Art must be serious about itself. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be funny, but it means it can’t be trivial. But seriousness alone – any more than sincerity alone – isn’t enough in itself.

There has to be an element of pleasure in art, of sensual enjoyment – be it of a combination of sounds, of words, or textures, or of images. Art has to ravish the senses, but not only do that. There has to be a moral sense. You have to be able to feel that the artist has a view that human beings possess a moral sensibility. That’s not the same as the artist being a moralist – or being a “good” person. The artist may be saying “this is how you should live your life” but it must be inferred, not preached. Art is not polemic.

There must be passion in art. Passion gives us a sense of life lived more intensely, with more meaning – more joy, more sorrow. “We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve,” said Victor Hugo. We can spend our period of reprieve in a state of listlessness, or we can fill the period of our death sentence with experience – lived experience or the experience we gain from art.

Art reflects, expresses, invokes and describes the ambiguity of humanity. Whatever the form of art, however realistic or however fantastical, it offers up a commentary on being alive, on the infinite messiness of humanity. Art doesn’t improve our behaviour or civilise us. Art is useless. It doesn’t clothe the poor or feed the hungry. It’s as useless as, well .?.?. life, but it’s precisely our awareness of the uselessness of life that makes us want to struggle to give it purpose, and to give that purpose meaning through art.

The philosopher Simone Weil wrote this: “The love of our neighbour means being able to say to him: What are you going through? It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not as a specimen from a social category labelled ‘unfortunate’ but as a man exactly as we are. To forget oneself briefly, to identify with a stranger to the point of fully recognising him or her, is to defy necessity.” Art is a way of “defying necessity”, drawing us into a heightened awareness of other people’s feelings and other people’s lives. It enables us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.