Tory Jeremy Hunt on Art For Art's Sake

Tory Shadow Culture Minister featured in a very interesting article by Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian yesterday. Basically the point was to fight the perception that the Tories are bad for art and culture and that Labour is good for art and culture.


Tories are bad for art and culture and Labour is good for art and culture.


Tories are bad for art and culture and Labour is good for art and culture.


Tories are bad for art and culture and Labour is good for art and culture.


Tories are bad for art and culture and Labour is good for art and culture.


Oops, don't know what happened there - my keyboard must have got stuck on repeat or something...


Tories are bad for art and culture and Labour is good for art and culture.


Tories are bad for art and culture and Labour is good for art and culture.


There we go again...really need to fix that faulty keyboard!


Anyway, Hunt went on to list the culture and art he likes, and what he doesn't get:


"In terms of his own cultural tastes, "if you want to talk about something where the scales have come off my eyes," he said, it is "the vibrancy of modern British theatre". He named Jez Butterworth's play Parlour Song and David Hare's satire on New Labour, Gethsemane, as well as the National Theatre's hit family play War Horse. In terms of classical music he is "more early Schoenberg than late Schoenberg". He said: "I have engaged with modern operas – I've been to see Turn of the Screw twice, as a matter of fact." (Benjamin Britten's opera was premiered in 1954.) However, he singled out a passage of a dance piece, Still, by respected choreographer and DV8 co-founder Nigel Charnock, as something he had not enjoyed. "They mutated the national anthem into Hitler salutes… It was tasteless and unnecessary. There's nothing wrong with the power of shock in art but it has to be done in a way that is more than shocking for the sake of shocking"."


Also, he says that "George Osborne [wannabe Chancellor] gave a speech at the Tate about the importance of Art for Art's Sake" .....Why am I not surprised?