A final thought: the Arts Editor

### David Levesley

**It is very easy to see the fact we exist as ‘Arts’ and to view us as a stuffy, Radio 4, elitist club of chesterfield-lounging aesthetes who look down on Books, Music, Film and TV as lesser cultural forms. But that is not what I want to do, nor what my focus has been. I have wanted the Arts section to be a place for all the other artistic forms you may not consider on so regular a basis – plays, dance, sculpture, paintings. We are not freemason fuddy-duddies but a slightly awkward brother.**

We live in a world today where ‘art’ is used as a qualification. A good book, a good album, an excellent piece of music are defined as ‘art’. All else is defined by its own terms. But this is not what ‘Art’ is. Something is a work of art in the way a plate of baked beans on toast is a plate of food and yet a Michelin starred dinner is equally one. All of our sections discuss pieces of art, whatever the modern press and academic institution want to suggest. In one of my first lectures, a lecturer said Suite Francaise was less a piece of art than the other books we studied on the course and I have been livid ever since. You may propose this is the reason I am here, writing to you, eighteen months after stepping up to the plate.

Do not think of us as the section that talks about the RSC and aloof playwrights and ballet, for we are so much more than that. What we are is a section that argues that a craft like embroidery is as much a relevant discussion for the Arts section (and believe me there are academics and critics out there who would dismiss such an opinion without a thought) as Josie Long’s latest show or an exhibition of paintings at the Tate.

In the last eighteen months I myself have been surprised by what constitutes the Arts section and also been rather annoyed at the amount of press agents who send us music festival press releases and the like. But really it is a testament to the importance of our section, reminding you that we are talking about pieces of art, but we are not saying they are more or less art than anything else.

If you want to talk about anything that is art, and there is not somebody else to help you say that in one of our marvelous sibling sections, then come to my successor and find that we are not judgmental, but holistic.