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Freedom of expression: In our survey of newspaper art coverage during 2001, summarised last year in issues 16 and 17, one broadsheet art critic stood out from the rest as independent and annoyingly unpredictable. He was John McEwen of the Sunday Telegraph. In a profession where predictability in what is covered and plodding reliability of opinion appear obligatory, McEwen reviewed a far wider selection of exhibitions from around the country (and especially from the Scottish capital) and a wider range of events within London and the English provinces than anyone else. He discussed the work of neglected artists who, one suspects, some of the newer and startlingly ignorant newspaper critics had probably never heard of. Reliant solely on his eyes (never his ears), he was frequently wittily dismissive, usually in the briefest of paragraphs, of shows featuring fashionable contemporary artists which in other papers commandeered page after dreary page of slobbering adulation. Like Brian Sewell in the Evening Standard, he seemed to hold the world of contemporary art in realistic perspective and never gave the impression of feeling obligated to praise those who were elsewhere routinely treated as innovators of genius. Recognising that there is good and bad work in all styles, old and new, he celebrated art’s variety not its faddish narrowness and current obsession with anything ‘young’. Additionally, and for many years, he has been one of few writers capable of making cynical amateurs like myself look twice at abstract painting, it being a style of work he understands intimately. His insights into its peculiar rules and formal grammar made one return to work with a more open mind. This quality makes for a special critic: to force one to look again, see something clearly for what it is and wish that one had been capable of making the observation for oneself, this is rare. My only personal experience of John McEwen was when we were both members of a press party in Edinburgh over ten years ago. A troupe of hacks and Arts Council loiterers was ferried by bus to a collection of outdoor sculptures and installations, collectively entitled Lux Europae, which had been specially commissioned and paid for by the Arts Council to accompany a photo-call of EC leaders in Scotland’s capital. Works were scattered across the city and I can not now recall a single one of the pieces, each of which was introduced prior to our arrival on site by an approved stooge who stood at the front of the bus reading artbollocks through a microphone – that I do remember. It beggared belief that such vast funds, resources and effort could be expended on a collection so thin. When we returned to the coach after seeing the first of the 27 works – it was something to do with posters on a station platform – I sat near John McEwen. We nodded politely to one another, before he ventured with a weary smile, “Only 26 to go.” McEwen has not had his contract renewed by the Sunday Telegraph. In today’s euphemistical parlance he has been “released”. Perhaps in today’s climate of all-pervading State Art influence, and the paranoid spinning and control-freakery which surrounds it, he has been fingered for holding the wrong opinions. Authoritative rumours abound concerning his departure from the paper which, as a gentleman, he has stoutly parried. We’ll come to these later following a brief digression. The morning after the announcement of the Turner Prize winner, Radio 4’s Today programme invited the refreshingly outspoken painter and arts minister, Dr Kim Howells, for his opinion on the victor. Producers were obviously hoping he would re-warm his “mechanical bullshit” comments made about some (but, crucially, not all) conceptual art a few weeks before. In a wonderfully forthright enfilade of grapeshot, Howells expressed his disgust with the immodest self-congratulation of the Tate Gallery party as it had appeared on the television. He particularly remarked upon the visible evidence of a self-serving, self-congratulating coterie, the very opposite of an avant garde, and especially of the uniforms of membership, specifically those black shirts beloved of curators actual and manqué. For a moment I was confused. He had said “black shirt” but I heard it as “blackshirt”. As a highly educated fellow and a former Marxist, Howells undoubtedly intended the double entendre. It struck me that the attitudes of these black shirts is indeed ‘blackshirt’ in its intolerance and bigotry, because the apostles of State Art are a kind of international blackshirt brotherhood. Dismissing all criticism as philistine, they advance their cause with lies, clever threats and specious argument, denouncing all opposition as marginal and scheming so its voice is gagged as frequently as possible. Their power and complacency derive solely from finding themselves in immovable positions of authority whilst their transcendence never derives from objectively assessable argument because their apologists are so feeble. They are merely zealots exercising a superior kind of power and, for the past decade, male curators aboard the bandwagon have tended to wear, yes, those black shirts. I first observed this phenomenon in 1991. I was escorted by the director of a modern art gallery around his newly converted fief. He wore not only a black shirt but a black tie, black jacket, black trousers, socks and shoes. Blacked up like Al Jolson he would have made the perfect kinetic, conceptual statement as he wriggled like a bacterium through his burning white ‘spaces’. He also spoke the drivel that comes with the uniform – he has more recently taken to writing it too. Now for that rumour. Concerns over the departure of John McEwen were conveyed to The Jackdaw not by idle gossipers but by eminent, highly placed, entirely reasonable and fair-minded art professionals and journalists whose names will remain secret. All were motivated by concern for freedom of expression. It was suggested to us that John McEwen was “released” because he was not prepared to temper his criticism of the prime movers in the fashionable art establishment, predominantly the Saatchis and Serotas, and was even unprepared to review at all certain exhibitions which, for all their expensive and energetic marketing, he considered insignificant or already over-exposed. Quite coincidentally, Charles Saatchi, often one of McEwen’s targets, cohabits with Nigella Lawson, who is sister to the Sunday Telegraph’s editor. Shortly after John McEwen was making me wish I’d said what he said in Auld Reekie, a letter was being signed by a cabal of art critics (mostly dumb ones), writers (including a number whose books are unreadable) and dealers (mainly those who are now major beneficiaries of State Art’s obsessions), demanding the sacking of Brian Sewell at the Evening Standard. It was a naked attempt at censorship by many of those who have since been co-opted to State Art’s round table. Given State Art’s scandalous record of bias, it is laughable that this lot should have criticised anyone else for “artistic prejudice”. Brian’s crime? He had the double effrontery not only to hold different opinions to their own about certain young artists and the claptrap used to promote them, but also to express his denunciations in witty, stylish reviews and persuasive essays which were miniature masterpieces of polemic. State Art is greatly fearful of skilful writers who amusingly expose the shallowness of the trash they idolise. Quite coincidentally the letter against Brian Sewell was orchestrated soon after a Tate Gallery meeting, attended according to his own reports by Jay Jopling of White Cube, which had been convened by Serota in order to devise a strategy to gain greater newspaper coverage for the contemporary art beloved of ... well ... Jopling, Serota and Saatchi mainly. I would submit that the minutes of that meeting are among the most important documents in recent contemporary art. Doubtless it is the blueprint for how certain contemporary artists, but not others, have come to dominate the news, critical and state-funded agenda over the succeeding decade. Quite coincidentally, the person who orchestrated the letter against Brian “curates” the art in a London hospital. That same hospital was subsequently offered a significant loan from the collection of Charles Saatchi. So many reasonable commentators now remark upon the paranoid necessity of the art establishment to control everything for its own ends that they can’t all be conspiracy theorists. It is for this reason that the “release” of John McEwen is of such interest to those of us who believe that State Art not only misrepresents contemporary art in its true diversity but is intolerant of those who believe only the evidence of their eyes. David Lee | ||||||
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