Consider the following comments on art.
Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.
Pablo Picasso
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
All art is quite useless.
Oscar Wilde
A culture that cannot feed its people has no business gilding its galleries.
The art a society praises tells you who it allows to be heard.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
Argue that art is not a luxury laid over the real business of living but one of the ways a society works out what it believes. Begin by conceding the practical objection, that art produces nothing you can eat and is easy to dismiss as decoration. Then press the harder claim: art is how a culture rehearses its values, mourns its dead and imagines what does not yet exist, which is hardly useless. A useful third move distinguishes art that comforts from art that disturbs, since the work that lasts often unsettles before it consoles. Caution: avoid the snobbery that treats only difficult or expensive work as real art, which quietly mistakes taste for virtue.