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Say No to Mr Wu’s pot army What is the point of blockbuster exhibitions? Of those still clinging on in the memory bank I can recall seeing comprehensive surveys of Aztecs, Incas, Aborigines, Assyrians, Bushmen, Red Indians, Eskimos, Ottomans, Chinese Emperors, Mongols, Sikhs, Tartars, Benins, Goths, Vandals, Seljuks, Huns and Bulgars. I’ve seen enough rugs to fill Old Trafford. But with few exceptions, usually where subjects overlapped core, longstanding personal interests and were admitted indelibly to the mental cardex, I can’t remember a solitary interesting fact or special object relating to almost everything seen in all the scores of blockbusters visited over the last four decades. Worse, ploughing through such exhibitions is a form of slow torture by pedantry and the deepening guilt occasioned by one’s own indifference to these cloths of Heaven spread out so lavishly beneath one’s feet. However impressed I may have been at the time, hardly anything left its mark because the compulsion felt to attend was unmatched by a serious interest. Once inside a blockbuster initial absorption is genuine enough for a room or two, following which the daunting array of stuff and information stretching miles ahead saps the will to live. Thus, the world’s most precious treasures soon begin to enter one eye only to be propelled, as if by Saturn 5, straight out of the other without depositing so much as a forensic smear. As a form of welcome relief, even leaving the dentist can’t touch exiting a blockbuster. And I suspect my response is a common one. Why, therefore, so many will pay through the nose this autumn to see Egyptian and Chinese artefacts, subjects in which most visitors will have neither committed nor developing interest, before or after, is a source of bafflement to me. You have to take your hats off to the PR twinsets who sow so successfully the seeds of desire to attend. For me, life is too short to cram in everything, so I won’t be visiting either. I’ve seen more than enough Egyptian and Chinese tomb treasures already. I even saw the Chinese clay soldiers the last time they were here, the time that everyone seems conveniently to have forgotten took place. The soldiers were bolt upright, with arms girder-rigid and expressionless heads awkwardly placed on shoulders like those on a cheap doll. As sculptures – heresy of heresies – they didn’t strike me as that impressive. Perfectly astonishing en masse trooping the colour in their subterranean mausoleum, yes, but individually they are not in the same aesthetic league as works carved and modelled coevally (and even much earlier) in the Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. Give me Scopas and Lysippos any day. Students especially should be warned off developing the trainspotter mentality of seeing absolutely everything. If only I’d learned (or even been taught) to be more selective earlier myself... So it was that in July 1972 I dutifully hitchhiked to London to see the glistening display of objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb at the British Museum. In what was a champion stroke of luck, a pair of corking sisters from Belper on their way to Wimbledon ferried me all the way from Watford Gap – I almost changed my plans. Anyway, museum lore tells us that the 1.7 million who visited this ’72 extravaganza made it the most attended exhibition ever staged in Britain, though the number was almost certainly exaggerated. (By the way, this claim is undoubtedly wrong as the 1.4 million who visited the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 – the 150th anniversary of which fell in early May and was regrettably marked by no one – was proportionally far higher.) So a figure equivalent to the population of Birmingham turned up in Bloomsbury and, guess what, hardly any of us saw a damn thing. But it was a necessary pilgrimage. Tut was among the day’s major talking points and non-attendance for an art history student would have been frowned upon for – as John Terry might say – its lack of commitment to the shirt. I have never, either then or now, cared tuppence about Egyptian art and culture and so, perhaps not surprisingly, I recollect nothing from the Tutankhamun exhibition – not even the pharaoh’s unforgettable golden death mask with its Humbrol-painted features familiar from a million mugs and coasters. Apart from Belper, the only things that registered for me that day were the length of the wait – all morning in a light drizzle – and the airless scrum once inside the exhibition’s cave-like darkness. I couldn’t wait to escape. A psychotherapist quack would doubtless conclude that this miserable experience of Tut and his gaudy trinkets put me off anything Egyptian for life. Indeed, as far as I’m concerned the British Museum could sell tomorrow the aesthetically worthless Rosetta Stone in order to buy something actually worth looking at. This would at least have the additional advantage of curing the museum’s thrombosis, also known as ‘Japanese Tourists’, who target this multilingual rock as if it had magical healing properties. If ever I want to know about Egyptian art I’ll investigate the rooms at the British Museum which I cross weekly on the journey elsewhere. These marvellous galleries have doubtless remained unexplored also by the million expected soon to swarm to the Millennium Dome to see The Return of King Tut (sans blingy death cowl), and will undoubtedly remain similarly unvisited despite the whoops so easily elicited in Greenwich. On the previous leg of its world tour this show was seen by 1.2 million ardent Egyptologists in Philadelphia. And, as we all know, as a result of the 1972 exhibition, England was suddenly bursting with Adlestrop housewives conversing in hieroglyphics. Blockbusters are one symptom of wrong-headed government policies. Governments want to see results for their cash and, sadly, culture ministry officials understand only numbers... not self-improving-middle-class numbers, which they despise, but proper numbers. In the sweetest dream of arts ministers the mist of élitism clears to reveal a rolling maul of bumcrack tattoos discussing the decline of the Roman Empire as they salivate over a tray dripping with Thracian torques. Sadly, art will never attract that audience because it requires years of study and quiet thought which most are not willing or able to give. But mindless ministerial dogma still demands paper evidence of large numbers through museum doors. Moreover, in addition to being seen to earn their corn, museums have to supplement meagre subsidy, and here resides the principal raison d’être of the blockbuster. Over the years blockbusters have become a critical constituent in the solvency of underfunded museums and the wider planning and encouragement of tourism. A Matisse exhibition in New York was reported to have delivered an additional $90 million into the Manhattan economy whilst Picasso in Melbourne generated $40 million. Everything about blockbuster exhibitions of the King Tut and the Potty Army variety is anathema to art. They are contrived entirely insincerely for reasons other than the interests of the art itself, or the experience of the viewer. Loaning governments, often in poor countries, realise their negotiating strength and scale their fees accordingly steeply. Thus are priceless objects exchanged for hard currency. The Egyptian exhibition at the dome was originally pitched at $10 million a venue to hire. The British Museum reportedly paid £500,000 to rent its pot platoon – roughly thirty grand a head. Although directors and curators always spout the expected earnest platitudes about their motives, behind the scenes no shred of altruism is involved. The blockbusters is a tried and trusted business model which works thanks to blanket publicity partly acquired by priming the journalistic pump with free trips. They are staged in order to make money. The quality of the experience for the viewer comes last because paying visitors – like today’s football supporters – are now merely so many stomachs to be filled with flapjacks and pockets to be picked in exchange for moronic souvenirs. (I’ll never forget the buttered almonds I could have bought in the shades of Monet’s Rouen series.) Viewers are herded through the objects with indecent haste, past works they can’t see or consider properly. The entire experience is antithetical to the enjoyment of art. Additionally, most viewers volunteer for the distraction of headphones, to the detriment and discomfort of those who prefer to look for themselves. This device imparts nuggets of information which save the visitor the arduous, solitary task of actually examining anything and is cleverly devised by organisers to funnel people through to the gift shop in order to allow more payers in more quickly. It is impossible to lose oneself in the reverie of study whilst being jostled and otherwise distracted. Recently, I have found Raphael, Vermeer, Titian and Michelangelo exhibitions to be a waste of time. Crowds and art are the incompatible acts of the blockbuster circus. Neither are we ever told of the inevitable damage to the works caused when irreplaceable, delicate objects are forced to globetrot with all jet-travel’s unnatural and unnecessary stresses. One day major masterpieces will go down with a plane or a ship only because art grazers lack the real interest and motivation to make the trip to see them. Make no mistake, blockbusters have nothing to do with art, its appreciation or scholarship. And, if you are of such a nitpicking mind, by the time you add up the flights backwards and forwards of directors, critics, handlers, curators, not to mention the four planes required for the squaddies themselves, the carbon footprint of the Chinese army’s visit to London would probably leave a visible impression on the moon. I wouldn’t be quite so negative if there was any suspicion that those who queue and pay stiffly so they can’t see works requiring long reflection were actually genuinely interested in what they saw. But I don’t believe this is true of most visitors for whom a blockbuster visit is an agreeable day out with some shopping tagged on. At best the exhibition will become a talking point at the next dinner party, and at that point, with the regurgitation of a remembered McNugget, the trip’s purpose and expense will have been worth the trouble. How many of the hundreds of thousands who queued to see scores of atrocious late Monets at the Royal Academy had actually taken the trouble to know properly the dozens of works by the same artist in the capital’s museums? A handful? The drones who traipse around blockbusters are no better than the flocks of disaffected rednecks who trample valuable archaeological sites in Turkey and elsewhere simply because they are close to package resorts and the air-con coach trip is chucked in with the price. I’ve watched trudging, thirsty crowds of them at Ephesus hating every minute of it, yearning for the sea and sand. The touristic approach to art is a pretense to culture. By turning art into mere spectacle, blockbusters do art a disservice and cheat the visitor. They encourage the belief that art is another form of casual consumption, there for the picking, laid on a plate, no effort needed. A genuine interest in art is one which gives art the time it deserves in regular small doses. Nothing else works. Years ago now I realised that there was too much art being produced and packaged, too much of too little interest demanding attention. This ceaseless deluge left no time to dwell, no time to enjoy, no time to make the discoveries so generously disclosed by masterpieces. I found that even significant sights were failing to stick. Without keeping a list I had no recollection of things seen as little as a few days before. This state had crept up on me after too many decades of seeing everything and it is obvious that many in the professional art sphere suffer a similar weariness, for it shows in their work. For me the enjoyment of looking had flown, blunted by surfeit and duty, and especially by too much that was indifferent and unworthy of the effort made to see it. State Art has a lot to answer for in this regard because it shows us the same shallow trash by the same few artists over and over and over again. I have long since stopped going to most exhibitions unless it holds real promise of new delight. By avoiding yet another Warhol, Hockney, Baselitz, Ryman, Hume, Hodgkin, Gormley exhibition, I don’t feel I’ve missed anything. Indeed, I’ve vowed never to visit another Warhol exhibition. I’ve seen the works, all of them, many times and what they offer is too little. One time was important, but sufficient. The same is true of so much elsewhere that is catchpenny and repetitive. Instead, I prefer now to pick with precision, discovering more in the cherished familiar whilst accepting the unforeseen stroke of luck. I am convinced – and today’s art critics should take note – that the reason why Gautier and the de Goncourt brothers could write about the paintings they saw without self-consciousness and with freshness and credible passion was at least partly because of the scarcity of what was on offer in their pre-blockbuster, pre-art-professional age. For them keen anticipation was still possible. Art wasn’t yet everywhere, in every building, in every square, on every bleeding traffic island, in every newspaper and magazine. They were no biennales, triennales, manifestas and that modern scourge ‘The Art Fair’. Senses deadened by ubiquity, now so common an affliction, were strangers to them. The Government and State Art apply too much pressure. They don’t want to tease appreciation of fine things into life, they wants to inflict contemporary art upon us everywhere and with immediate effect. Thus is more and more money constantly demanded so more and more of this stuff can be forced down our throats. This is stupid because we risk spoiling ourselves for art, destroying the specialness of the experience with a psunami of mediocrity. We need less art not more. We need fewer blockbusters and fewer art professionals, for where professionalism prospers politicised duty replaces the real purpose of art. The greatest danger for anyone who enjoys art is overkill and the blockbuster is partly to blame for this prevalent condition. So do yourself a favour and give the clay figurines the cold shoulder. A year from now you’ll have forgotten you missed them. David Lee | |||||
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