Brian Eno is returning to the realm of written words. His highly anticipated "What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory", co-authored with Dutch artist and writer Bette Adriaanse, encourages readers to consider the questions that have been key to Eno's career: What role does art play? Why do we require it?
This week, Faber has published "What Art Does", which is not just a comprehensive analysis, but a call to explore how art influences our lives, our communities, and our destinies.
The book explores the human desire for creativity and the role of art in fostering connections among people, examining the reasons behind creating art and its impact on personal transformation.
The book's back cover invites readers to envision a different future, describing its contents as a 'richly illustrated, playful and inquisitive' journey of discovery.
He has also continued to pursue a parallel career in the visual arts, primarily concentrating on light-based creations throughout this period.
As a co-founder of Earth Percent and the HardArt collective, Eno has long been a proponent of cultural change that promotes social and environmental activism. In "What Art Does", he collaborates with Adriaanse to introduce a new artistic theory that builds upon his earlier ideas on creativity.
Adriaanse first met Eno after co-founding the TRQSE network – a community of artists and scientists working on social projects. Their shared enthusiasm for the impact of art on social change led to in-depth discussions about the role of creativity – and these conversations laid the groundwork for their collaboration. “What Art Does” brings together the ideas Eno has developed throughout his career as an artist into a cohesive work that encourages readers to reevaluate how art can benefit everyone.
This book, "What Art Does", explores the significance of everyday things, including soap operas and the language of haircuts. Eno and Adriaanse argue that art in all its forms is crucial to both individual and collective well-being.
Eno's approach to art has long been characterized by a spirit of experimentation and pushing boundaries, and the book's release strategy reflects this innovative mindset. To begin, a limited edition of just 777 signed copies was made available on December 3, 2024, each copy coming with a hand-painted slipcase created by the authors. A black-and-white PDF version was also accessible for a week after the initial release, but it wasn't until January 16 that the physical and eBook versions became available to the general public.
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For Eno, this book isn't just an intellectual project; it's a means of harnessing art to inspire beneficial change, and serves as a link between his diverse body of work and his lifelong commitment to the notion that creativity can be a potent force for social transformation.