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| Locked Out of the Main Republican Party! |
I haven't had the best of weeks. On Sunday the police prevented me and child 2 from waving our ‘Make Monarchy History’ banners at
the royal barge at the Jubilee. They rounded us up along with hundreds of other
Republicans in a street well away from the cameras of the world. But on Tuesday I was caught on video being shouted at myself in a soaking tent in the borderlands of England and
Wales.
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| Art of the temple of Brauronian Artemis |
The context was a festival of ‘philosophy and music’ at Hay
on Wye (not the much larger and more
prestigious literary festival, founded in 1988, which Bill Clinton once
described as ‘the Woodstock of the Mind’).
I am usually quite good at running debates, and was invited to chair a panel asking whether the modern Art Gallery has become a
substitute for the Church (it must be admitted that my sole qualification for
this is that my father is an Anglican priest). I was intrigued by the topic
because in ancient Greece, temples and art galleries were indistinguishable.
The place with all the paintings and the statues and the ‘installations’ was
always a temple complex: the Greeks thought the gods loved art and wanted religious
buildings jam-packed in their honour.
Back in Britain, with loud folk-rock pulsating through the
canvas of the tent, I tried to get the ‘freelance philosopher’ Jonathan Ree going,
plus two of the top people in the Art world: Charles Saumarez
Smith, CEO of the Royal Academy, and Penelope Curtis, Director of Tate Modern.
Charles and Penelope agreed that art galleries resemble
churches socially in that there is rivalry between different cities to build
the most splendid new architectural edifice to dominate the local skyline. They
were in absolute disagreement that
visual art could or should have an effect on the viewer of any spiritual or
metaphysical kind—Saumarez Smith thought transcendence possible, while Curtis
thought it was actually undesirable. They both think that the main aim of art
is to invite the viewer to ‘look at looking’, that is, reflect on what s/he is
doing while contemplating the artwork (i.e. in the language of a ‘festival of
philosophy’, do something cognitive or epistemological). All very postmodern,
self-aware, 'sef-reflexive', 'meta-' and (to my mind) so very onanistic and ‘last-century’.
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| The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern |
And then I put my foot in it. My understanding of one of the
reasons why people (used to) go to church is to get moral guidance. Religion
can provide ethical standards, codes of behaviour, and encourage unselfishness
and charity. I asked whether art could or should substitute for the ethical
function of churchgoing. Both luminaries shuddered in absolute horror. How
could I have raised such an obscene question? You would have thought that I had proposed legislation dictating that art could only feature youths in love with
tractors, as in Stalinist ‘socialist realism.’ The implication was that
connecting art and ethics was profoundly dangerous and would lead immediately
to political censorship.
The audience response was fascinating. One woman spoke about how art had given her a reason to live by creating vistas of
hope and possibility when she was widowed. Another suggested that churches were
too conservative and authoritarian in the art that they displayed and should encourage
congregations to participate in
creating inspiring visual environments.
But one middle-aged man launched an
attack on me which was clearly a visceral reaction to the question I had
raised, even though it took a personal form (“How can someone as ignorant as
you be a Professor of Classics?” and “I can’t believe they asked someone with
your ego to chair at this festival!”). I always did know how to charm people.
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| Horace reciting to Virgil and Maecenas |
Ancient critics thought that art was divinely
inspired (Homer) and could give you a metaphysical tingle (Longinus in On the Sublime). But they also agreed
that at its best it was useful to the community as well as pleasurable, utile as well as dulce (Plato, Aristotle, Horace). Yet another reason we need to keep in touch
with the wisdom of our cultural ancestors?
Interesting. The mass art we see on TV is full, surely, of moral direction, ethical quandaries, good goodies and bad baddies. Nobody seems to regard that as the thin end of the fascist wedge (well, almost nobody anyway). Indeed, I suspect your excitable assailant would be rather against deliberately amoral TV.
ReplyDeleteBut I suppose you don't see a lot of TV in galleries, which presumably are reserved for the sort of High Art that can only truly be appreciated by people as well-informed and humble as the twerp who had a go at you.
Charlie, I completely agree. There is something very strange going on here to do with elite versus popular artforms!
ReplyDeleteI always thought religion was just a cack-handed attempt at the artistic examination of right and wrong, as executed by petty tyrants and frustrated artists (the two usually go hand in hand), i.e., art without the subtlety or the admission of complexity, by the kinds of people who instinctively fail to grasp the notion that there isn't always a right or wrong answer, or that the right one mightn't be achievable anyway. At the other end of the spectrum, the really pretentious highbrow art stuff - which I suspect your critics at this debate would worship as some kind of pure ideal - seems to me to be the smoke and mirrors of the subtle and the complex without having the courage to really use it to say anything at all. Maybe that's what they're afraid of: having to say something.
ReplyDeleteI rather think you are right, Matt.
ReplyDelete