Art of work

Alain de Botton is concerned that the activity that occupies most of our waking moments - work - is being ignored by our artists.

We need an art that can proclaim the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the modern workplace and, not least, its extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, along with love, despite current economic mayhem, with the principal source of life's meaning.

It seems to me that TV workplace sitcoms have fulfilled that function for some time, though perhaps not on the level to which de Botton aspires.  He hopes other art forms will rise (or sink, depending of your view of the function of art) to the occasion. 

One can hope for a day when photographs of electricity conductors might hang over dining tables and when someone might write a libretto for an opera set in the sales office of a packaging firm.

What will the music of work sound like?  Antheil, maybe?