21st Century: Art in the First Decade

ABC Radio National is running a competition, 21st Century: Art in the First Decade - Major prize draw, 'tell us, in STRICTLY 150 words or less, why you think art matters in the 21st century. '

This is my entry:

Art matters in the 21st century as it always has. In the 21st century and for much of the 20th, humanity no longer cared enough about traditional fine visual art and never did care enough about modernist art for it to have any great impact on our society. The decorative arts are alive and well, home furnishings and decorations are always in demand, but traditional mediums have been surpassed in utility by technology. Fine art iterations of painting, sculpture and drawing have significantly decreased in their relevance to society as entertainment, edification, conceptualisation and record keeping.
The contemporary equivalent of classical fine visual art is film, television, animation, graphic design, newspapers, magazines, comics, advertisements, illustration, concept design, engineering, video games, and all other current genres of visual art whether or not described as fine. This constitutes the overwhelming majority of our species’ visual media and defines our culture.

********************************

And to give this post some visual interest, have a stag beetle.