The values of art 'appear' as antagonistic to those of rational bourgeios culture: art is a 'superior reality' encountered in opposition to the experiences of our daily lives at home and in the industrial sphere.