Brian Eno and Bette A. – announce new book “WHAT ART DOES”

Drawing on his experience as an artist, Brian Eno is releasing his book on art, made in collaboration with Bette A.

WHAT ART DOES examines the function of fictional worlds – such as pop songs, detective novels, soap operas, shoe tassels and the hidden language of haircuts – and suggests a new theory of art.

Why do we do it? How does it help us? And how does it hold us all together?

WHAT ART DOES is a full colour illustrated hardback book, initially available in a limited edition of 777 signed copies. Each copy comes with its own unique slipcase hand painted by Brian and Bette A. This limited edition will be available exclusively from Metalabel for North American customers, and Enoshop for customers in the rest of the world.

A black and white PDF will be available for 7 days from initial release of the limited edition. For more information please visit:

North America: https://eno.metalabel.com/what-art-does

Rest of World: https://www.enoshop.co.uk/product/what-art-does

Hardback and ebook editions will be available on general release from Faber on 16th January 2025.

About the authors:

Brian Eno is an artist. He was born in Suffolk and studied art at Ipswich and Winchester art colleges. After art school he joined the band Roxy Music and over the next five decades he continued to make music with others including Talking Heads, Devo, U2, Laurie Anderson, James, David Byrne, Coldplay, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd and Fred Again. Brian’s visual art has been shown internationally in over 200 venues. He is involved in activist work, such as the climate charity Earth Percent and HardArt, both of which he co-founded, and Stop The War coalition. Brian often lectures, trying to answer the question: What does art do?

Bette A. is an artist, born in Amsterdam. As a child she liked to write plays and her primary school teachers allowed her to practise them in the gymnasium. She joined a youth theatre group in her hometown. Bette continued to study Image and Language at the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy of Amsterdam, where she learned to follow wild ideas. After doing a Master in Creative Writing at Oxford University she started writing in both English and Dutch, and published her novels ‘Rus Like Everyone Else’ and ‘What’s Mine’. Aside from writing novels, Bette makes short stories and drawings, and teaches in art schools. In 2019 Bette co-founded TRQSE – a network of artists and scientists who work together on social projects.

Through this network Bette met Brian. They started collaborating on social projects and talking about art. Their conversations led to working together on ‘What Art Does’, assembling the ideas Brian has developed during his working life and turning them into a book.

About the charities:

Earth Percent: a charity that channels funds from the music business to organisations that do the most impactful work around the climate emergency, from GreenWave, involved in the farming of eco-friendly regenerative ocean crops, to Client Earth, who take legal action against the biggest polluters. Earth Percent was co-founded by Brian Eno.

The Heroines! Movement: a worldwide non-profit collective of grassroots teams making story projects and school programs around local women role models, encouraging all children to dream big and to chase those dreams. The Heroines! Movement was co-founded by Bette A.