The Jackdaw

Category: Comment

  • Giles Auty: Review of The New Philistines by Sihrab Ahmari

    Although I no longer live permanently in Britain, I have been fascinated to learn about the apparent stir caused there recently by this worthy and unusual little book.

    The feelings of indignation and outrage which underwrite it are understandable. Yet even the fiercest cultural arguments seldom seem to stir much in the way of violent emotions in Britain. By custom we generally prefer to ignore such supposedly ‘irrelevant’ matters as our culture more or less completely – or sweep them as swiftly as possible under the carpet.

    As a relatively recent newcomer to Britain, Mr. Ahmari’s lack of experience of such ingrained attitudes not only insulates him but possibly encourages him to believe that sentiments such as his really do deserve to be heard. To a large extent I agree with him. Yet if the history of our world in the past 100 years teaches us anything it must surely be that deeply flawed ideas and notions prevail all too often and sometimes for much too long even in ostensibly democratic Western societies. Thus somewhere – if only on the campus of a Western university – some group or other will surely be planning to celebrate the centenary of the October Revolution in Russia during the latter part of this year.

    Indeed, it is the kind of New Left, postmodernist brainwashing which has taken place largely unresisted for decades now in Western academic institutions which is the true cause of almost everything to which Mr. Ahmari so rightly objects.

    But was such brainwashing something our Western populations either requested or desired? The answer to that is a resounding no. Instead the almost total destruction of the teaching of the arts and humanities in Britain and other Western countries in recent times was, in fact, a direct consequence of the largely unresisted ‘Long March’ which began its sweep through the soft underbelly of Western life and culture nearly half a century ago now.

    Who then were the prime movers and founding fathers of the so-called ‘Long March Through The Institutions’? All were scions of the Extreme Left of course – think Gramsci and Marcuse as typical examples – rather than any kind of believers at all in what most of us would understand by democracy let alone by the word culture.

    One of the first objects of Mr. Ahmari’s criticism, Director of the Globe Theatre Emma Rice, seems to me to be a typical example of the result of such brainwashing. Indeed whenever her ideas diverge from those even of Shakespeare himself she does not hesitate to believe she is ‘automatically’  in the right.  That is because she actually believes a very high percentage of the cultural propaganda to which, at some point, she seems to have been dangerously exposed. Thus the Bard can, of course, only be right on almost any issue when he agrees with her.  Indeed, as Ms. Rice admits: “I have tried to sit down with Shakespeare but it doesn’t work. I get sleepy and then suddenly I want to listen to The Archers”.

    In short the great playwright’s plays are apparently a bit too long, the language a bit too archaic and many of those who claim to enjoy him are now merely ‘faking’ it. Indeed, does not the description ‘new philistine’ begin to seem even rather mild and generous in the unusual case of Ms.Rice?

    I also cannot help wondering whether such a familiar adjective as ‘timeless’ has any intelligible meaning at all for her? Yet it is precisely because the famous playwright’s human insights were and are so utterly ageless – as well as beautifully and tellingly expressed – that so many traditionally educated people continue to revere him internationally more than four centuries after his death. Like so many of her ilk Ms. Rice seems to lack even the most elementary grasp of the essential difference between truth and opinion. Indeed, all she does seem to have, for the moment at least, is the degree of power which she shares with a large number of other, oddly unsuitable-seeming people who run the arts in Britain today in the supposed name of ‘our’ nation.  In truth, the arts and culture in general have not ‘belonged’ to any normal members of our society now for some generations past. They belong instead to an unelected arts autocracy and its fellow travellers which has formed its very own, generally coercive and pseudo-revolutionary agenda.

    Just how undemocratic, misguided and mad can we get? You may not wish to answer that question. Since Mr. Ahmari is apparently a recent convert to Catholicism I sense that truth in the singular is a notion with which he, by contrast, is both entirely familiar and comfortable.

    To return to the basic theme of his book, I agree thoroughly with Mr. Ahmari’s right to feel thoroughly outraged. He expected something much better from Britain than an infantilisation of our once flourishing culture by power-mad followers of New Left fashions – to say nothing of its almost total degradation now via the forces of the state.

    In the middle section of the book its author finds time for apposite historical, political and philosophical reflections until at last venturing forth into the uneasy realm of the visual arts. If Mr. Ahrami’s ventures into the Globe Theatre seemed hard for him to credit imagine his shock on entering the portals of a few of the heavily subsidised public outlets for visual art such as the ICA and South London Gallery. These and even stranger venues were formerly on my own regular visiting rounds.  Indeed at a massive international women’s convention held in the early 1980s at the ICA I once provided unintentional evidence of the once widely held contention by feminists that ‘all men are potential rapists’. This occurred when I embraced the only person there I thought that I knew: the wife of a close friend. However, it was not my friend’s wife at all but her identical twin sister – an ardent feminist – who I had greeted with such enthusiasm.

    To Mr. Ahmari, as to me, there appears no good reason why a nation with a noted historic culture should by now seem so intent on destroying it. What unimaginable perversity of mind could possibly be responsible for such an action?

    Fortunately for Mr. Ahmari – and every other inhabitant of Britain – a relatively brief and entirely credible answer does exist now to this question. This gem was luckily provided for me recently, in the course of a letter, by the editor of this very magazine: “State art is an invention of my lifetime.  I’ve watched it evolve.  It has successfully infiltrated and now controls every corner of contemporary art, funding only what it deems challenging, conceptual, minimal etc.. It is an outrageous travesty of what public funding for art should be. No artist should be excluded from assistance simply by virtue of a stylistic path, or the use of a medium, which officialdom deems misguided. State art discriminates against any traditional styles, favours the contemporary over the traditional and colludes in a sleazy manner with the marketplace. It has contributed to the ruin of the Fine Art college system, which now teaches practically nothing but the transparent pretence of ‘intellectualism’, and produces ‘artists’ only fit for the State Art treadmill. Artists excluded by State Art, a very large majority, must fend for themselves. Some do this successfully against the odds: but they will be denied acclaim, they won’t be collected by the state, they won’t have books published about them by mainstream publishers and they will be condemned to having their work reviewed only rarely because print and broadcast media are also on message with State Art.”

    Should Mr. Ahmari require a concise answer to at least some of the questions he raises in his book then this single paragraph supplies it.  However, if he wishes to venture a step or two further he may also care to read a recently published book Culture at Crisis Point which has recently become available internationally via sales@connorcourt.com

    Giles Auty
    The Jackdaw

  • Giles Auty: The Vital Value of Dissent

    From the raised kitchen window of my house I can see most of the birds which regularly visit the garden. In summer these are mostly magpies, currawongs and cockatoos while in winter quite large flocks of pale green female satin bowerbirds arrive which are often accompanied by an all-black male.

    The latter is, in fact, the only bird which could possibly be mistaken for the much more regular but somewhat furtive year-round visitor which is a male blackbird – a species of English thrush which was first introduced into Australia in 1862. In their country of origin such male birds are probably the most prolific creators of endlessly inventive birdsong whereas in Australia my particular example avoids drawing attention to himself now by never singing at all. In short, much larger and angrier indigenous birds of a territorial disposition clearly believe they enjoy sole rights to my garden.

    I do not suggest for a moment that my situation and that of the blackbird are directly analogous yet are perhaps just sufficiently so for me to feel rather more than passing sympathy for his plight.

    I came to work in Australia more than 20 years ago now but had hardly written a word here before an extremely hostile half page appeared in The Age which was composed almost entirely of comments made by known opponents of mine from the English press.  Quite a lot of thought and effort must have gone into preparing that particular form of welcome to these shores. Not to be outdone, Australia’s ABC television shortly concocted a lengthy, similarly abrasive and most dishonestly edited program which likewise made not the slightest attempt at balance. Indeed not long afterwards when my name was recommended by a friend to a well-known ABC radio interviewer she stated: “I can’t possibly have people like that on my show”. Like what exactly you may be tempted to ask? I would still quite like an answer to that question myself.

    Purely by chance I have subsequently heard that particular person interview two of the more vacuous and self-serving people known to British art with an attitude of total reverence. Australia can indeed be a strange and sometimes perverse country. What is of rather greater interest, however, is exactly why that should be so.

    I raise these matters now getting on for two decades after the event not because even a jot of resentment remains but simply because I do not think that large sections of the Australian media have really improved their act noticeably from those somewhat distant days to this. One thing which that does, in effect, is lock Australia into an unnecessary time-warp which reflects very poorly indeed on this country’s desire to be taken seriously on any international cultural stage.

    Typical of such complacent but somewhat parochial blundering, in fact, was the expensively produced, would-be blockbuster exhibition AUSTRALIA which ran at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from September to December 2013.

    Those who carry some knowledge of recent art history in their heads will know that the latter show was designed to build on the goodwill first created by Recent Australian Painting which had been shown at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London way back in 1961. That was also the show which virtually opened the door for Australian artists keen to establish themselves internationally rather than just locally: Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Brett Whiteley and Fred Williams were typical beneficiaries of that historic Whitechapel show.

    So just how well was the much more comprehensive follow-up exhibition AUSTRALIA received? When that show ended, a panel of senior British critics voted it the worst major exhibition held in London during 2013. I had formerly been a member of that panel myself while still working in London for The Spectator. Why, then, exactly was a panel of highly experienced critics so disappointed? Should I mention here perhaps that the latter disappointment was not reported particularly widely – or indeed at all – in the Australian media?

    I have been an Australian citizen now for eight years and so feel saddened by any kind of completely unnecessary national flop – let alone one which is artistic in nature. With even a modicum of wider consultation the foregoing reverse could have been avoided very easily. Later in this article I will explain precisely why.

    For the moment, however, I need to return to the little matter of why I was once considered some kind of monster here by at least some authorities. A need clearly existed in certain quarters to silence or at least sideline me – presumably because I was believed not to comply with some form or other of political or cultural orthodoxy.

    I  am a very frank and outspoken art critic I agree but probably no more so than John McDonald from the Sydney Morning Herald, nor the late Robert Hughes who was then writing for Time, nor indeed the late Brian Sewell who was then making a major name for himself as a dissident voice while writing for London’s Evening Standard. All four of us were largely in agreement about some of the more obvious follies of Late Modernism as well as about the extremely unfortunate subsequent effects of judging art by its political conformity or correctness rather than by its intrinsic merit as art. That said, the true and – apparently unforgivable nature – of my personal crime was to be perceived as a political conservative which formerly enjoyed a popularity roughly on a par with rat poison in what some believe to be ‘proper’ art circles in Australia.

     

    As evidence for those prosecuting my ‘crime’ I had admittedly worked in London for a number of years as visual arts spokesman for the Conservative Advisory Committee for the Arts and Heritage as well as serving on the Art Working Group for the National Curriculum for English and Welsh Schools where my appointment was even rumoured to have been prompted by former British PM Margaret Thatcher.

    It could be pointed out however that a Conservative government was in power in Britain during all my years of working there as an art critic. Clearly if I hoped to contribute at all to government arts programs and policies no other option existed for me at that time. In short I tried consistently to help to create government art policies rather than merely to endorse them.

    My precise political views aside, my lengthy professional experience was at one time evidently welcomed quite widely on matters relating to the arts. Indeed, I had not been in Australia long before I was approached by the then Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne to advise on improvements and refurbishments to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In the event I personally commissioned the bronze there of Archbishop Mannix by English sculptor Nigel Boonham (see opposite) as well as a number of other works on the then Archbishop’s behalf.

    Before coming to Australia I had reviewed major exhibitions and events in more than twenty different countries including such widely varied venues as the former USSR, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Singapore, the USA and even Trinidad & Tobago. One truly amazing experience included the unveiling at a private house in Germany of a superb portrait bust of my host by Arno Breker – Hitler’s favourite sculptor – who astonishingly was then still alive.  Although perhaps best known as the creator of the massive neo-classical sculpture for the notorious Berlin Olympics of 1936, Breker was also instrumental during the war in saving a number of French artists in Paris from the unwelcome attentions of the Gestapo.

    At least some of my early experiences of Australia were hardly less bizarre and unexpected than the foregoing. Indeed, on a first trip round the offices of my then employer The Australian a colleague pointed out a fellow journalist in the following manner: “She comes from a very fine old communist family of course”

     

    That certainly did come as something of a shock to me partly because a section of my compulsory military service had been spent hard up against the front-line of the Russian forces which formerly occupied a large area of Northern Germany. Many years later at a drinks party at Tbilisi in Georgia I met a Russian ex-serviceman who had also served in exactly that same sector. In days past we had been separated, in fact, by only a few hundred metres of ice and snow and thus years later rather enjoyed a few civilised drinks together to celebrate ‘old times’.

    Twenty years ago The Australian was certainly more ambiguous in its political stance than it could be said to be today. Even so, it was probably even then this country’s most conservative serious newspaper so far as its politics, at least, were concerned. But what about other areas of that paper such as education and the arts? Were such sections of the paper formerly allowed to be more or less autonomous thus contributing to the strongly left-leaning bias of both disciplines in Australia’s general life? Indeed, if they were allowed to be so was that because the arts generally were once held – largely by political editors and writers – to be of little or no account? Although my appointment here was very poorly received indeed by the Fairfax press, for example, and by ‘our’ ABC, a substantial section of my new readers at The Australian clearly felt very differently – as did quite a number of very senior Australian artists. One such strongly urged me to apply, in fact, for the then vacant post of director of the National Gallery of Australia – a position for which I was shortlisted.

    Over the years I had also been approached in Britain to join the ranks of arts bureaucracy. One such occasion involved the offered directorship of the Bear Lane Gallery in Oxford – a post occupied by the late Nick Waterlow, former director of Sydney University’s art gallery, when I turned that particular appointment down.

    Unfortunately while it is certainly possible to retain a dissident voice simply as a critic and writer, such an independent stance is probably much harder to maintain within publicly-funded institutions.  

    What shortly became apparent to me while working here was that it was my fellow journalists rather than the general public who were most opposed to some of the less orthodox and politically correct opinions I expressed.

    Ironically, in view of the extreme hostility which greeted my arrival here I found myself named  some eight months later by English historian Paul Johnson as “one of only four outstanding British art critics of the past forty years” (The Spectator, February 17th, 1996).

     

    The arts in general have been one of the major victims of what passes here for post-modernist theory. Regrettably for us such thinking also takes root and flourishes most notably in ‘young’ countries such as Australia which generally lack any form of inbuilt self-righting mechanism almost entirely. Basic commonsense can thus often seem to take rather a long holiday from our shores.

    It was my believed opposition to the evident excesses of Late Modernism and then of Post-Modernism in the arts which undoubtedly accounted for much of the strong initial local opposition  – to which I have referred already – to my appointment at The Australian. The tactics employed by my opponents may have seemed a trifle crude yet I suggest that merely showed the depth of their desire that any hint of open opposition to any of their particular artistic codes and beliefs needed to be shut down as quickly as possible. For if I  managed to attract any degree of public support at all who knew where such matters might lead? Perhaps the political left’s iron grip on arts funding of all kinds might even have been marginally loosened?

    In theory the public funding of art of all kinds sounds almost entirely admirable and dates back in recent times, at least, to the theories and enthusiasms of John Maynard Keynes who was the guiding light behind the founding of the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) in Britain shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War. That led in turn to the setting up of various kinds of Arts Councils immediately after the war including, in time, the Australia Council.

    While public support for orchestras, opera and ballet companies, theatres and such often appears to serve some worthwhile social, artistic and logistical purpose, other forms of support, such as that of favoured individuals, opens the door so obviously to cronyism that the practice becomes very hard indeed to justify whatever safeguards are supposedly put in place.

    Almost all of the foregoing is because most arts funding has by now become politicised in ways which should have been easy to foresee. As just one consequence of this the public often becomes obliged now to support precisely the kind of art and art forms it most dislikes and distrusts. Yet all such art’s funding exists, of course, in the public’s name.

    Just one of the problems afflicting many present-day critics, curators and even art gallery directors is that while being highly trained in Marxist analysis, for example, and other equally arcane and politicised practices, they possess hardly any ability at all by now to use their eyes. That is precisely why, in fact, the huge exhibition AUSTRALIA was basically such a flop. Before going on to explain why, I would also like to extend some degree of sympathy to all Australians involved in the visual arts. Our land is so isolated and travel from it so expensive and tiring that it would be extremely difficult for most Australians to see even a fraction of the major art from all times I have been lucky enough to see myself, largely from my former base in London.

    Much – but by no means all – of what I believe is based on that wealth of experience. I have also seen poor exhibitions here, notably of Turner and Monet, which did little or no justice to their causes. Great tomes and catalogues can also only tell us so much – for to be in the presence of great art can often be an utterly transforming experience. I think here of the greatest exhibition I have ever seen, for example, which was of nearly eighty works by Velazquez in February 1990 at the Prado in Madrid.

    The failure of AUSTRALIA was not just a matter of lack of knowledge – especially of international conditions and expectations – but no less so one of confidence. In the absence of both knowledge and confidence what transpired was both a muddle and a compromise. Fifty five years ago, the Whitechapel show introduced much that was totally unknown to a British public starved of knowledge of international art and starved also of the books which might serve as some valuable form of introduction to it at least.

    Aboriginal art aside, much of the art which Australia produced in its early days was largely a matter of topographical curiosity when marsupials and dingoes, emus and man-eating sharks still shared the value of strangeness at least. Much of the early work in AUSTRALIA therefore became a kind of plodding history lesson for the five people left in the world who were not quite sure who Charles Darwin, William Bligh and Ned Kelly were and similarly had little grasp and understanding of the world-wide history of plein-air painting which was internationally inspired by a short-lived Frenchman, Jules Bastien-Lepage (see illustration), whose influence during his lifetime was greater than that of Manet. Was that interesting fact personally known to you?

    One problem was that the kind of painting exemplified by such as Roberts and Streeton had many exemplars elsewhere in the world with whom reasonably sophisticated gallery-goers would have been thoroughly familiar. I personally like the art of Roberts and Streeton very much but no more so than that of the early Newlyn School artists with which I have long been familiar. When still a full-time painter myself, I formerly rented Stanhope Forbes’s old studio in Newlyn.

    So what else could Australia have showcased that was not only world-class but which was virtually unknown to a British audience? Nolan and Boyd – who both subsequently lived in Britain – were already very well-known in that country – as was the former’s Ned Kelly series around which much of the publicity for the London show was centred. But the latter dated from the late 1940s of course. Had Australian artists achieved nothing of world-class or consequence either since or before that date which would be novel to its audience?

    Much of the art in the most recent section of the show – weirdly named ELIZABETHAN POST-COLONIAL 1950-2013 – was extremely weak and derivative by international standards and artists around whom the whole show could have been built were each represented by only a single, often ill-chosen work. This is where lack of what used to be called aesthetic judgement utterly crippled the show.

    During the years when I still wrote regularly in the mainstream Australian press I pointed out the extraordinary world-class merits of various Australian artists: William Robinson, Lloyd Rees, John Olsen and Kenneth Macqueen to name but four. Robinson and Olsen who are two of the finest Australian artists of the 20th century also have the advantage of working on an epic scale. Rees and Macqueen, by contrast, possessed a lyrical sensitivity that was truly timeless.

    Rees’s pencil drawings of the mid-1930s are perhaps the nearest equivalent that exists to the famous Shoreham paintings of Samuel Palmer from more than a century earlier. Palmer is one of Britain’s best-loved artists but is virtually unknown in Australia. Both he and Rees went through quite brief ‘transcendental’ periods, while the visual poetry of Macqueen at his best is sublimely but unquestionably Australian.

    If you do nothing else this year, source and buy William Robinson’s The Transfigured Landscape (co-published by Queensland University of Technology and Piper Press) which illustrates among many other masterpieces his six-part Creation Series in full. Each work is seven metres or more in width and absolutely world-class in its execution, imagination and spiritual force. Olsen at his best is also unmistakeably Australian in his execution, subject matter and uniquelyAntipodean sense of humour.

    To sum up, what an utterly marvellous visual treat was denied to Britain and what cold, colonial porridge was served up instead.

    If ever a need existed for the mimsy, left-wing stranglehold on the arts in Australia to be broken, the exhibition AUSTRALIA surely supplied it.

    Giles Auty
    The Jackdaw

  • Eric Coombes: The Destruction of Art Education and Its Implications for School Pupils

    The near-destruction in the western world of a centuries-long tradition of visual education could be described – hyperbolically but not misleadingly – as having been accomplished overnight. The inherited gifts of that tradition are now being casually, ungratefully and even malevolently thrown away. In its chronologically long-range survey, What Happened to Art Education? provides the context in which the extraordinary rapidity and grievousness of this loss displays itself.

    The enormity of the threat to our culture is evident to those responding to David Lee’s essay in last month’s edition of The Jackdaw. There is broad agreement that art education at the higher level has been wrecked by the jettison and denigration of traditional skills (usually by those incapable of acquiring them), and the imposition of the ‘intellectual’ in their place. This judgement is grounded in a true perception of an appalling state of affairs. But we need, in my view, to take care not to make our observations in misleading terms. James Charnley, for example, suggests that ‘[t]he way forward is to take the intellectualism out of art’. This, however, could be taken to imply that what was displaced by ‘intellectualism’ was itself without an important intellectual dimension. It might also seem to presuppose that the practice of ‘art’ as it is now generally promoted at the ‘higher’ level of ‘education’ is dominated by the exercise of intellect. Who provide the models for this exercise? Such towering intellects as Damien Hirst, ‘Professor’ Tracey Emin or Martin Creed? If intellectualism needs to be ‘taken out’, then ‘intellectualism’ must be understood as something hostile to the cultivation of intellect – as an arrogant imposture, the infantile pantomime of self-important pretence that now constitutes ‘education’ in the visual arts.

    Following the recommendations of the Coldstream and Summerson reports more than forty years ago, a formal requirement was introduced for Dip.A.D. and then degree courses in art and design to include a modest element of ‘complementary’ studies, generally art history, theory and sometimes aesthetics. It is worth remembering that the devil’s work of utilitarianism, though already well advanced, had not yet reduced higher education quite to its present state of ruination; and this requirement was intended to enhance the humane benefits of art education, as education – as something of value in itself, rather than a mere preparation of students for their putative future roles as economic units in a world understood entirely in terms of commerce. (It should, in passing, be emphasized that the political context of crass philistinism in which this attitude has triumphed is by no means attributable to one political party rather than another.)

    There was no reason why this provision of genuinely intellectual material (wherever the actual provision could properly be so described) would threaten the learning of traditional skills – no more than a course in, say, the philosophy or history of mathematics would hinder a mathematics student from doing mathematics. The bogus intellectualism that now prevails is a very different matter, since it has invaded and subjugated the domain of practice and thoroughly poisoned the soil in which skills were cultivated.

    What, exactly, are the skills that have been scrapped? Well, in the case of painting, for example, the correct answer is the tritely obvious one: they are those required to make paintings. In what sense are those skills not intellectual, by contrast with what has displaced them? Clearly, some of the necessary operations involved have, in themselves, no significant intellectual dimension – such things as preparing grounds and so on. But consider what a level of organized complexity can be achieved in painting, even in a simple still-life, let alone in such stupendous achievements as, say, Poussin’s Adoration of the Golden Calf. Such a work embodies an awe-inspiring exercise of intelligence. Does that not count as – among other things – an exercise of intellect? In what sense of ‘intellectual’ is this not intellectual, while gobbledygook posturing as thinking is? The uneducated find what is intellectually demanding indistinguishable from the merely confused, illiterate, pretentious or fraudulent, and may therefore suppose that the more something is incomprehensible to themselves the more they must pretend to understand and value it. And, as a few important but disregarded commentators have pointed out, a major problem of the contemporary world is that education is now largely in the hands of the uneducated.

    Before moving on, I want to make one specific point about ‘skills’. Traditionally, the central ‘skill’, for all the visual arts, including architecture, and – partly in a slightly extended sense, sculpture – was that of drawing. I have added scare quotes to the word ‘skill’, not because the word is incorrect in this context, but because it may have inappropriately modest connotations, especially when applied to drawing. If drawing is a skill, it is a skill in much the same sense in which the use of language is a skill, and, like language, it is a medium of thought and not merely the technique for producing artefacts of certain kinds. This is why, before the comprehensive vandalization of art education, drawing was understood to have paramount importance, as something fundamental and indispensible. And unless an understanding of this indispensability is regained, we shall have destroyed our visual tradition, which is as much as to say that we shall have destroyed the visual arts themselves, leaving only a deposit of artefacts as inscrutable items of cultural palaeontology.

     

    Here I merely assert this point, essentially without argument. With the editor’s indulgence, I might return to it in a future article, where I would attempt some elaboration, elucidation and justification. But I now turn to an aspect of the present situation not explicitly dealt with in his essay: the predicament of the young person preparing to enter higher education from school, wanting to pursue an interest in the visual arts, but confronted by the chaotic and hazardous wreckage of the art-school system in which help might once have been found. Deprived of life by the managerialist philistines into whose malign custody they were delivered, the mortal remains of serious and sometimes distinguished schools of art now rest in the huge charnel houses that have ousted and plundered them. Under a regime of licensed fraudulence, these bloated conglomerates often boast such preposterously vainglorious titles as The University for the Creative Arts. (What, may one ask, are the uncreative arts?)

    But, it might be objected, they have no difficulty in recruiting students – do they? Well, perhaps not – no more than do any of the other entities now allowed to boast the once meaningful title of ‘university’. What is the significance of this fact, if it is a fact – in a situation where, in consequence of government policies, a university place – no longer perceived, as it once was, as a privilege contingent on achievement – has become, for nearly half of each cohort of school leavers, something like a right which it is almost compulsory to claim? It might be worth reflecting on the hugely varying levels of ability or attainment needed to gain places at these institutions, and – connectedly of course – the unprecedented magnitude of variations in the levels of well-informed esteem, or disesteem, which they enjoy within the informal hierarchy of institutions now labelled ‘university’.

    Let us consider the likely path to art school taken by able young people in the past. Many children, probably most, will, if encouraged, enjoy using art materials, and often fall happily into the habit of drawing – a habit that can be cultivated, unhampered by cumbersome paraphernalia, using very modest, easily portable materials. As we grow up, those of us who develop a strong interest in the visual arts are usually, I imagine, encouraged by teachers or parents, or, best of all, both. At least, that was, I think, true for many of my generation: I feel less confident that it is still the case. Our interest in making art or, more accurately perhaps, what is not yet art – proto-art – grows along with our discovery (helped by those mentors) through reproductions and visits to galleries, of what is possible – which turns out to be even more revelatory than we had, to begin with, realized. The masters show us what is possible, but this is disclosed gradually, since the ability fully to experience what they reveal itself depends upon the development of perceptual capacities which are cultivated only through acquaintance with their works.

     

    The particular kind of satisfaction we take in making images becomes inseparable from our sense of participating in an activity defined by the practice of the masters, not simply through knowledge of the fact that it is of the masters, but through finding that our experience of their work leads us towards an intuitive grasp of what – in our tradition – drawing is. This involves the dawning understanding – not necessarily verbally or self-consciously articulated – that when we enjoy a drawing by, say, Rembrandt, we are following the articulation of a thought of Rembrandt’s, inseparable from that particular drawing, and not merely recognizing the subject-matter. We could almost say that we follow that articulation by imagining ourselves making that drawing, and perhaps wanting to do something not the same, but in some sense equivalent, or in the same spirit. The joy that comes from any modest little successes in this endeavour engenders an aspiration, an inner voice which will not be silenced, which may ultimately deflect the young person from the path of prudence. Sensible suggestions to enter the law or accountancy are rejected, and the seduction of art triumphs over the cogently argued merits of social and economic caution.

    It is still possible, though less likely than it was, for sixth formers to be in something like that state when contemplating where to go after school. But the seduction of art no longer leads them to art school (or ‘University of Blah Blah’), or, if it does, they have made a big mistake (I know of one such mistake); for they will almost certainly find themselves required to devote time and energy to what bears no discernible relationship to the difficult but rewarding activity that brought them there, but prevented from trying to do better what they actually want to do. Why would an intelligent young person animated by the joy to be found in drawing, painting and sculpture – which is still what usually leads the young to art – gladly submit to a peremptory requirement to make videos, discover a hitherto undisclosed enthusiasm for ‘installations’, or rejoice in solemn but idiotic projects under the rubric of ‘conceptual art’. What have these things got to do with the visual arts? Not only will students not be taught to draw, they will probably be virtually forbidden to engage in what can properly be called drawing – although they may well be told that photography, videos, installations and, for all I know, pastry-making, yo-yos, pub-crawls, ping pong or bouncy castles are forms of drawing.

    The consequence is that, the ‘lad or lass’, to borrow some words of Augustus John’s, whose ‘soul is alight with that flame which in the young only art and love can kindle’ will, if both intelligent and well-informed, decline to enter an institution purporting to provide higher education in the practice of the visual arts. Any unfortunate enough to be misled are destined to probable early withdrawal, or to the endurance of shamelessly pretentious diseducation, to frustrated hopes and huge debts, acquired entirely wastefully. I leave it to the reader to judge whether these institutions are filled with lads and lasses whose souls are alight with that flame which, in the young, can be kindled only by videos, installations and ‘conceptual art’. For myself, I have to admit that I regard that hypothesis with scepticism.

    Degree courses in art, therefore, especially in ‘Fine Art’, may enrol unprecedentedly large numbers – criminally large numbers – of students. Whether they have many young people actually studying the visual arts is another matter entirely. Indeed, one may doubt that successful art students – successful by the criteria (or whims) of the system they have entered – are really interested in art, given that they may have little acquaintance with what it is they would be interested in. More than with most professions, the propensity to pursue a career in art seems until recently often to have had a strong familial element. In all the (not unnumerous) cases where I knew, each of my own older ex-colleagues had a least one child, sometimes more, who had followed father or mother in attending art school. But among my own contemporaries and those following this seems not to be so. I reluctantly advised my own children against this course, despite their great enthusiasm and capacity for drawing and painting, and I know of others, similarly placed, who have done the same. Those most capable and motivated to study art – and also best informed about the condition of art education – may well be those most decisively rejecting degree courses in the practice of art.

    An important consequence of what I’ve so far said is the near certainty that there has been a precipitous decline in the average abilities – abilities of any kind – of students enrolling for art courses. Nearly all young people going on to first-degree-level courses in any subject, including art, will have first completed A-level courses, or some equivalent thereof. It is only after this that full-time study of art can usually begin. Art remains just one subject among many that might be pursued after school, and, for obvious reasons, not one which the academically able always get much encouragement to pursue in the sixth form. There was a time, however, when the academically able sixth former might have continued with art as an extra A-level subject, fitting the work into the spaces between other timetabled subjects. In that way, an officially recognized interest in art, with the possibility of further development, was retained, even as the preconditions for entry to more conventional and secure careers continued to be established. And such a sixth-former might finally be unable to resist the promptings of a soul ‘alight with the flame’ kindled by art.

     

    But this route for the academically able has been made more arduous, because of changes in how art is now taught and examined. Superficially, these changes might seem benign. When I did O-level art at school, we took, if I remember rightly (the exact details are unimportant), three three-hour papers: drawing from the human figure (a boy in his gym kit); still-life drawing; and a painted pictorial composition. For the last, one was given a (small) choice of subjects in advance, in order to prepare for the examination, which one did by working out a composition through sketches, and possibly making studies from observation. But this preparatory material was not allowed into the examination room, where one tried to complete a painting in three hours. At A-level, the procedure was essentially the same, except that to the three O-level papers was added a fourth design paper, and, if one might be a candidate for a state scholarship, a paper in art history.

    There is much to be said against this system, and much was said against it. It was sometimes thought unreasonable to expect candidates to make a painting in a mere stressful three hours. But we could make paintings in those circumstances, and were sometimes not entirely displeased with the results. And whether it was really more intolerable, or potentially unfair, to have to make a painting under these conditions than to write three or four mini-essays under similar conditions for other subjects might be regarded as a moot point.

    On first consideration, the current system might seem to promote a more serious and more ambitious engagement, since pupils are assessed mostly on projects which need to be sustained over longer periods, during the two years of the GCSE or A-level course, rather than on the outcome of three stressful periods, each of three hours. Projects will probably be based, or supposedly based, on some such abstraction as ‘metamorphosis’, ‘flexibility’, ‘proximity’ (you name it): the tired old genres of landscape, still-life or figure composition are presumably not thought, merely in themselves, to challenge the intellectual and ‘creative’ capacities of the candidate. The development of these projects has to be recorded (or appear to be recorded) in notebooks, written as well as visual, and by the filling of portfolios. Everything has to be explained in written notes, whether standing in need of such explanation or not.

     

    A minor part of the assessment does involve producing a piece of work under examination conditions, or a very loosely supervised variant of examination conditions. But a total of ten rather than three hours is allowed for this; there are no restrictions on what can be brought in for use during these ten hours; and, as with course work, records must be produced of the preparatory evolution of ideas, which may be needlessly, if not fraudulently, elaborated. Whereas under the old system, the work was sent off to be marked by an examiner unknown to the candidates, under the present system, everything, not just course work, is marked by the candidates’ teachers, though subject to external ‘moderation’. The assessment, at least in theory, is not simply of the quality of the final outcomes, but, at least as importantly, of the processes – as presented – through which those outcomes have supposedly been reached, together with the candidate’s written accounts and written assessment of those processes. If I could bring myself to write a full account of the 55 pages of Edexcel’s mind-numbing ‘specification’ for GCSE in Art and Design, I doubt that any readers (whose patience may already be tried) could bring themselves to read it. Suffice it to say that it is impossible that any intelligent person could regard its multiplication of arbitrarily invented criteria and of bogus distinctions between different aspects of the ‘creative’ process as anything but a kind of bureaucratic or managerialist fantasy: the fantasy that, if something is broken down into enough components, even if those components are themselves invented for the sole purpose of sustaining the fantasy, then assessment can be made more ‘objective’ by reducing its outcome to a kind of arithmetical sum. But some inkling of the quality of thought informing the specification will be gained by an inspection of Edexcel’s preposterous ‘assessment matrix’. (I reproduce here, opposite, the one in use when my daughter did GCSE art. The A-level ‘matrix’ was essentially similar.) It will be seen that each candidate has to be given a mark for two ‘strands’ relating to each of four ‘assessment objectives’. That is, the final assessment is determined by the sum of no less than eight marks – not marks for eight pieces of work, but for qualities supposedly displayed, or not displayed, throughout the ‘course’.

    It will be noticed that no competence of a traditional nature is specifically required (none, that is, of the centuries-old tradition of western art), and the central discipline of drawing is not even mentioned. By contrast, under the old discredited system the ability to draw from observation was not only required, but explicitly examined. As at the ‘higher’ level, it amounts to the same thing, whether drawing is dismissed as unnecessary or obsolete or whether almost anything but drawing itself is promoted in its place as an alleged form of drawing. It is as if we suddenly decided that it was no longer necessary for writers to know how to construct sentences or mathematicians to acquire fluency in using the system of symbols in which mathematical thinking is conducted. (But ‘educationists’ have gone a long way, if not yet quite so far, towards implementing those decisions too.) It should be noted that, even for the most talented, to draw well is very, very difficult, and therefore requires discipline, the demand for which is now regarded with suspicion. It is also the most teachable element in a proper art education. But teaching it requires competent draughtsmen willing to teach, that is to undertake that other ill-regarded and obsolete thing: instruction.

    Under this system, it is, in fact, possible for enlightened teachers, where they preside, to establish a regime in which their pupils receive some genuine visual education. If they have any sense – which is not always the case – art teachers in practice assess their pupils’ work much as they always have done, and then divide the overall mark into eight fantasy marks. They may also, if necessary, prompt their pupils to ‘find’ additional preparatory work or ‘records’ of such, to complete the trail of ‘evidence’ establishing their adequate compliance with the requirements of both ‘strands’ in each of the four ‘assessment objectives’.

    Despite the enormous amount of nonsense, bogus intellectualism and pretence bound up with it, this system might seem, in significant respects, an improvement on previous systems. Since it demands more work, or at least time, from pupils, does it not now seem a weightier element in the curriculum, and thereby gain in prestige? In fact, any parent whose children have been through the elaborately but counter-productively regulated system we now have will know that, in most subjects, pupils’ workload has become heavier, more time consuming, more onerous and tedious than ever, while it is simultaneously contrived that less than ever is actually learnt. No subject, however, has been made more time-consuming than art, largely through the requirement not only to preserve or record preparatory work, but for pupils to become archivists of their own ephemera.

    Compared with this system – counter-intuitive though it might at first seem – for academically able pupils, taking perhaps nine other subjects at O-level, and perhaps three others at A-level, the old system had distinct advantages. At A-level, art has become so time-consuming that it is not practicable to take it as an ‘extra’ subject. When my own children were entering the sixth form, we knew of several young people who reluctantly decided against continuing with art at school, mainly because of this hugely time-consuming aspect – not, in these cases, because their parents were otherwise opposed to their doing so. But these were pupils with academic ability at a high level, who had not at that point definitely made up their minds what direction to take after school: for such pupils it would have made sense to take art to A-level only if they had already decided to continue with it as undergraduates. But they were potential candidates for places at ‘top’ universities to study academic subjects, and had not, at that stage, decided against seeking those places.

    Academic high flyers were always likely to be under pressure not to take what was seen as a needlessly risky route through the sixth form to a higher level course in the practice of art. The possibility of their doing so must be further weakened if the objections to continuing with art in the sixth form are reinforced by these additional pragmatic considerations. But we now have the sad and bizarre situation where, in considering the good of both the visual arts themselves and the young people concerned, this is, in itself, something impossible to regret.

     

    What about those talented but ‘un-academic’ students, who rightly concern Paul Wilks in his contribution to the previous issue? I strongly suspect that, in the past, the need for their dispensation from the academic entry requirements arose far more from deficiencies in the schools than from innate deficiencies in the entrants themselves. In any event, because of the general devaluing of qualifications, the loss or curtailment of those concessions is probably no longer of much consequence. They may not find it difficult to gain admission to degree courses in ‘Fine Art’, but what prospect does that offer to the talented of exploiting their talents? The very abilities in recognition of which they might once have secured dispensation from the academic entry requirements are precisely those which, in current circumstances, they will have no opportunity to develop. In any case, who would recognize their talents?

    Eric Coombes
    The Jackdaw

  • Alexander Adams: Canon Fodder – November 2017

    Alexander Adams investigates the status of the canon in art under Post-Modernism and the dangers of undervaluing it

    The canon of great art has never been the target of greater ire than it is today, but many leftist critics and their traditionalist opponents misunderstand the canon. The truth is unsettling for both groups. This essay seeks to clarify the nature of the canon at a time when it is an especially contentious subject.

    Great Deeds Against the Dead

    Last year art-history A-level was scrapped due to low take-up, then, after a campaign to reverse the decision, it was reinstated. This allowed New Criticism a foothold in school art-history teaching. When the new curriculum was developed, there was a downgrading of the master artists of Europe. Sarah Phillips, designer of new art-history syllabus, said “It is a global specification. Students won’t just study the work of dead white men. They will have the opportunity to study Islamic architecture and work by men and women of all colours and creeds.” Perhaps students will be tested on artist skin colour in exams.

    “Art history is the study of power, politics, identity and humanity; it makes perfect sense to keep the exam,” said Jeremy Deller. One doesn’t envy students wanting to learn about painting only to be dragooned into political-education courses and harangued on the purported crimes of their forefathers, who were more likely to have been agricultural labourers toiling in fields than redcoats bayonetting babies in India. Perhaps A-level art history would have better remained decently defunct.  

    Leftist critics characterise the canon as a white male Christian club. That view excludes ancient pre-Christians, undisclosed atheists/agnostics and recent additions to the canon but – those exceptions aside – white Christian men were ones making large-scale oil paintings and stone carvings up until recent centuries so Western European art is necessarily their art. Critics confuse corollary with cause. The canon has never been based on the identity of artists. Indeed, it is heedless of artist identity. Art in the canon is judged on intrinsic and extrinsic qualities without regard to maker. Numerous anonymous ancient and medieval art works are canonical.

    Incidentally, dismissing art because of the maker’s masculinity discards contributions of countless female models, patrons and collectors, not to mention wives, sisters and daughters who worked in studios and even painted parts of pictures. These women believed in and helped to make these paintings; if they could see activists agitating to have these paintings removed from sight they would likely be appalled and baffled at careless condemnation of art they loved.  

    The Exquisitely Efficient Machine

    The canon is both the group of generally accepted masterworks (and, by inference, their makers) and the principles underlying that selection. Art historians, artists and knowledgeable enthusiasts have approximate lists of great essential art though details vary. There are major and minor figures in the canon and canons for specific countries and mediums.

    The canon is a distillation of informed judgement over the course of centuries. It is an exercise in both discrimination and tolerance as one accepts the whole without agreeing with every part. Crucially, personal taste is irrelevant. You may not care for Rubens but he is important, influential and innovatory; he cannot be removed by you. The canon provides broad consensus while at the same time compelling no one to praise falsely. The canon cannot be imposed from above by either scholars or social activists. The canon endures despite fashion and politics but the contents of the canon are provisional.

    Dissent regarding the stature of an artist does not damage the canon; on the contrary, it strengthens it by forcing supporters of an artist to examine and refute (or accept) criticism. This process of continual testing winnows substandard art from the canon and proves the fitness of that which remains. It is an exquisitely efficient (though slow) machine for refining our understanding of art. The canon, far from being a machine of oppression and exclusion, is a meritorious mechanism for selecting the most important art on fairly universal principles for the education and pleasure of everyone. The canon has no racial, gender, sexual or personal prejudice. It is regional but not nationalistic. It accepts the professional and amateur, the sacred and profane.

    What is this “Canon”?

    There is no authoritative list of canonical works. The canon, by definition, cannot have a single fixed form. If you want to produce a list of canonical works take all narratives on art history, starting with Pliny going through Vasari and ending today, add respected monographs covering individual art movements and books of masterpieces of art. Add up all mentions or illustrations of individual art works then remove the least frequently cited third of that list, remove all works made in the last 40 years, remove anything made by a living artist. What remains is the canon.

    The weaknesses of this definition are that it gives greatest statistical weight to recent views, to published (rather than privately expressed) opinions and to works of which we have photographic images. Frequency of citations proves nothing and does not qualitatively measure works. Popularity proves nothing except itself.

    The canon is not democratic nor is it just. It rewards audacity. The cuckoo which ejects the host’s chick from the nest will survive and prosper, so too the brilliant adopter can displace a talented but flawed inventor. Justice has never informed the canon nor can it. The canon is a hierarchy of competence which reflects societal appetite for exceptional achievement and it does not arbitrate historical priority or factual (or emotional) justice.

    Canon Criteria

    The presence of a single work (or body of works) produced by a now-deceased artist in the Western fine-art canon is due to it having at least one of three attributes still considered to apply today: (a) importance or influence, (b) originality or innovation, and (c) outstanding quality within an aesthetic field; with two minor attributes valued: (d) timeliness, and (e) lineage. To be a minor figure an artist needs only one of the minor attributes.

    Attributes (b), (d) and (e) need further comment. Originality need not be actual invention but being the outstanding exponent or populariser of a new material, style or subject. For example, no modern historian now assigns the invention of oil painting to the Van Eyck brothers but they were the first artists to bring the technique to perfection in panel painting and were historically credited as originators. Priority on its own is not enough.

    Timeliness is zeitgeist – encapsulating a particular culture during an era. Lynn Chadwick is a minor canonical figure. His metal sculpture of the 1950s embodies the spirit of an age (post-War figurative sculpture) while it is not strong enough to make Chadwick a major artist. Lineage is an attribute of the canon’s traditional didactic purpose. Perugino, a figure on the periphery of the canon, would probably have sunk from our view if he had not taught Raphael.

    Man Proposes, the Canon Disposes

    There is something unusual about the way the fine-art canon operates, which may not have been remarked on before. Every artist who is – or has been – in the canon rises once and remains or sinks but he/she never rises for a second time. I cannot think of an example where an artist we regard as canonical has ever dropped out of the canon and later returned to the canon as significant as he/she was before. This is not a matter of fluctuating popularity but one of absolute neglect – a time when an artist was no longer taught or mentioned in general texts, only for that artist to be resurrected. It seems that once history has downgraded an artist gravely, it is a permanent change. I have never read this observation elsewhere.

    During his lifetime Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-79) was considered a genius comparable to Raphael. His paintings displayed great skill; his life drawings are excellent. His place in history seemed assured yet Mengs disappeared from the canon quickly and is hardly more than a footnote in art histories. Viewers found Mengs’s good qualities in other artists and nothing great or original to distinguish his art. Technical brilliance is no meal ticket to Parnassus.

    Consider the case of Bernard Buffet (1928-99). In France, Buffet was the most lauded painter to mature in immediate post-War period. He was very successful in Japan, where a Buffet museum was founded. For several decades Buffet was hugely famous, fabulously rich and perhaps the worst ever painter to be considered great. His work is as crude, ugly, bombastic, modish and shallow as anything that has been shown on museum walls. Despite prizes and critical acclaim, by the time of his death Buffet was utterly forgotten; more than half of younger readers will never have heard his name let alone seen a Buffet painting in person.

    The canon makes short work of poseurs such as Buffet and the technically gifted but banal such as Mengs. So, if you despair of the artists of today who are promoted as living links to the canon, fear not.

    Modernism and the Canon

    Traditionalists beware: the canon is not a sword of truth which makes aesthetic distinctions and slays the dragon of Modernist art. There is no objective aesthetic standard which applies to all art in the canon. Even if we set aside Modernism, in aesthetic terms the canon ranges from the schematic (Byzantine), symbolic (Neolithic), semi-abstract (Cycladic) and decorative/abstract (Celtic manuscripts) to the naïve (Fontainebleau school), idealistic (Michelangelo) and realistic (Caravaggio). Modernist art cannot be excluded from the canon; it has already entered it. The only aesthetic criterion is excellence within a defined field.

    Those who state “Raphael is part of the canon; in aesthetic terms, Pollock cannot be compared to Raphael; therefore Pollock cannot be part of the canon” are in error. Consider the rules of the canon. Raphael and Pollock are comparable in that they are both great exponents of their schools; their art is artistically influential, culturally important, original and typical of their period and place. In strictly canonical terms, Raphael is closer to Pollock than to Raphael’s own assistant Gianfrancesco Penni. Reverse engineering of what the canon is in order to exclude art one does not like is dishonest. Consider: the canon exists as a collective enterprise regardless of personal taste. One can dislike Pollock; one can argue against his art; one cannot exclude Pollock from the canon ex cathedra. One can propose and advocate for additions or subtractions regarding the canon but propositions will be decided upon collectively over a lengthy historical period.

    Bear in mind that the canon is not necessarily the best art ever produced. It is a collection of the best art that is commonly known and which it is vital (or useful) to be known by artists, scholars, art lovers and those more broadly interested in visual culture. The fact that you might have the world’s most beautiful painting hidden in your attic does not invalidate the canon because the canon is a collective body of knowledge which is comparative, commonly understood, widely accessible and not entirely based on aesthetic worth. There are plenty of beautiful works which are not canonical and plenty of canonical works which are not beautiful. If an ugly work of art meets the criteria for inclusion then it can be included. I would propose Asger Jorn’s more shocking “disfigurations” – defacements of junkshop pictures – as examples of ugly art which has already entered the canon.

    Counter-intuitive as it seems, it is a fact that no aesthetic criteria will fit the canon. Therefore, though aesthetic criteria are crucial to our judgement of art, aesthetic rules cannot generate a canon. Consider the cases of Mengs and thousands of gifted academicians whose art is tediously accurate and which will never supplant the wonky anatomies of Delacroix and Goya. In the article “New Order”, I suggested that viewers, curators and museum directors should continue the traditional approach of selecting and judging work on the bases of primarily aesthetic quality and secondarily historical value. This is not in conflict with the canon. Art appreciation is a personal matter which we practise every day; the canon is a collective endeavour which no individual (or single national or professional body) can arbitrate.

    Masterpieces and Blind Spots

    Due to the way art is discussed, there is a tendency to highlight masterpieces. They provide common reference points. The human memory has a limited capacity and books have limited pages, so (for the non-specialist) Cimabue’s Crucifixion serves to stand for his whole output. However, the canon can select works which are atypical. Meret Oppenheim’s Fur Teacup (1936) is an iconic work of Surrealism and is celebrated as such. It far surpasses the quality of all her other work. (Trust me, I’ve slogged through the monographs.) In that respect Fur Teacup is actually atypical of Oppenheim’s art, being so much better than her other work. The canon being efficient as it is, has pared down her entire output to the only good thing she made. Likewise, Richard Oelze’s masterpiece Expectation (1935-6) is the only work of his that is worth giving time to. The canon recognises masterpieces by journeyman artists.

    Consider the converse. The canon also admits bodies of works when no masterpiece exists. Paul Klee is an established figure in the canon, but there is no single painting, or even handful of paintings, which sums up Klee’s achievements. In Klee’s case any typical painting serves as an introduction to the diffuse body of works.

    The canon does have weaknesses, mainly due to its didactic presentation of progress. There are marginal cases of artists who do not fit easily into eras or schools. The canon tends to overlook remarkable outsiders. Balthus springs to mind. I would say Balthus deserves to be in a canon of 20th-century painting on merit but he could justifiably be left out as being “unnecessary” to explain any era or movement. William Blake and Stanley Spencer are only relevant to the story of British art and can be completely omitted from an overview of Western art of their times.

    Another weakness of the canon is it has historically undervalued secular subjects, such as the still-life, landscape and marine. Grand subjects often overwhelm intimate reflection. A final series of weaknesses concerns the hierarchy of mediums. Since the rise of the reproduction print and photographic illustration, sculpture has been forced to the margins while painting has taken centre stage. Likewise, while separate canons for printmaking, watercolour and drawing have developed, they are generally viewed as subsidiary to painting and find only marginal places in histories of art.

    Post-Modernists and the Canon

    Post-Modernists loathe the canon for its specific qualities and its existence. The canon accretes slowly and selectively; it cannot be changed for political reasons and it cannot be legislated upon. The fact it does offer recognition for women/minority artists makes the canon even more hateful to Identarians. It is too slow and selective to comply with social-justice-activist demands that women/minorities be elevated en masse immediately and accepted universally. The canon compels no one to like or respect art. The canon rewards accomplishment not identity and – in Identarian eyes – effectively “bribes” women/minority artists by offering recognition to any artist who accepts the status quo and who makes art worthy of the canon. Identarian opposition to the status quo precludes participation in a canon which rewards application, patience, excellence and individuality; Identarians prioritise conformity, victimhood, impatience, birth rights and the right to demand instant change and exercise totalitarian control. The very existence of the canon is repugnant to Identarians, who feel it impedes social justice.

    There is no need to force women into the canon because the canon absorbs great art regardless. One cannot write of 20th- century portraiture or the legacy of Symbolism without mentioning Frida Kahlo, likewise with abstract sculpture and Barbara Hepworth. There are many other examples. Berlinde de Bruyckere is the most original and powerful sculptor of the figure since Giacometti and it would be surprising if her art did not find its way into the canon. Much to our editor’s dismay and disagreement, I suspect Jean-Michel Basquiat is also canon-bound. Traditionalists dislike the speed with which art accretes to the canon and it offends them to see non-traditional schools appended to the Golden Age of (insert preferred artist/school/era here). Traditionalists should propose recent makers of great art and await history’s verdict. The canon may discard all recent art and record a fallow period, as it has done for whole countries and eras.

    Post-Modernists too reject accretion to the canon. For them the accretion is too slow. They have two views on the canon – that it must be abolished or rewritten. Neither of these authoritarian tendencies can be achieved in a permanent form. Abolition is impossible because people have a natural tendency to form groups, celebrate exceptional excellence and class things in terms of quality and thereby reach group consensus. Rewriting is impossible because no one group can dictate the canon and – as we have seen with political appointees such as Socialist Realist and National Socialist artists – the canon rejects bad art.

    Post-Modernists hate the canon partly because they do not believe in group consensus. They do not believe that art progresses or that a narrative (other than a socio-economic one) can be drawn from art history. Post-Modernists contend that the idea that multiple groups and individuals over eras can reach agreement is an illusion which conceals collusion, oppression and exclusion.   

    So, if abolition and rewriting are impossible, why now write an article addressing Post-Modernist attitudes towards the canon?

    Firstly, art history students are suffering because they are not being taught the canon in a thorough way, thus limiting their understanding. Even to oppose the canon you must at least know it. Secondly, we all suffer when political activists manipulate education and curation of art. Thirdly, elevation to the canon is a prize to be striven for and fame has inspired plenty of artists to perform to their best. Fourthly, symbolic changes, even ineffectual ones against weak opponents – and there are no weaker opponents than the dead – encourage further encroachment in other areas of life.

    Lastly, if traditionalists and moderates wish to oppose Post-Modernism effectively they should examine what the canon really is before they invoke it. If you support the canon you must acknowledge it in its totality, even with schools and artists you dislike, and you must accept it will accrete new art. As I have previously written, traditionalists who battle both Post-Modernism and Modernism will drive away Modernists and moderates, who are their natural allies in opposing Post-Modernism. Traditionalists, Modernists and moderates today all have common cause against Post-Modernist authoritarianism, quota programming and identity politics. They have differing tastes but their principles largely overlap.

    In the past many Marxists agitated against the canon whilst covertly enjoying its art. They understood that dissidents savour the moral superiority of principled protest while enjoying the fruits of a system they ostensibly oppose. What is different now is that New Left agitators are in positions of power unopposed by conservatives or connoisseurs within institutions or the political class. They can alter curricula, defund research, publish propaganda as art theory and take down pictures in museums; they are in a position to actually suppress and – in the case of historic statues – destroy.

    The canon is nothing less than a manifestation of our civilisation. To learn from and contribute to the canon (as writers, makers and art lovers) is to contribute to civilisation and is to affirm our belief in collective wisdom, consensus and progress, regardless of our personal taste in art.

    Alexander Adams
    The Jackdaw Nov/Dec 2017

  • Alexander Adams: New Order – September 2017

    Alexander Adams seeks to explain how identity politics, Feminism and New Criticism underpin the ideology of a generation of curators, and concludes by discussing the probable direction of the Tate under Dr Balshaw

    An Allegory

    Once upon a time there was a society which made objects that had meaning and that people enjoyed looking at. The society put these objects in museums so that more people could enjoy them. Then an elite of that society decided that the objects did not matter so much but the skin colour and reproductive organs of the object-makers mattered a lot. Displaying objects made by people of certain skin colours or possessing certain reproductive organs pleased other people and made them feel virtuous. The elite counted the numbers of museum objects made by people of certain skin colours or possessing certain reproductive organs. These statistics measured how virtuous the society was compared to other societies. More and more people were encouraged to visit the objects to display their virtue or to acquire virtue. The elite wanted all the people to visit the objects even though some people preferred to do other things. When the elite persuaded people of certain skin colours or possessing only small amounts of money to visit the objects, the elite said it made society better when actually all it did was make the elite feel less guilty. It was known that most people liked meaningful or beautiful objects but it was decided by the elite that the virtuous statistics were more important. The elite decided that people’s unhappiness about the elite using people’s money to buy for museum objects that were neither meaningful nor beautiful was caused by people not being virtuous enough. Some people thought the idea of virtuous statistics was silly but most of them did not say that because it would have been rude.

    Murder Machines

    This year a sculpture by Sam Durant entitled Scaffold was erected in a sculpture park managed by Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The wooden sculpture juxtaposed elements of playground-activity structures and gallows. One minor aspect of Scaffold referred to the hanging of Dakota Native Americans in 1862 as part of struggles between the Dakota Nation and the American government. That reference had been missed until it was pointed out, at which time a campaign to remove the sculpture was begun by the Dakota. “This is a murder machine that killed our people because we were hungry,” said a member of the Dakota Nation, equating Scaffold with an actual gallows that hanged members of the Dakota. In May the museum destroyed Scaffold and the artist renounced his work.

    This year there was a protest by some black artists against the display at the Whitney Biennial of a painting of murdered black activist Emmett Till. Black activists lobbied to have the painting by Dana Schutz, a white artist, removed as offensive and hurtful. “The subject matter is not Schutz’s,” said one protestor, claiming ownership and authority over the representation of a historical event.  

    In these two cases, activists claimed ownership over aspects of history in order to suppress art works. In one case it resulted in the destruction of art. Pressure groups have noticed the weakness of curators, administrators and politicians and their unwillingness to protect art from censorship. Sympathetic towards notions of social justice, administrators sometimes submit to emotional blackmail by groups which demand censorship.  

    Delacroix did not have to be Greek to paint Massacre at Chios; Sargent did not have to be either British or a combatant to paint Gassed; Callot did not seek approval of relatives of hanged men before publishing prints. These are iconic touchstones for appreciating events in world history, yet according to supporters of identity politics such art should not be made now. Groups should own their histories, curb free speech and suppress or destroy art deemed offensive. There was a time, not so long ago, when we derided Soviet agronomists’ dismissal of Mendelian genetics as “bourgeois” and Nazi ministers damning branches of science as “Jewish”, yet today art can be “too white and male”.

    Identarianism

    Identarianism (or identity politics) is a political belief system which has had huge influence over politics in Western countries for the last three decades. It sprang from New Left principles developed in the wake of failed attempts at revolution in 1968 and revelation of the atrocities and failures of Communism. It seeks to advance social justice and enforce relative equality through incremental advances in social capital of supposedly disadvantaged subsets such as women, ethnic and sexual minorities and so forth. There is commensurately punitive retraction of rights from supposedly advantaged groups such as men, white people and so forth.

    Identarianism is essentially a political manifestation of Post-Modernism which acts by harnessing factional interests. In the same way Marxism co-opted movements of emancipation, workers’ rights, anti-clericism, anti-colonialism and so on, Identarianism gathers factional interests under the umbrella of Post-Modernist relativism by promising social justice.

    Here are some tenets of Identarianism:

    Every person has involuntary affiliations from birth (ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, physical ability, family religion, etc.) and shares a common identity with other members of his or her subsets. These identity subsets are not generally mutable. (Mutability of gender and sexual orientation are controversial issues within Identarianism.) Subset identities necessarily form a strong part in determining one’s outlook. People do not have universal qualities (as in the Enlightenment model of universal rights) but have compound qualities derived from their subset identities. Equality is therefore relative not universal.

    1. Every person has involuntary affiliations from birth (ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, physical ability, family religion, etc.) and shares a common identity with other members of his or her subsets. These identity subsets are not generally mutable. (Mutability of gender and sexual orientation are controversial issues within Identarianism.) Subset identities necessarily form a strong part in determining one’s outlook. People do not have universal qualities (as in the Enlightenment model of universal rights) but have compound qualities derived from their subset identities. Equality is therefore relative not universal.
    2. Subsets are subject to pervasive networks of personal, institutional and social prejudice, discrimination and disadvantage. This oppression is collective and endemic.
    3. Social, legal, political and financial power – and its converse – is heritable.
    4. Privilege and guilt is collective and heritable.
    5. Subset members have a right to demand redress or reparations for collective discrimination and oppression by oppressing subset(s).
    6. Subset members can work together to promote the fulfilment of their potential (called “equity”; see below) and to reduce power/privilege of other subsets. Subsets can work together to form tactical alliances in order to achieve social and legal change. Dialogue is power negotiation between inherently unequal subsets; compromise is acceptance of oppression.
    7. Identities are formed of multiple subsets and these overlapping definitions are described as examples of intersectionality.
    8. Some subsets experience more discrimination (or privilege) than others. This is (relatively) quantifiable. An individual’s position is determined by his or her specific intersectionality.
    9. Culture and language are sources of power/oppression and should be used to enact social justice. Social justice is either a) the relative equalisation of power/privilege of subsets or b) realisation of potential in unequal ways (see below).
    10. One cannot understand or judge members of another subset. A subset culture is unique and the experience of its members is unfathomable. Only members of a subset have the right to speak about the experience of members of that subset.
    11. It is injurious for a person to use or appropriate culture, history or language of another’s subset.
    12. One best understands – and is understood by – members of one’s own subsets. Each subset has a shared culture. It is not expected or encouraged for a person to form voluntary personal affiliations across subset boundaries except for purposes of temporary political action. Strong affiliation for another’s subset is akin to appropriation.
    13. Exercise of imagination, empathy and fantasy are opportunities for potential (even unconscious) prejudice, misapprehension and distortion to occur and should therefore be avoided.
    14. Any of the rules above can be broken to promote a subset, prove the truth of identity politics or to otherwise further the cause of Identarianism.

    An example of rule 14 modifying rule 11 is that it would be fair for a black person to appropriate white Western culture because the black man is relatively disadvantaged. If a white man appropriates black culture this is an act of oppression. If a black man claims he is interested only in black art this is expected (rule 12). If a white man claims he is only interested in art by white men this is narrow-minded bigotry.

    Never fast enough, never far enough

    Identarianism is not a fuzzy warm principle of being nice to people and treating others equally – quite the contrary. It demands people be treated unequally. It divides people into subsets, classifies individuals’ worth minutely with matrices of privilege and social status, undercuts individuals’ autonomy and discourages (even curtails) individuals’ forming personal taste. It is incompatible with humanistic Enlightenment values. It accommodates factional interests and dehumanises opponents. It seeks to suppress free speech and free thought. Identarianism is dictatorial and dehumanising to its core; as an ideology it is riven by contradiction, hypocrisy and double-think. Identarianism is part nihilistic revolutionary movement, part narcissistic cult of selfhood, part religion of moral fury. It nurtures a culture of self-hatred, guilt and contempt for Western civilisation even – especially – among middle-class white people.

    Look at the groups removing “politically objectionable” statues. Look at university-student mobs which shout down or assault public speakers. Look at student bodies which demand “safe spaces” and ban discussion as “hate speech”. This is Identarianism in its purest form, where it expresses the mentality and emotional tenor of even those who consider themselves moderates. Most activists do not fully understand the origins, tenets and implications of their ideology. No matter. Consider the Cultural Revolution, when commissars harnessed the anger of young idealists to instigate an orgy of righteous cultural destruction. Identarianism is not simply another way of viewing society, which can co-exist with other outlooks; it is an entity which has evolved to suppress opposition and destroy cultural expression.

    Identarians do not have much time for old art because a) its artists and subjects do not reflect the demographic profile of today’s society; b) it rarely has a clear “socially progressive” message; and c) it resists co-option to Identarian aims. Beyond justifying the general Marxist declaration that spousal portraits and paintings of livestock and land constitute evidence of the capital classes recording possession of chattels, old art cannot be used to further social justice. This is, to be fair, an accurate assessment in purely political terms if one has didactic aims and no aesthetic, cultural or historical curiosity. If I were a curator in the Identarian movement, I would be consigning old art to the vaults and lobbying for deaccession rights.

    To Identarians, when change seems so gradual and the historic burden so outrageous, implementation of affirmative action (including – unstated – quotas) seems not only desirable but necessary and those who will be disadvantaged by quotas are unavoidable collateral damage. Individuals who advocate caution are revanchists. For a firebrand who believes he or she is on the right side of history, change cannot come fast enough or go far enough.

    New Criticism and Post-Modernism

    To understand why Identarianism has such purchase inside the art world one needs to understand New Criticism.

    New Criticism in art history is an outgrowth of Marxist analysis of culture. It produces socio-economic critiques of art production/reception and is driven by theory in the fields of women’s/black/queer/post-colonialist studies. New Criticism is leftist, more theoretical than historical and underpinned by French post-structuralist philosophy. New Criticism is at the core of most art-history university education, existing uneasily alongside traditional art history. A common strand in New Criticism is distrust of aesthetics, formalist analysis of art and anything that could be construed as connoisseurship. New Criticism, Post-Modernism and identity politics began in the late 1960s and developed in parallel and in symbiosis.   

    New Criticism is predicated upon the fracturing of the consensus in Western values. Post-Modernism states that an infinite variety of perspectives and interpretations means consensus is both impossible and irrelevant. (“All values are relative” is an unqualified assertion of an unconditional truth which negates itself, but never mind.) Where all values are relative there can be no society-wide standards for appreciation and evaluation of art; hence the development of multiple strands within New Criticism, each with different concerns, languages and value systems. Whereas Modernist art was judged carefully in terms of its visual content, Post-Modernist art exists in a zone free of all formalist analysis; its appearance is not only inscrutable and illegible but actually arbitrary and meaningless in visual terms.

    Nowadays many art critics, curators and theoreticians do not enjoy art; they do not like looking at art or discussing how it operates visually; New Criticism says that this is unimportant as only contextual power structures around art production and reception matter. This ideology breeds theoreticians with a positive disdain towards the visual qualities of art.  New Criticism and Identarianism are tools for identification of power structures and are antipathetic towards aesthetic appreciation, ambiguity, personal reflection, dissent, individualism and even pleasure. Pleasure in appreciation of form and technique, interest in creative decisions, appreciation of beauty, wonder at the experience of being transported into a different world or era, delight in discovery, joy through empathetic engagement – all these are alien to New Criticism and Identarianism.  

    What art is

    While New Criticism can provide insights into aspects of art production/reception, it never comes close to describing (let alone explaining) our responses to art as a whole or delineating why we respond more strongly to certain objects rather than to other similar objects. Syncretic criticism on a grounding of formalist analysis, traditional art history, aesthetics, iconography and literary and scientific knowledge – directed by self-scrutiny – is a more valuable approach to art criticism. To advocates of New Criticism that sounds suspiciously like bourgeois connoisseurship – perhaps it is.

    I have previously given  the definition of fine art as follows: a non-utile physical object appreciated primarily for its appearance which can function on an aesthetic and emotionally engaging level when shorn of all original cultural context (e.g. cave painting, Cycladic art, African tribal objects viewed as art rather than religious devices, etc.). (Technically, that means Conceptual art is not art, but that’s another subject.) Although mythology, allegory, literary sources and biographical information can inform readings, they are never central or even primary. It does not matter how sophisticated an argument is put forward in a work of visual art (a medium which by its nature is unsuited to conveying complex intellectual ideas), if a work of art is not appreciated on either a human/emotional level or aesthetic basis it will sink from view. Museum basements are full of prize-winning allegories which are unendurably tedious even for cultured visitors. Syncretic criticism can ably discuss and explain why certain works of art succeed or fail; New Criticism cannot, though – to be fair – its proponents do not believe art can succeed or fail.

    Modernists and traditionalists should make common cause against Identarianism. While Modernists and traditionalists disagree about aesthetics, both groups care passionately about the appearance of art. Identarians do not. They do not believe that aesthetics exist. New Criticism (which subordinates art’s visual character to political readings), Feminism (which seeks redress for perceived historical injustice) and Identarianism (which states that culture is a tool to be used to combat privilege) bolster curators who believe that art which cannot be turned to political purposes should be dismissed, subordinated or suppressed.

    Women’s art

    Due to multiple causes, in terms of proportion, women artists working in major art fields were in a minority until the late 20th Century. The lack of women in the Western canon is complex and relates to at least four social factors which led to one significant consequence:

    1.   Social pressure strongly discouraged women of upper and middle classes from pursuing manual crafts for income.
    2.   Women had difficulty in studying art because of restrictions on entering academies, apprenticeships and gaining access to male life models, which led to few women gaining high-level skills, experience and qualifications.
    3.   Women were often barred from joining guilds and societies and were therefore impeded from engaging in professional commissions and making their livelihoods.
    4.   Childcare and domestic duties often restricted the amount of time women had to make art.

    Consequently, women artists rarely practised large-scale history/religious oil painting and stone carving – genres and mediums that were central to art historical canons. Instead women artists often practised the “minor” arts of drawing, watercolour painting, pastel painting, crafts and folk art. These fields have traditionally been classed subsidiary to oil painting and stone carving – much to the chagrin of practitioners both male and female. Therefore there were relatively few women artists working at a professional level before the late 19th Century and thus there is little historical art by women in museums.

    Here is the sleight of hand which justifies affirmative action: “Look at the statistics of how little art by women is included in art-museum collections. This demonstrates there is an implicit masculine bias in judging what is suitable for art canons and proves there is a campaign of exclusion and suppression which continues to this day.” Historically there were specific restrictions on women entering the fine arts. However, today cohorts of fine-art graduates are often female dominated. Many administrators, curators, tutors and scholars are women. In my experience, lower and middle ranks of arts administration are hugely dominated by women, who are rapidly rising to top positions. Of the journals I write for, half have female editors; every single editorial assistant is female. The staffs of publishing house press departments are almost all female. Roughly 90% of the museum press officers I have liaised with are female. I would love to meet a caste of oppressive bearded patriarchs in the arts so I could gaze upon them in wonder and curiosity. I could shake their hands and wish them farewell.

    A statistical imbalance from a broad swathe of history is used to justify affirmative action applied to the current art scene where no exclusion exists. The just campaign for equal rights has been won; the new cause is for preferential rights. To the assertion that women/minorities faced worse discrimination in the past and that quota programming is a small price to pay, one can say two things: firstly, the price is heavy enough for individuals who have to bear the burden of this “historic redress” and, secondly, discrimination in the past was wrong and it is wrong today.

    Equity not equality

    Equity is different from equality. Equality means parity and neutrality. Equity means reward determined by input or worth, not necessarily equal. Equality is problematic for Identarians and Post-Modernists because it produces inconvenient results. Despite decades of equal opportunity, certain demographic groups tend to choose particular academic subjects less often and – as groups – perform on average better or poorly within their population cohorts. So, faced with this situation, Identarians have reversed the target. No longer is it equality of opportunity which is important, it is equality of outcome. This is equity, in Post-Modernist terms.

    Since oppressed individuals struggle against society, academia and privilege, they should be given preferential treatment to compensate for their disadvantages. The individual is valued as a victim, to be patronised and promoted regardless of his/her unique circumstances and actions. He/she is merely a figurehead, role model or token. The humanistic values of equality of worth, dignity and rights as ideals are nullified by a capricious and inscrutable system which not only denies equality as a target but even as a possibility.

    In employment this leads to affirmative action, in academia to equity recruitment, in culture to quota programming.         

    Quotas v. art

    Many Feminists (including Dr Balshaw) suggest that active steps must be taken to increase the public presence of female artists. Here are five flaws to collecting and exhibiting art on the basis of statistics:

    Firstly, targets diminish art. They reduce every artist (indeed every person) to a representative of subsets categorised by gender, race, etc. Artists become featureless interchangeable tokens in abstract calculations. It neglects the subject, quality and intellectual content of art and makes labels more important than art. It views artists as more important than art.

    Secondly, targets patronise artists. The reputations of Barbara Hepworth, Gwen John, Frida Kahlo and many other women have risen as high in their fields as those of male counterparts. Their art has become recognised without quota programming, on its intrinsic merit as art. Fairly or unfairly, quota programming will cast a shadow over the new generation of female artists who will benefit from it.

    Thirdly, targets patronise viewers. A generation of viewers will be subject to second-rate art promoted through a quota system. It will teach the lesson: what you do is less important that who you are. Inspiring examples of women (and men) attaining success through hard work, skill and invention will be replaced by the example of passive mediocre individuals who were selected because their skin colour or reproductive organs fulfilled a quota. A more dispiriting message is hard to imagine.

    Fourthly, targets are unworkable. Should half of all the art we view be produced by women? How would that be calculated: by number of artists or artworks? What about unattributed works? Will living artists have to register data or will a committee verify data to prevent artists wrongly self-identifying in order to gain advantage? Who will arbitrate these matters?

    Fifthly, targets are meaningless. In what way is a museum which displays 50/50 male and female artists a good museum? Viewers who are engaged by art not artists would be content with museums completely filled with women’s art if that art were the best art available. An obsession with statistics is the only fixed point in Identarian arts policy because all other issues – what is art, how can one judge art, what is art for – are all rendered unanswerable (or null) by Post-Modernism.

    Predictions

    From the statements of Dr Balshaw, her track-record at the Whitworth Art Gallery and Tate’s recent policies, we can guess that her tenure will be marked by three aims: a) a drive to increase levels of attendance; b) attempting to alter visitor demographics; and c) altering the demographics of artists represented. Here are some predictions:

    1. Collection and exhibition of art will be increasingly driven by the imperative to promote female/minority artists regardless of aesthetic or formal qualities of their art. There will be a drive to pack the collection with art by women/minorities in an attempt to reach arbitrary statistical targets. The contemporary collection will become a massive ever-inflating multi-million-pound experiment in social engineering grounded on untested principles, driven by ideology and set to utilitarian goals: to demonstrate virtue and make visitors virtuous.
    2. As in all politically driven economies which prioritise production and performance targets (centralised national economies, educational and health-care systems, etc.), there will be an increasing tendency to distort, partially report and fabricate figures to suggest increased attendance and greater consumption of art by minorities and the poor. Targets will be altered and definitions manipulated to compensate for poor results.
    3. There will be an increase in the practice of piggybacking shows of lesser known female/minority artists by attaching them to shows of more popular artists, regardless of whether the linkage is artistically/aesthetically appropriate. Attendees of Tate Liverpool’s exhibition of Leonora Carrington will remember a neighbouring room devoted to Cathy Wilkes. Both exhibitions were on the same ticket. Many visitors – seeing a room filled with contemporary art unrelated to Carrington – did not even enter the Wilkes room. However, Tate reports attendance of the Wilkes and Carrington shows as equal.
    4. Space devoted to historical (pre-Modern art) in Tate Britain will be steadily reduced. Presentations of historical art will increasingly disregard art-historical standards. Curatorial staff and financial resources will be redirected towards contemporary art. Departing staff who handled pre-Modern art will not be automatically replaced.
    5. Interpretative texts will reduce discussion of stylistic aspects and will highlight social dimensions of art. In an attempt to make texts as accessible as possible, they will be simplified to a degree that errors will become frequent, undetected by staff who will be under-informed about art history.

    The Fate of the Tate

    The Tate has numerous problems. It has multiple subjects to cover (British, contemporary and world art). It does too many things (maintaining and expanding a collection, hosting exhibitions, running a website, maintaining four venues and organising education/outreach programmes, publishing, conservation, research, hospitality, retail, fundraising, membership services, publicity and so on). It has too many staff. It has too much art. It must continually increase income. It must continually increase attendance. The Tate’s fundamental problem is that it does not know why it exists; this will only get worse over Dr Balshaw’s era, with its promised blend of identity politics, populism, community events, pop culture and an influx of school parties, not to mention a massive acquisition drive.

    When the existence of museums depends on popular consent and museum funding depends on reaching a mass audience, curators tend to make art as approachable as possible. Yet the more art is presented as just another piece of everyday life, the more averagely informed people wonder what the purpose of an art museum is. Making art more popular by adapting it to ape pop culture (or by co-opting pop culture as art) increases engagement but decreases respect towards art. Pop culture in museums cannot help but be a feeble denatured mimicry of the pop culture that fills the rest of the world.  

    People are not helpless dolts. Many of them yearn to have new experiences, to learn, to overcome obstacles. Rather than saying “fine art means whatever you want and it’s just ordinary life”, tell them “fine art is complicated and dense but if you invest time and thought you will get unique rich experiences and insights into the world and human nature”. If you were told (the lie) that fine art is just ordinary life, why would you bother with art?  

    In a Post-Modern multi-cultural age, cultural institutions lose morale and direction because they have no moral or intellectual underpinning. If museum staff do not believe fine art has intrinsic value as art (not just as a demographic signifier) then they cannot explain art. If even experts cannot explain why art is important, they (and their museums) deserve to go. Dr Balshaw, who studied English and critical theory not art history, is an arts-venue manager who has demonstrated little knowledge of art history and is thus in the worst possible position to put forward an intellectual and moral case for high art.

    Instead of experiencing fascination slowly develop in a quiet gallery, today’s teenager is inside a cultural mall facing a Sam Taylor Wood video installation in a noisy, overcrowded room. “Seen better on YouTube,” he says and wanders off – and who would disagree? Frankly, I’d rather be watching YouTube too. Arts-venue managers (as opposed to art historians, who used to run museums) are terrified of silent static art, of allowing visitors to choose to engage or walk away, and – like an anxious mother – chop art into tiny morsels without context or jangle bright geegaws such as interactive experiences to capture attention. But that is exactly what everyone experiences elsewhere all the time. Why go to a museum to bow your head over a museum-specific mobile-phone app when you could do that sitting at home?

    But surely those morsels entice visitors to learn more. Oh? Where? In a chaotic museum which cannot properly display that art, label it informatively or explain why it is important? Showing films, staging concerts, hosting performances, holding lectures, providing educational activities – all of these are done better, cheaper and smarter by cinemas, private galleries, concert halls and schools with facilities adapted to those purposes and staffed by professionals who are experts. The only thing an art museum does better than any other venue is displaying painting and sculpture. It could almost have been designed for that purpose.

    The Tate is so intent on being second-rate in as many areas as possible it neglects its core mission. A museum such as the Tate should conserve, present and explain art objects of the highest aesthetic quality and historical worth. Clarity, focus and excellence – and the respect that would generate – will secure the future for a slimmed Tate. But the circus must go. Exhibiting and collecting a cross-section of the entirety of the world’s high and pop culture in its myriad manifestations in a museum barely capable of presenting its limited collection of British and Western Modernist art up to 1970 is not only impossible, it is insanity.

    Accept that not everyone will be interested in fine art, as not everyone is interested in classical music, historical monuments and public gardens. So be it. High art has always been a minority interest. Is high art elitist? No. It returns as much as one is willing to put in, like all areas of the arts which require effort before providing rewards of lasting value. The drive to make high art a mass viewing activity is motivated by curatorial self-interest, cultural insecurity and financial necessity. It is not viable. If a museum has (due to poor decision-making) an unmanageably vast collection and an enormous number of staff and consequently locks itself into an unsustainable counter-productive cycle of performance targets to attain ever-greater income simply to survive then it deserves to fail.

    I have no personal animosity towards Dr Balshaw. Certainly, anyone who has run a large arts venue financially successfully has admirable abilities. However, anyone whose approach to leadership is essentially managerial, whose principles are informed by identity politics and Post-Modernism, who has no apparent belief in the functions and value of high art (distinct from pop culture) and who cannot identify or defend the core mission of a national art collection will only make worse the situation at an already unwieldy, organisation. Instead of being the Tate’s most suitable fundraising director, Dr Balshaw may, sadly, be the Tate’s least suitable director.

    Alexander Adams
    The Jackdaw Sept/Oct 2017

  • Dick French: On The Town – November 2017

    It used to be said that a night out with John Bellany would take three years off your life. I’ll find out one day. We were both great friends of Cyril Reason, who was one of our tutors at the RCA, and although Cyril was less extreme than Bellany he was a thirsty man. I’ll never forget one night in The Yorker, a tall thin pub on Piccadilly (no longer there) around ’67 or ’68. Cyril improvised a game of ten-pin bowling in the upstairs bar. Bottles for skittles and heavy, round glass ashtrays rolled on edge. What fun we had before being turfed out. And talking of turf, Bellany and Cyril once wangled their way into the Royal Enclosure at Longchamps (they liked the gee-gees). They were happily guzzling away at the free champagne when they felt themselves hoisted into the air by heavies and dumped over the fence with the proles. Like many artists of the past century (Mondrian and Kandinsky for instance) Cyril had some interest in the occult and theosophy and although only fifteen years older than me he had actually met Madame Blavatsky.

    There’s a show of John’s paintings at Fortnum and Mason’s, almost next door to where The Yorker used to be. His paintings are scattered around the store but there’s a helpful catalogue so you can locate them. They are mostly later paintings from the ’80s onwards, although there’s Scottish Fish Gutter and Lost Soul from around ’65. I don’t like the later stuff as much as his earlier work, some of which was extremely good. I first saw it up in the mural room at the RCA where he used to work. A lot of the other students didn’t know what to make of him as they were all being ‘Popsy’ and minimal. In contrast his work was darkly brooding and bloody, strong meat, if a little too Celtic and rootsy for me. There was another Scotsman working close to Bellany who did enormous paintings of women being raped and throttled in public lavatories. I wonder what came of him. Bellany’s later works became formulaic; too many maidens will almond eyes, pointy chins, and thin shoulderless bodies … although there is a good painting of a fishing boat in the shop window called Intrepid.

    In the late ’60s if you were doing anything a bit out of the mainstream people would come up and say: “Hmm. Very interesting but of course completely invalid.” By ‘validity’ I think they meant conformity to the rules of art as laid down by Clement Greenberg in the ’40s and ’50s… “Integrity of the picture plane”, avoidance of depth or illusion, and regarding the painting as an object…

    Talking of which I don’t suppose you can get more ‘valid’ than Jasper Johns who is having a big show across the road from Bellany at the RA. He is said to be “interrogating the relationship between language and art”. An artist who has made ingenious use of his inadequacies – he can’t draw and has no sense of colour – grey is the predominant shade in this exhibition. Not that they aren’t decorative and sometimes even elegant, in particular the ones with dangling strings, the ‘Catenary’ series. You can’t go wrong with a catenary.

    He started off doing targets, moved on to flags, numbers, letters and bronze beer cans painted to look like the real thing. That last idea was taken up later by many other artists – didn’t someone recently do bronze bin bags? Then there were a few cast body parts followed by decades of cross-hatching. The pattern had all the qualities that interested him, namely “literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness and the possibility of complete lack of meaning”. Say no more.

    In the ’70s he met Samuel Beckett and they were supposed to have collaborated on a manuscript called ‘Foirades’ or ‘Fizzles’. The etchings accompanying the text don’t seem to have much to do with it except that they were grey and that was Beckett’s favourite colour. ‘Foirade’ is French for a silent fart but you won’t learn that from the wall charts. Another thing you won’t learn there is that Beckett disliked Johns and so no further collaborations were planned. It’s unlikely that they were collaborations anyway as the etchings were much the same stuff Johns had been doing for years. ‘Foirades’ was on sale for $6,000 in 1976.

    It’s astonishing to consider the intellectual vacuity of the New York art scene which persists to this day. At the White Cube gallery in Mason’s Yard you can see a show called ‘From the Vapour of Gasoline’ (one of Basquiat’s profundities). The show is supposed to “chronicle the dramatic ideological shift and deconstruct a national self-image opening up the space between the authorial narratives of the US and the darker histories they concealed”. Christopher Wool – he of the stencilled messages – features largely. His works are extremely expensive, but then the world is full of rich idiots seeking a safe place to stash their cash. I couldn’t bet on it being safe for much longer because ‘The king is in the altogether’ and Damien seems to have burst. But I’m not one to gloat.

    At the National Gallery an excellent exhibition, ‘Reflections, Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites’, argues that as students Holman Hunt, Rossetti and Millais became fascinated by Van Eyck’s painting of the Arnolfini wedding which hung in the west wing of the National Gallery. In those days the RA schools were in the east wing. It’s a convincing argument that this led to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who were fed up with the influence of Reynolds and the brown academic tradition of the time. They wanted brilliant colour and a more meticulous approach, Reynolds being characterised by his nickname “Sir Sloshua”. They started to paint on white grounds for sharpness and zing.

    They were also fascinated by the convex mirror on the wall behind the Arnolfinis and many of them made use of the same device in their own work. It seems likely that Velasquez was aware of this portrait as it once belonged to the Spanish court, but I suspect it’s stretching it a bit to suggest it led to his use of the mirror in Las Meninas. One of the great surprises of this show is a partial copy of Las Meninas by John Phillip from 1862. It’s extremely well painted, especially the maids’ dresses, but surely it represents an approach the Pre-Raffs were trying to escape.

    Also at the National is a show of pastels by Degas, ‘Drawn in Colour’. Well worth seeing, especially the women bathing. There are three of these, quite large for pastels. In one a woman bends over in a shallow blue tub, the blue of the tub reflected on her flank, and all against a red background. The pastel is laid on in broad parallel streaks in several built-up layers.

    There are dancers, horsemen and café scenes mostly from the Burrell in Glasgow. Next door to Degas is a gallery devoted to small landscapes painted mostly on the spot. Outstanding is Sunset in the Auvergne by Theodore Rousseau showing a distant view of the Puy de Dôme. It’s only about nine inches by seven. Don’t miss it.

    In the central hall you can see a show of paintings by Luca Giordano or Fa Presto as he was popularly known – the fast one. These are preparatory paintings for his decoration of the Galeria and Library of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence. The whole project took him only a year, 1682-83. I was particularly taken by the Allegory of Temperance. Maybe his tongue was in his cheek. There’s a very large Giordano further on in the National. It’s Perseus turning enemies to stone, very dramatic and well worth looking at. I suppose you could call Giordano a very late mannerist.

    At the Tate in ’64 they had a retrospective of Marcel Duchamp. Everyone took it very seriously, including me. I spent a long time pondering the significance of The Large Glass which I think was a replica made by Richard Hamilton. I thought it must be the repository of some arcane wisdom – serious and precocious that was me. A long time afterwards I realised that it was a joke, a very good joke which continues to amuse people to this day. Not many jokes can be funny for a hundred years. You’ve got to hand it to him. How about this … “The Bride fundamentally is a petrol can of love (or power-timidity). This timid potency, distributed to the motor with weak cylinders in contact with the sparks of his constant life (magneto desire) explodes and expands to the virgin who has arrived at the end of her desire.”

    I almost forgot, it includes a “gravity regulator”.

    Following a disappointing visit to The Chequers, the wonderful Spanish barmaid having moved on, I crossed over to the RA to see the Duchamp/Dali exhibition. Duchamp was quite a good cubist. He added some dynamism whereas Dali’s attempts at the same style were dreary, but it wasn’t long before the Spaniard developed his trademark illusionistic technique which curator Dawn Ades considers exquisite. I would call it “hobbyist”.

    All the familiar stuff is here, the bottle rack, stool/bicycle wheel, and that bloody urinal. What tedium. How can anybody still be interested in this crap a hundred years on? But they are.

    In one room there are a series of short films. I was hoping to see more of Gala and her charms but it wasn’t to be. One film shows an enormous banquet with Dali and Gala at the head of the table. I think it’s based on the feast scene in Bunuel’s great film Viridiana. It’s a theme that crops up again in the centrefold of the Rolling Stones album Beggars’ Banquet. Curiously, Bob Hope is among the guests. He takes the lid off a large serving dish and two frogs hop out. He does that Bob Hope face as they leap down the table.

    The traffic was so bad it took me an hour to get down to the press view of Outsiders at the Saatchi Gallery. I got there with only half an hour to spare. Imagine my surprise to find that when I signed the book mine was the only name in it. I wouldn’t normally have bothered but the ticket showed a nice girl’s bottom. Outsider art usually refers to the work of eccentrics or the mentally ill but the stuff on display was “general issue” by those just released from art school, all of which had been  knocked out very recently to fill the space available.

    To Whitehall for my morning draught in the Cock and Bottle. That monument with the dangling coats and hats is truly revolting, and the clay modeller’s conceit of leaving the pellets proud of the trousers makes Montgomery look as though he’s got dysentery. How refreshing for a while to gaze on the Burghers of Calais as I stroll along the river towards the Tate.

    Entering the Duveen Galleries I saw that the Queen of One-Trick Ponies is back in town. Her absence has not done much to furnish the space between her ears. I felt a great surge of pity for the poor woman as I surveyed the ranks of castings displayed along the floor (they are supposed to be the casts of the space underneath chairs).

    On to Haydon’s Punch and Judy where I can happily spend ten or fifteen minutes. And then a wander promiscuously through various galleries. I was in the mood for Samuel Palmer and after a few minutes with him I stepped through the arch to the unexpected pleasure of the work of Ray Harryhausen and some of the artists who inspired him such as John Martin and Gandy. Harryhausen was the maker of vintage Horror films such as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Jason and the Argonauts. He specialised in stop-motion animation and many of the models he made to work from are on display. A single scene could take four months to produce. He bought Gandy’s extraordinary painting Jupiter Pluvius but the Martins were beyond his pocket. Displayed are many of his drawings related to his film scenes. They are certainly better than Dali’s drawings.

    Wandering again I found a beautiful Pastoral by Cayley Robinson (above). I remember it being in an antechamber when the National was showing Acts of Mercy about ten years ago. Tonally, it’s remarkable, the simplified shoreline reminiscent of Munch. The fleece of the sheep is picked out by the golden moonlight which slices vertically across the lake. This is the sort of picture that would be extremely popular as a poster, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Apart from that Scotch bloke I don’t think we have any popular art. And so on to the scandalous Duchess of Argyll, a woman I’ve always admired. Gerald Brockhurst’s portrait of her is rather good although he hasn’t quite managed to suggest her lascivious nature. Goya would have managed it somehow. Apparently the famous “headless man” was Douglas Fairbanks junior. As the picture was probably a commissioned piece it wouldn’t have been appropriate to be too revealing of her predilections.

    News from the grotto. The Sage has been giving much thought to the North Korean situation. He thinks that North Korea is China’s  opening move.

    Dick French
    The Jackdaw Nov/Dec 2017

  • Dick French: On The Town – September 2017

    I’ve just been to see an exhibition by an artist whose name for the moment escapes me. He is having an exhibition of his furniture-friendly Pop-Art style abstractions. They’re copies of book covers – title above, abstraction below. A few years ago there was someone, perhaps it was the same bloke, doing large pictures of penguin book covers. Scrape that barrel.

    The only unusual aspect is that the hard-edge compositional passages are superimposed on sloppy bits that he lets dribble at the lower edge. It’s a formula he could pursue for the rest of his life.

    Some would say “’Twas ever thus!” And thus ’twas, I suppose. But the art world has never been such a joke as it is at present. And it behoves us all to treat it accordingly. You can go along and have a laugh at White Cube Gallery in Mason’s Yard.

    “Sir!”, as Dr Johnson didn’t say, “The man who is tired of the 24 bus route is tired of life. From the bosky glades of Hampstead Heath it glides gently through Camden Town and down to the West End. At the bottom of Gower Street you can turn left for the British Museum or right to Bradley’s Spanish Bar and Soho. Further on past the guitar shops of Denmark Street, now destined for demolition by the megalomaniac town and railway planners. The 12 Bar Club is already closed down and before that went the wonderful Black Gardenia at the top of Dean Street – all victims of Crossrail. Stay on to Leicester Square and turn left for the Salisbury or a bit further for Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. Thence to Whitehall where I often alight at the Cock and Bottle for a morning draught. Thus refreshed I might continue on foot along Millbank to the Tate Gallery.

    The other night I deviated from my usual habits and took a bus up to Islington to see the new exhibition by George Rowlett, who has been painting in Italy for a while, taking in the temples at Paestum along with a few land and seacapes. While waiting for Mrs Cravat in the Island Queen I noticed a tall earthenware jar by the window. Its neck was decorated with fairy lights. It reminded me of Samuel Beckett’s great novel The Unnameable, and although some call it The Unreadable I have always found it most absorbing. In it a creature lives in a jar by a restaurant, just a stump with its head poking out. There’s some sawdust in the bottom and from time to time it gets mucked out and spread on the roses. At Christmas they string fairy lights around the neck of the jar and place a tarpaulin over its head if it snows. As the menu dangles from the neck, to read it people must lean down towards the creature’s head.

    Edward Burra was a great fan of Beckett and he thought it would be rather nice to live in a jar with just his eyes poking out. He did a number of pictures on this theme. Being so disabled it was a bit like describing his own condition, although he always managed to get around.

    An interesting feature of George Rowlett’s paintings is that they often contain fragments of the scene which inspired them. Flies, gnats, twigs, and in one of his recent pieces what looks like the tailfin of a sardine is poking out of a rape field. It’s a bit like Goya writing “Yo Lo Vi”. I saw this. I was there. Perhaps it’s just another way of trapping the moment. I always wonder about the insects etc. which must have been stuck in Van Gogh’s paintings. He always complained about them. Someone must have picked them out.

    Rowlett’s painting of the Temple of Neptune at Paestum is a dynamic piece (see illustration). A gigantic dark-haired figure seems to be bursting through the front columns (this is more noticeable in the reproduction than in the actual painting). Such things happen when  improvising so loosely and do not detract from the grandeur of the painting. My favourite piece in the show is, oddly, not included in the catalogue: Rape Field near Ripple, grey sky in May. Over a sumptuously slathered on butter and lemon rape field, a wide violet band containing flecks of viridian streaks along under a lowering sky. In the background of Lady’s Smock Lupin and Poppy Heads he seems to have slathered on a totally new colour. Pinky violet, peachy cream. Farrow and Ball would go crazy. Keep it a secret George!

    To Chichester with Dirty Harry to see the John Minton show at Pallant House. The air at Chichester is really most refreshing. You feel so close to the sea. The train takes ages and by the time we arrived my throat was as dry as a nun’s gusset. Fortunately just over the level crossing is an excellent pub. On the way back to the station the barman let us watch a stage of the Tour de France on an enormous screen.

    At Pallant House as well as the Minton show there is a small gallery of William Coldstream’s paintings. I never realised before how bad he was. The effort he puts in! All those measurements, angles and so forth to achieve such meagre results is astonishing. A kind of constipated sobriety in sharp contrast to Minton’s neo-romantic exuberance. Francis Bacon was always rather dismissive of Minton’s obsession with fellating sailors and body builders: “Why can’t he take it up the bum like everyone else so he can really enjoy it?”

    Poor old Minton, a star in the ’40s he rapidly became vieux chapeau as the neo-romantics were swamped by hard-core American influences. His early drawings and paintings were haunting and mysterious, rather like improvised Samuel Palmers. They had an intensity which is hard to sustain for more than a few years. I can think of a number of artists who have had the same problem of youthful ingenuity followed by floundering attempts to come to terms with Modernismo. And the pressure to do so is enormous.

    Minton resorted to curious stylistic habits; for instance, portraying heads as horizontal rugby balls with sharp ends – the bigger they got the worse they became.

    He did however retain the ability to paint in a straightforward manner and after his early romantic pieces his portraits are some of his best work.

    Minton was renowned for his massive mood swings and was often described as mercurial. He was a great friend and admirer of an artistic duo called ‘the two Roberts’, Colquhoun and MacBryde, who wore kilts for God’s sake. They took advantage of his wealth and generosity but looked down on him as a ‘mere’ illustrator. They were much admired in their day but are now almost forgotten. Bacon and Freud are the only artists of this period to survive the American invasion.

    Minton became so sozzled that he gave up his teaching post at the Royal College. It must be the first and only time an art school teacher has done that.

    Pictures I thought worth looking at were The Desolate Stage of 1939, The Road to Valencia of 1949 and English Landscape of 43. There’s an amusing section called ‘Exotic Fruits’ of half-naked black men picking bananas.

    News from the Grotto… The sage is confined to headquarters for the duration of the Appleby Horse Fair. Pikeys arrive from far and wide seeking ‘business opportunities’; some in the manner of Augustus John, and others with lorries towing large chrome-plated caravans. It’s best to be at home.

    Dick French
    The Jackdaw Sep/Oct 2017

  • Dick French: On The Town – July 2017

    I heard on the wireless that Cornelia Fluff has just been appointed ‘Official Sculptor’ for the General Election. What can this mean? She’s obviously a bit of a Leftie so maybe she could run up a big bronze statue of Compo on his bicycle for Islington Green.

    Mr Serota has left the Billabong and moved uptown to a new job where he’s in charge of absolutely everything. Talk about ‘Once a Jolly Swagman’. I’ve always thought of him as Moriarty ‘The Napoleon of Art Crime’:

    “He sits motionless at the centre of his web, but that web has many radiations and he knows well every quiver of each of these. He does little himself, he only plans, but his agents are numerous and splendidly organised.” (Conan Doyle)

    Talking to Long John in The Salisbury I noticed two tickets sticking out of his shirt pocket. I enquired about them and he proudly handed them over the bar. A pair of tickets for Lord’s at £85 each. He’d just been to Locks of St James’s and spent £300 on a Panama hat. He takes his cricket seriously does Long John. When I was at school I got hit on the head by a cricket ball and have no time for it. And time is what you need for cricket.

    The chap next to me started talking about cricket and then football, but when he realised I had no interest in either he suggested we talk about golf. I think he’d been on a course. I warmed to him because he seemed rather lonely. He was wearing a syrup – not bad, quite well fitted, what used to be known as a ‘Beatle Wig’. I managed to get away and strolled down to the National Gallery. On the way I had an altercation with a street performer who was blocking the path along the south wall with a semi-circle of onlookers. I hate street theatre. You can still hear the buggers as you climb the staircase inside the gallery.

    Chrysophilus has been given his own room to display his latest efforts. He’s done a large tapestry, or rather a factory has run it up for him, based on a series of watercolours which are also on display. Enlarging such exiguous material is of course disastrous. As well as the tapestry the gallery is decked out from floor to ceiling with grisaille hangings of dusky maidens doing the hokey cokey. He didn’t even do these himself. The whole business is unspeakable so I won’t, except to observe that forty-odd years ago it would have been considered rather “girly”. Oops!

    Going past Fortnums I always get a cheery wave from the Irish millionaire who holds the door open. I was on my way to White Cube in Mason’s Yard which is conveniently just behind The Chequers on Duke Street – a pub worth visiting if only for the splendid Spanish barmaids. The WC is showing the work of Wayne Thiebaud, an artist I’ve admired since the ’60s when he was associated with Pop Art. Thiebaud is mostly a still life painter. One of the many things that distinguished him from the Pop artists was his delight in the sensual properties of paint. His cakes and pies look delicious and cakes, pies and ice creams are his favourite theme. His palette is that of the cake shop and ice cream parlour. Later on he managed to translate this into landscapes, oddly enough both rural and urban.

    Sometimes Thiebaud paints people and they’re dreadful.

    Clown Cones (see illustration), a reproduction of which I’d seen in the paper, I imagined as much bigger, but in fact it’s a modest work. I’d like to have seen it much bigger. It would have been outrageous. Cherry Pie of 2016 is delightful, as is Burger To Go of ’99. Quite why I like them so much is difficult to say. Maybe I’m pathetically grateful for finding visual pleasure in a modern painting. He slips thick streaks of lemon yellow into paintings of motorways in a convincing manner. A visionary of sorts. If I was rich I would buy Thiebaud’s pictures and hang them alongside George Rowlett’s, especially those luscious Alpine scenes where he also uses ice cream colours in a surprising way. [See page 46 for the latest Rowlett exhibition. Ed]

    The pictures here are fairly recent and are not quite as juicy as the ones I remember from the ’60s. I think it’s because most of them are done in acrylic rather than the oil of earlier times. But at 95 he is still producing great work. “Mr Thiebaud, you are to be congratulated”, as Elwood P Dowd would have remarked.

     

    To the Royal Academy Summer Show, this year presided over by the winsome Eileen Cooper, who can neither draw nor paint. But, as it says here, “She brings her experience and knowledge of diverse practices to the Summer Exhibition”.

    All the usual suspects are here, including of course ‘Paper & Glue’, the creative bachelors with yet another of their would-be photo combines. Don’t they ever get fed up with themselves? Year after year the same old flashy muck.

    There’s a painting worth looking at by Anthony Eyton of an Indian festival in Varanasi.

    Cornelia Parker is still flattening teapots. Habits acquired in art school are hard to relinquish.

    Prices are unbelievable. Gormless has done a woodcut in an edition of 5 at £30,250 each. That should keep him in vegetables for a while. And Macfisheries shows a linocut in an edition of 50 at £2,800. Fluff pops up yet again with a “polymer photogravure etching on Tiepolo Bianco paper” if you please. Edition of 15 at £3,025 a pop.

    There’s a neon sign by Biffa Bacon’s mother in an edition of 3 at £84,000 each. So rush along all you bargain hunters, why don’t you.

    An etching Girls Girls Girls by Cathy Pilkington, newly appointed Royal Academy Professor of Sculpture no less, is certainly a step up from her hideous sculptures which are curiously but understandably not on display.

    There’s even Julian Schnabel – remember him? – with a rather modestly sized load of smashed plates painted green. Nearby is a truly revolting intestinal jumble in bloody reds and pinks. It was so obscene I almost liked it. Then I realised it was by Hamish Kipper, but I don’t suppose he made it himself.

    With a few exceptions all this work seems to be a constipated extension of what they were doing at art school. There are no surprises. At college in the ’60s there was a chap who wrote in his thesis that by 1970 all innovations would had been achieved and that the future would be given over to what he called ‘conservative abstraction’. A percipient fellow, his prediction has come to pass.

    News from the grotto. The Sage writes from the wild country to tell me that the public lavatories in his local market town have been converted into an art gallery. There are lots of pictures of sheep in the snow – L’Escuela des Moutons Congeladas. On the wall some local wag has written “SID HEPPLETHWAITE HAS A BIG ONE”.

    Dick French
    The Jackdaw Jul/Aug 2017

  • Dick French: On The Town – May 2017

    Mr Wu was on the wireless last night. A very long programme on the World Service, but still I learned very little about him. He speaks as one heavily sedated. Talk about insclutable. He dwells in a large bunker under Berlin with 6,000 three-legged stools and some lifejackets. There was no mention of the poison beans, maybe he’s sold them all. The trailer described him as “one of the world’s most powerful artists”. It is puzzling how an aesthetic black hole can achieve such eminence. His career is enough to make even the most sceptical of us start subscribing to conspiracy theories. He’s one of these artistic accumulators who head things up. There’s a lot of them about. One thinks of MacFisheries, the bloke at the RA who makes animals out of coathangers and map pins. I suppose you could call it a modular approach which prevents you from making a mess… Now what can I heap up next?

    In the 19th century it took a long time for the French to latch on to the importance of Baudelaire. The Parnassian ideal was ascendant and accordingly it was possible to compose what was considered the highest poetry about almost nothing. Plus ça change.

    Art establishments have a primordial and instinctive terror of change. When Baudelaire wrote about “une oasis d’horreur dans un desert d’ennui” he could have been describing Mr Wu and the Art World.

    To the National Gallery for the exhibition of Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo. Sebastiano was from Cesenatico, most famous nowadays for being the birthplace and training ground of ‘Il Pirata’, Marco Pantani, still adored by the tifosi even though almost his entire career was fuelled by coke and EPO. Contrast this with Lance Armstrong who is considered a disgrace.

    An impressive show, although two of the most interesting pieces are already in the National Gallery. One of them, The Raising of Lazarus, is among the earliest purchases of the NG. Something I’d never noticed in this painting is that a group of women close to the raising itself are holding their noses. This I learned from the wall chart, but closer inspection shows this to be untrue. They are raising their veils across the lower parts of their faces to avoid contagion. The plague, both bubonic and pneumonic, had been raging on and off for many years when this painting was being worked on and such a gesture was commonplace. Besides, after three days underground Lazarus must have been a tad smelly.

    Sebastiano composes on the diagonal and the triangle. A striking example of his triangular approach is The Judgment of Solomon. The darkening of the central figure’s head is extremely dramatic but this could be due to deterioration. In some of his paintings he lets the sfumato disintegrate the forms rather in the manner of Beccafumi. The black starts to creep in, especially in a painting of the Virgin and Child in which the infant resembles Charlie Drake. The Virgin’s head is also unsatisfactory – too much face.

    In The Visitation the foetal St John the Baptist is said to be leaping for joy in his mother’s womb during her encounter with the Virgin Mary. A difficult subject to depict. One can almost hear Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling drawling “Well I think the word difficult is awfully well chosen”.

    There are some wonderful drawings and letters in this show. Michelangelo often worked on both sides of the paper which was expensive in those days. I think he was probably a bit of a skinflint. It’s interesting that Michelangelo drew mostly with the hand when nowadays we are encouraged to draw mostly with the arm.

    Many of these paintings have dramatic bits of landscape in the background in the red-tinged sky. I couldn’t take to The Lamentation. I think it’s the expression on the Virgin’s face. Those upturned eyes and the horizontal body seem insufficiently scourged with its immaculate underpants. Still I suppose this is no place for realism.

    “People don’t buy pictures because they admire them, they buy them because others covet them.” Advice given to Constable, but I can’t remember by whom. An Andy Warhol painting of Chairman Mao has just sold in Hong Kong for $1l million. How long can this crap persist? Warhol was once described as “an ambulant black hole”. And now we’ve got another one in Mr Wu.

    To the Mall to see the painter/stainers exhibition. At the opening I met no less than the Chief Stain himself. He seemed a nice chap. Sporting his enormous bling on a chain round his neck he looked a bit like a sommelier. For once the 1st prize was worth looking at. A large, elaborate, patched-together drawing by Chris Green. Bernadette Tinko showed a small picture of a filthy brown sink, which I rather liked, while opposite Alex Rooney showed a similarly sized clean white sink. I wonder if they know each other. Cherry Pickles shows another rear view mirror piece, A487, and Peter Archer’s Cliff Edge is sensitive.

    The Scrapyard Queen shows another of her car wrecks; as always very well done but I’m always hoping she’ll ring a few changes – naked men draped over the bonnet sipping from golden cans perhaps. But I don’t think she takes me seriously.

    My friend The Sage writes from his grotto in the Yorkshire Dales sending me a copy of the Royal Academy Spring Magazine. I can’t imagine how he gets hold of such things. (Age Concern apparently.) He’s very cross about this woman who’s been appointed Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy. She’s called Cathie Pilkington and makes the most atrocious plaster dolls which are supposed to be based on the Little Dancer by Degas. As always in this kind of work the exegesis is of more importance than the thing you have to look at. And there can be few things more unpleasant than what she makes. That such an incompetent can be put in charge of students astonishes me. But it shouldn’t really. After all they have Huge Mary in charge of painting. The Sage described them as “sugar sculptures for cake decorations”. She also intends to “dress, drape, protect or obscure with soft coverings” the RA’s collection of historic casts. She means to display her dolls in a way that will make them seem “tiny but vibrant” against lush velvet curtains. Does that mean she’s going to paint them black?

    To the John Soanes, always one of my favourite places. Unfortunately it was infested by a load of plaster body castings by Marc Quinn. “The museum is an unfinished total artwork. We’re continuing the process.” Oh yeah?

    Even though these things are body casts he’s managed to get them out of proportion. The separate upper and lower parts don’t fit together properly. Someone should grab him by the beard (I imagine he’s got one) and point out shoulder to nipple, nipple to navel, naval to the foothills of the fanny – same distance. Variations do occur of course but with the rather perfect specimen he has grabbed from behind this rule would hold. If her bum was a drug it would be Class A. Her tits too, petite.

    “I think that great art is time travel. Emotional time travel.” What on earth can he mean by this? “Quinn’s works invite us to reflect on the nature and meaning of time”. I should be used to such gnomic utterances by now but I can still be surprised and puzzled.

    And here’s my version of the grab from behind…

    Dick French
    The Jackdaw May/Jun 2017

  • Dick French: On The Town – March 2017

    Now my wedge is worn down to a nubbin so I’m trying to scratch a few dibs out of this art world. I’d done a few beauty panels and I’m punting them round town when I meet this dame in Covent Garden. I’ve known her a year or so and now she’s working the spigot in this bar on Long Acre. Now this is a classy trap, inhabited by the better class of West End rum pots. This Judy is Class A and she dresses in a manner that suggests she’s not afraid of catching cold. I like the way she always lets her bra strap hang down. She’s from that Hungary, where I hear you can commit all manner of depravity in the street without attracting attention. This must be dispiriting for them as likes an audience. I had a nightmare once when I had that Joan Collins over a bar stool of a Friday night in the French and nobody was taking any notice. During the season she’s always glued to the rugby on the tele so I enquire into this situation and she says to me like this: ‘It’s not the rugby Dick, it’s the men.’ And then she pulls me close and whispers in my shell-like, and I reply to her like this: (but this confidential riposte comes out a bit louder than intended, causing no small amusement and then some among the rum pots.)

    ‘A week off work to recover? I don’t believe it. The team maybe!’

    By and by comes Oat Willie. Now this is a curious character and carries a little sack of oats over his left shoulder at hip height. He alternates fistfuls of beer on the right with fistfuls of oats on the left. He’s fond of talking about his practice so much that many of the rum pots consider him to be no great asset to the community and give him the back of their necks. He’s fond of the bogey weed and I personally consider him to be higher than a cat’s back, which is no great commendation. By and by he shuffles off down the bar to gaze at Zoë, for such is the pancake’s name. He even offers her a dip in his little sack but she declines, it being a bit sweaty after a couple of pints. He associates with such low-lifes as John the Stud and Dave the Reptile who really have no business in a high class art blat.

    Dirty Harry sends me a free hack ticket to that Royal Academy to have a glaum at this show of Russian Revolutionary art. So I’m sitting on the No 14 bus admiring the great relief along the front of the Gaumont cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue. It takes you from medieval times to the Charleston and apart from the Parthenon it’s one of the greatest friezes I’ve ever seen. A traffic jam is not always such a bad thing.

    At the Academy they’ve draped the balustrades in red swags and put in a beautiful new crimson stair carpet at the entrances so it’s a bit disappointing when you get inside. It’s not that the pictures are particularly bad, although few of them appeal to me, but most share that “cellar-stored” look common to many early 20th century paintings; cracked, yellowed and dingy. A few things I liked. A painting by Isaak Brodsky which reminded me a bit of George Bellows’s shock worker, a figure stripped to the waist standing on a crane jib. Like Bellows but without the enjoyment in the paint, which is a characteristic of most of these artists. None of them relished the medium. Maybe they couldn’t afford to.

    Israel Lizak is an exception with his painting Walk. It reminded me a bit of Gorky and is an abstraction of an elegant woman in a hat from ’28. And then there’s Vladimir Tatlin who you could say has pride of place with his large model of The Worker’s Flying Bicycle. It never flew but it’s a great idea. And there’s rather a beautiful small photo of the profile of poet Anna Akhmatova by Moisei Nappelbaum (see illustration). She was denounced by the Bolsheviks as ‘half-harlot half -nun’. “Her tormented mouth through which 100,000,000 people scream.” There’s a woman down our street like that.

    On the way out a woman who was clearly upset was saying how sad it had all made her feel. And I had to agree. Apart from all the ghastly goings-on I can’t stand pictures of peasants.

    Up the Burlington Arcade the Fountain Pen Shop has closed down. Some of them cost many hundreds of pounds but were rather beautiful. On Berwick Street the blood oranges have just arrived and the daffodils have come out in the French pub.

    Sent on a mission on your behalf I failed miserably. It had been suggested I look at the David Hockney retrospective, an unpleasant job but someone’s got to do it. The queue was such, hundreds of them, that I lost all enthusiasm. Even after buying a ticket – twenty quid! – you have to wait around for an hour before they let you in.

    I decided to look at the Paul Nash show instead. A wise decision. The first room is called Dreaming Trees. They look like etchings but are mostly pen and ink. The catalogue describes them as ‘Symbolist’, but I disagree. Trees, hills, landscapes and a few ghostly figures which take time to emerge. They convey a sense of mystery which is not transcendent but embedded in the nature of all things themselves. There’s no need to look for anything else, ‘things’ are sufficient for those with eyes to see. Then came the war and a remarkable transformation. He started to work in oil and to make the pictures for which he is most famous.

    “There are men who want the war to last forever. Feeble and inarticulate may be my message. But it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls” 1917

    Starburst shell over the Ypres Salient at night … blacks and various shades of viridian, the light from the starburst picking out the troops helmets as they go slightly downhill on the duckboards. In the same room are The Menin Road and We Are Making a New World, the paintings for which he is most acclaimed.

    After the war he turned again to landscapes with rather mysterious qualities but without the intensity of his pre-war work. In the ’20s he went to live in Rye and got to know the 20-year-old Edward Burra – Nash was 35. Burra disliked Nash’s wife Margaret, who was much involved in folk music and morris dancing.

    “Such fun. We do Widdy Come Toddy, Parson’s Fuddle and Fuck a Chickabiddy and Flummox a Bubby Nit in the Navel. And also Maiden Heads Bung-Ho.” (Burra’s letters)

    Nash himself was quietly appalled by how his wife carried on. Burra considered that Nash couldn’t draw but although his figures were rather weak it didn’t really matter in his best work. Then in the ’30s he became committed to the idea of International Modernism which is strange considering how idiosyncratic his work had been. He liked the idea of a life force within inanimate objects and put together arrangements which nowadays look like very ordinary art school exercises. Later on in the ’30s he got involved with the Surrealists.

    There’s an interesting film of him during the Second World War working in the scrapyard of German bombers at Cowley in Oxford, the drawings and photographs of which led to his famous picture Totes Meer of 1940. The chalkiness of a lot of his pictures, which I’ve always considered one of his drawback, didn’t really bother me, until the very late things of wheeling sunflowers which are supposed to be symbolic of death. He died in 1946.

    Dick French
    The Jackdaw Mar/April 2017