Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts

From one of our most widely admired art critics comes a bold and timely manifesto reaffirming the independence of all the arts-musical, literary, and visual-and their unique and unparalleled power to excite, disturb, and inspire us.

As people look to the arts to promote a particular ideology, whether radical, liberal, or conservative, Jed Perl argues that the arts have their own laws and logic, which transcend the controversies of any one moment. “Art's relevance,” he writes, “has everything...