Is Art Good for Us?

Download or read book Is Art Good for Us? written by Joli Jensen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are the arts good for us? This book questions our taken-for-granted assumptions about the transformational powers of high culture by critiquing an instrumental American heritage of beliefs about the arts. Jensen argues that faith in high culture's unproven ability to transform people and society allows social critics to keep faith with the idea of a democratic society while deploring popular culture. Employing perspectives from Tocqueville and Dewey, she argues that the arts are good, but they don't do good. Instead of expecting the arts to improve things (and blaming the media for ruining them) we need to recognize that it is up to us, not "the arts" to make the world a better place.