 | ||||||
 | ||||||
 | ||||||
 | | | | | | |
Decline and Fall of the Wallace Selby Whittingham considers important questions raised by the exhibition of Damien Hirst’s paintings at the Wallace Collection Since writing about Turner and the Masters in the last issue, it has occurred to me that Damien Hirst’s exhibition at the Wallace Collection affords a parallel, albeit the differences are greater than the similarities. Whereas Turner was generally acknowledged as a master in certain fields – marines, storms and elegiac landscapes – his efforts as a history painter were often ridiculed in his day and still are now. The catalogue is so dismissive of one imitation that it does not even illustrate it. That was of Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, which Ian Warrell of Tate Britain says Turner ìwhimsically parodiedî. (Whether Turner intended it as a parody is another matter). Likewise Damien Hirst has gained recognition in some quarters for his sharks, whereas his new attempt at painting has been greeted with universal derision by the critics and as a similar act of hubris. Turner’s failures have added fuel to those critics of his bequests that he bludgeoned his way into the National Gallery, which should be reserved solely for works of superior merit. This has helped undermine his wish for a Turner Gallery at the National Gallery, though Turner and the Masters demonstrates that that is the more appropriate home than is the Tate. I have long felt – something which I should now repeat to avoid the charge of inconsistency in my condemnation of the Hirst show – that the solution is that hinted at in the carefully worded Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords, the 150th anniversary of which falls 2011, that a home for the bequest should be found ìin connexion with the National Galleryî, thereby preserving the essence of Turner’s wish while not disrupting the National Gallery’s plan and remit to house only masterpieces. The Hirst exhibition brutally disrupts the Wallace, as did the Lucian Freud show five years ago, to an extent that even a Turner Gallery inside the National ever would have. Freud, however, is a much better painter than Hirst, and his claim to be an heir of Rubens and Watteau is more justifiable, though the connection seemed fairly remote. (As indeed in the case of CÈzanne’s Bathers in one of the Venetian rooms at the National Gallery, which, unlike Rubens’s Judgement of Paris, looks out of place). In both cases queues have formed. Even more disruptively the shows have caused two rooms of Dutch pictures to be emptied on the main floor, so breaking the circulation round that. A former trustee of the Wallace (1973-90), Christopher Loyd, (whose Turners form a fine room in the reopened Ashmolean Museum) wrote to me: ìI too was surprised with the Lucian Freud exhibition being accommodated so that the Dutch paintings had to be removed. Previously when exhibitions have been held on those same walls the exhibits have mostly been from the Wallace Collection with any outsiders being there for comparison. It seemed unnecessary as with the exhibition space downstairs the Freud paintings could have been better shown there.î Of course the Wallace today would disagree. The vogue is for introducing cutting-edge art into ìstuffyî heritage displays in order to liven them up and attract more visitors. This is supposed to get people looking at the permanent collection who otherwise would not. Attendants at the Wallace loyally declare that visitors do indeed go on to look at the old masters. That is hardly surprising, as the empty offerings by Hirst will detain few very long. Some people, who have little appreciation of the constituents of good painting (composition, form, colour, drawing, etc.) are happy to have their minds tickled by conceptual art or by ìparodiesî (to use the Tate curator’s expression) of the masters. This is surely not what Lady Wallace intended when she gave the collection to the nation. At the time of the Hirst show I wrote to the then chairman of the Wallace Collection’s trustees. That was John Lewis, a solicitor and son of a QC, an admirer of sculpture and architecture and on various other art committees. (He has since been succeeded by Sir John Ritblat). He replied flatly that the exhibition ìin no way contravenedî the wishes of Lady Wallace. ìThe only relevant ‘condition’ was that the Collection should not be ‘mixed’ with other Works of Art.î I received no reply from another lawyer on the board, the Honourable Barbara S. Thomas of Eversheds, but presumably she concurred. Clearly all depends on how you define ìmixedî, and for that you would have to consider examples that Lady Wallace had in mind. British precedents were mainly of collections, such as Turner’s, which were given to be part of existing museums and where the condition was to keep these in rooms devoted solely to works from their gift. If this is the Wallace’s interpretation, then, according to Loyd’s recollection, it had earlier broken the condition. However the Wallace was the gift of a whole museum, like Sir John Soane’s, and the implication was that the collection should similarly not be added to. An attempt was made to incorporate the Soane in the British Museum, but that was successfully resisted. So far the Barnes Collection has preserved its unmixed status, even if other of Barnes’ restrictions have been overridden. John Lewis continued testily that ìwe have always been very conscious both of the spirit and the wording of the gift of Lady Wallace,î though conceded later that ìas with so many stipulations, the words themselves are not entirely clear on the face of things and so those interpreting them have to do their best to divine the intentions of the draftsman.î One is reminded of the caution of Merryman and Elsen (Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts) that museum directors and trustees ìwill interpret everything that is said in favour of their museum’s interests.î It is true that the Wallace resisted the blandishments of the National Gallery, when that wanted to borrow its Rubens landscape, but Lady Wallace’s prohibition against lending could hardly be quibbled over. It is also true that her direction that a new building should be erected for the collection was waived, with the agreement of her heir, and it has stayed in Manchester House, and those keen to override donors’ wishes will cite one breach, however justifiable, as grounds for further ones, as in the case of the Burrell Collection. The Wallace was the prototype of a series of museums devoted to private collections such as the Burrell, though as it has turned out the parallel is closer to those received with the building housing them such as the Jacquemart-AndrÈ in Paris, Frick at New York, and Isabella Gardner at Boston, which were founded partly in imitation of the Wallace. At these the collections and building form an ensemble as much as at any English stately home, and the introduction of contemporary works is foreign to that, especially when mixed up in the same rooms as the permanent collection, as has happened at, for instance, Petworth House. Maybe the intermingling of Banksy’s efforts in Bristol’s Art Gallery was amusing for a while, but did they really aid the appreciation of the permanent collection? Remarking that it has become de rigeur to show contemporary art in museums which do not collect it, the editor of Apollo in its December issue says, ìI almost never feel that the juxtaposition of contemporary art and Old Masters makes me look at the art of the past differently, despite being told by the curators of such exhibitions that it will.î Weakly he concedes, ìmaybe I just haven’t experienced enough of these sorts of exhibitions,î and suggests that the installation of Amsterdam’s red light district, Hoerengracht, at the National Gallery may convince him otherwise. It has not in my case. The Dutch 17th century pictures hung at its entrance are so totally different, even if their subject may be akin. (When I helped the late Fritz Grossmann catalogue a gift of Dutch pictures to Manchester City Art Gallery, we debated how the subjects should be described, agreeing to put a chivalrous gloss on them, an evasion to which the Hoerengracht perhaps stands as a reproof). Following this fashion the winners of the mind-numbing School of Saatchi competition (BBC2 TV) are to be shown in the Hermitage. Yet the Saatchi Gallery is confined to Saatchi-approved art. In The People’s France in 1950 the Jacquemart-AndrÈ, like the Wallace mainly a collection of Italian Renaissance and French 18th century works, was described by Alan Houghton Brodrick as having ìa spacious yet somewhat stuffy and bourgeois atmosphere.î Maybe to counteract that a decade later it housed a Van Gogh exhibition which had nothing to do with the permanent collection. (Four years later Chagall redecorated the Opera ceiling). I remember being bowled over by the Van Goghs, for which of course there was a long queue, but spending no time on what else there was to see. Of course the prime motive for having such shows as Hirst’s is to attract more visitors, but that is rarely conducive to enjoyable viewing, especially in museums which are fairly small and rooms mostly of modest size. The various evils of the vogue for loan exhibitions, especially the larger or more glitzy ones, at our museums have been gradually realised in recent years. No doubt, if Hirst can relieve oligarchs of some of their questionably acquired millions (Evening Standard Magazine, December 4th), that will gain him kudos among many Britons, as will his gift of £250,000 for the refurbishment of the rooms. (This troubled David Lister in The Independent, October 17th, though he ìdidn’t think for a minuteî that the decision to hold the show was influenced by that!). To protest that art has nothing to do with money is rather prudish (especially in the context of the Wallace), but commercialism has become too rampant. One of the selfsame oligarchs attended the opening at the Wallace (ìHirst among equalsî one paper punned). Guests were not allowed to drink their champagne near the Hirsts, which were protected by glass, only in the grand gallery where the Rembrandts and Rubens had no such protection. Should all museums try to do everything? The Latin adage, non omnia possumus omnes (we cannot all do everything), comes to mind, as does the adage that the cobbler should stick to his last. Of course the British Museum has been propagating the virtues of the universal museum as part of its defence against the attempts to remove the Marbles to the specialised Parthenon Museum at Athens. However the objection made against the idea of a National Gallery – ìthe collection in one spot of so many chef d’oeuvres would not be favourable to the Arts Ö it will be visited too mechanically. It will excite no enthusiasm; pictures are separated from their history, statues from their connection, everything from its proprietyî (Morning Chronicle, August 3rd, 1802) – has been borne out by the grasshopper reaction of many visitors to the larger museums. The Chairman of the National Trust, Sir Simon Jenkins, argues to the contrary in his review of the new Mediaeval and Renaissance galleries at the V&A and against a German art dealer fuming about a lack of atmosphere (The Guardian, December 4th). But surely part of the Wallace’s attraction, at any rate, is its atmosphere and that it once was a private house (or ìa nostalgic family homeî, the asset which its current leaflet lists first)? The direction in part supports that idea and in part subverts it, suggesting an opportunist policy rather than one of conviction. The gallery’s restaurant is unashamedly grand, but the shop has remaindered off the serious catalogue raisonnÈs by its former director, John Ingamells, and replaced these with the ìpopularî junk such as other museum shops might hesitate to include. The aforementioned leaflet shows an actor in period costume striking a pose in front of the Rubens landscape before rows of children. As a not totally abnormal child I am sure I would have felt this to be condescending. Another leaflet is introduced by Monty the Monkey, who bids visitors to ìhide from scary monstersî and the like. The next show (February 4th – March 28th) is one to be ìcuratedî by 9-10 year-old children, but whether this is more than another gimmick remains to be seen. Aimed at older patrons is mention of another attraction, ìsaucy miniaturesî, and an earlier leaflet was more visually saucy in its choice of an illustration. All this is no doubt an attempt to banish the charge of stuffiness. It is not quite on the level of the V&A’s description of itself as an ìace cafÈî with museum attached, but, with some aid from Hirst, it is veering in that direction. I had once hoped that the advent of female directors might mark a refreshing innovation, but judgement has not been their forte. The current one at the Wallace, Rosalind Savill CBE FBA FSA, President of the French Porcelain Society, has her admirers, and many, including Christopher Loyd, approve of some changes made under her stewardship. But she now stands condemned by her own actions. No doubt the Wallace is above all a museum of French 18th century art, the epitome of luxury and frivolity. That era ended in the guillotine. Ms Savill should now surely be heading for the tumbrils. She has been director since 1992, the same length of time as John Ingamells, who was axed prematurely at 58, the same age as Rosalind Savill is now. If he was too serious, his successor has been too frivolous, and nevermore so than when putting on an exhibition of paintings by an artist who confesses that he is a mere novice at painting and to the detriment of the enjoyment of the collection which she was appointed to cherish. | ||||
 | ||||
 | ||||
Key Moments | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
Key Jackdaw Moments All of this site is | ||||
| | | | |