In his own words

What is the value of art?

Peter & Joan Oliver. 1975

The conventionally held notions of the value and use of the arts are to perpetuate an historical esthetic; to produce a cultured person, able to receive and transmit existing values; to purge anti-social attitudes; to occupy the less able; and as recreation activity for leisure. We believe that an appreciation of the arts based on these principles to be inappropriate, even reactionary. Their real importance is with the full development of human intelligence expressed in more than one form, from knowledge gained in a number of ways. Our society over-emphasizes the logical, deductive approach to knowledge, and our schools are mainly concerned with academic achievement. The arts can help develop the full range of human potential by promoting the intelligence of feeling, awareness, imagination, intuition, judgment, and the creative capacity. They are important in the exploration of values, emphasis being on individual choice rather than being led towards acceptance of what has pre-determined as 'correct'. The arts are significant in relation to cultural change, providing opportunity for reflecting assumptions and meanings, allowing for review and re-appraisal. Finally the arts offer physical and perceptual skills which enhance the ability of the individual in areas beyond the artistic sphere. The arts should not be seen to be just peripheral activities to amuse and occupy people during their leisure hours. They fulfill a basic human need provide a means of expressing and using our creative capacities and enable us to communicate personal and shared meanings. Through the arts, and feeling are brought together as we struggle to find meaning and convey it.

"Art becomes a wager on the capacity of human beings to invent new relationships and to experience hitherto unknown emotions… For we are as much what we have been as what we are able to imagine."

Jean Duvignaud, "Sociology of Art" 1972.