When asked why art matters, why it’s important, the English author, actor, television presenter, comedian and polymath Stephen Fry agrees with this writer’s suggestion that art is something numinous, something that transcends the everyday.
“Transcendent is a marvellous word to use. [Art] does take us out of the humdrum and so on. But I’d also say it does the opposite. It actually makes us penetrate reality in a more extraordinary way than anything else can,” says Fry, speaking from his Melbourne hotel room on the eve of a national tour of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
