How ‘Creative Industries' Evokes the Legacy of Modernist Visual Art

Abstract

The concept of ‘creative industries' presents a new idea for the Arts/Humanities faculty predicated upon forging a conjunction between the creative arts and cultural industries. It also provides a unique opportunity for the creative arts as well as the old Humanities faculty to acquire a new role at the centre of policy discussions about the new economy. ‘Creative industries’, in short, provides arts and humanities with a ‘new’ industry face suited to the needs of the twenty-first century. Yet, so far, discussions about creative industries have focused upon either their new economy connections or upon their delineation from ‘cultural industries’. This fosters the impression that the concept of creative industries is forged from the intersection of cultural studies, the new economy and cultural industries alone. What is the place of the creative arts within creative industries? Has it any feasible critical role when it is constantly dubbed ‘the subsidised arts’? This paper presents a reading that shows that the conception of creative industries is actually reliant upon the creative arts — in particular, the legacy of interdisciplinary modernist practice within the visual arts. It will examine how the sometimes anti-art rhetoric of some creative industries manifestos evokes this legacy. It then draws out some important socio-political implications of throwing this legacy into this mix that currently constitutes ‘creative industries’.

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