Too much art, or is it?

Singapore Art Week 2026, now in its 13th edition, aims to push boundaries further, emphasising collaboration, innovation and technology

It is far from an isolated question — “and what of art, really?” — and it is no less urgent historically. In post-WWII Europe, the philosopher Theodor W Adorno declared: “There can be no poetry after Auschwitz.” Even earlier, on the brink of WWI, the Imagist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky pronounced art dead: “It found itself in the backwater of life … It was soft and could not defend itself.”