LITERATURE & HUMANITIES

Meetings chaired by Peter Rex Valentine unless otherwise stated

THE ARTS AND THE PUBLIC

Geoffrey Catchpole, Member, on 21 April 2004.

The term ‘art’ has been interpreted variously and has been extended over a continuum which ranges from purely aesthetic to purely utilitarian activities and comes in many modes and media. E.H.Gombrich (the late art guru) and Stephen Bayley (co-founder of the Design Museum) each remark that ‘there is no such thing as art/design – only artists/designers’. The speaker gave illustrations ranging from Plato and Aristotle to 19^th century German Idealists to indicate how philosophical positions have influenced concepts of art. Turning to contemporary views he referred to emphasis on underlying psychological and cultural factors influencing artists, such as Helen Garrett (another Member) who has reported ‘unconscious evolution’ of ‘possibilities for the painting’. Karen Armstrong sees ‘religion as art’. Iris Murdoch saw ‘Art and morals as one…love, art morality is the discovery of reality…but even at its most exquisite, art is incomplete’ because, from her Platonist viewpoint, artists attempt to access ‘the Good’. For Susan Langer, an American philosopher, an artwork is an expression of it’s author’s ‘Idea’, which she describes as ‘something that takes shape as he articulates an envisagement of realities which discursive language cannot properly express.’ For her, the product is a ‘symbol- primarily to capture and hold his own imagination of organized feeling, the rhythms of life, the forms of emotion.’ The artist thus works for himself, but ‘in a sense’ makes it for an ‘ideal’ rather than any actual audience for his work .

The history of art. Ancient cave carvings are believed to reflect religious or magical beliefs and to have purely practical purposes. Similarly, craftsmen and artisans through the ages have developed skills primarily to serve requirements imposed by others. By the time of the Renaissance both an elite sponsoring art and a churchgoing public were familiar with allegorical references derived from Latin and Greek writers, with whom we are not familiar today. At the same time, Michelangelo and Leonardo were developing a ‘cult of the genius’, which led to an artistic profession ‘opposed to general organization and public accountability’, as one writer has put it. By the 18^th century the spread of wealth and elitist tastes brought the Grand Tour – as the Curator of Bath’s recent Piranesi exhibition remarked –‘elements of Roman antiquity infused with Venetian fantasy gripped the Romantic artists for a century after his death in 1778…and influenced cinema today’. The rise of nation-states and the spread of democracies brought national museums – Peel sought to ‘cement bonds of people and state’ when he sited the national museum in Trafalgar Square, in order to allow both rich and poor to experience art. In the 19^th century Salon art came to be challenged. The Pre-Raphaelites went out to nature 20 years before the Impressionists and also pursued what one critic has called ‘fey medievalism’. When Ruskin, however, attempted to read ‘Nature’s scripture’ he was reflecting both a search for divine significance and the growing popularity of scientific research. That trend, evident in geology, led to biblical queries, undermining mysticism, which in turn turned attention to the nature and purpose of art itself. Thus, by 1900, industrial/commercial/social revolutions had brought new materials, techniques, arts and artists, publics, markets and attitudes to art and growing numbers and forms of artistic expression.

The arts since 1900. Having traced external motivators through utility, religious and political propaganda, cultural elitism and economic pressures, what of today? The ‘shock of the new’ came in various art-forms, along then with the turbulence caused by the Great War and its aftermath. Some artists, such as Epstein, Nevinson and Gettler suffered for their art through public criticism, while others became the Establishment ( including Epstein eventually). A contemporary commentator on the economics of art mentions that in the 1970s only half of one per cent of French and German professional artists enjoyed a ‘reasonable’ income. In his view, although artistic creativity requires little funding, the wealthy exert ‘cultural imperialism’. Financial rewards go to the reputable, irrespective of artistic worth- ‘cultural significance is now regarded as virtually equivalent to being innovative…elite markets sell reputation, popular markets sell entertainment’.

By 1948 T.S. Eliot was warning of a ‘period of no culture’. Some artists who began as ‘anti-Establishment’ found themselves later to be part of it. John Russell Taylor notes that Roy Lichtenstein initially asked ‘what a painting is, what it does, how it does it?’…etc., only to become a ‘pop icon’ himself ‘ endlessly reproduced and hung on suburban walls’. Others chose to join the Establishment – Andy Warhol said ‘Making money is art, and working is art, and good business is the best art’, while Damien Hirst is reported to have said in 1990 ‘I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it’. Commenting on Tracey Emin’s work, Billy Childish recently said that ‘a lot of British art is only about show…Entertainment and fashion are fine, but it is not fine if they are the content of what gets called art. What is the point of anti-art if it is establishment and called "art"? Life is the most important thing, not art. Art is just a way we can try to understand how we can be better people.’ He himself, however, finds himself now involved as a gallery owner in litigation involving other gallery owners. Grayson Perry, the 2003 Turner Prize winner, sees the art world as ‘over-stylish and cool’, but he also says ‘ Popularity has nothing to do with the art world…which is a bastion of elitism…and that is how it should be…democracy can have some pretty terrible taste’.

Thus, the determination of popular taste is said to be the product of an ‘art world’ other than that of artists themselves. One writer, advocating the ‘Fringe’ as ‘the last rebel pocket of reality in a world full of hype’, claims that ‘A global profit imperative drives policy…the arts are fossilized in money’. The Curator of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow discusses ‘public galleries around the world which show the same diet of narrow conceptualism’, concluding that ‘ a benighted view of art has a stranglehold on the few who choose what little art we are allowed to see …and the public acquiesce, because what else can they compare it with?’ Gombrich had warned of being afraid of being thought "uneducated" if we call something "very interesting" which we really find somewhat repulsive. He added – ‘ Checking catalogues in galleries is not appreciating art and neither is searching our memory of art history for an appropriate label…a voyage of discovery is far more difficult, but also much more rewarding…taste can be developed if we try to understand what the artist wanted to do’.

The way forward? The Glasgow curator concluded that ‘glorious new art will emerge from the gloom…the tragedy is that we cannot yet see it’. A book reviewer declared that art is not there ‘to help people to feel superior at dinner parties’ but ‘to lay you to waste and then reconfigure you’. Jeanette Winterson argued that ‘Art is a dialogue across time…the responsibility of any artist is to make it new’. Since ‘real life is too limited, we need art’s new possibilities…we need difficult confrontations to adjust opinions’. So arguably we need new and dynamic art to shake us out of our complacency? Isn’t that what some now complain about? We had the ‘shock of the new’ over a century ago and that is ‘new’ no longer. Given the new materials and art-forms in a world now without inhibitions, the artist is nominally free to explore at will, with a public lagging somewhat behind, but prepared to be told what to value. Where now should the artist go?

Professor Fred Inglis acknowledges that ‘post-modern intelligentsia …relativists…are quite right to say that the individualizing of values- the inevitable product of globalization- is no more than a common recognition of the impossible variety of historical experience and human credulity’, but ‘people still go unrepentantly on looking out for good lives…Beauty, Plato said first and Iris Murdoch reminded us, is a good we love quite naturally…it may not last, but it fires us to seek the certainties which are true, and these, when found, are good in themselves and good for us’. So we come full circle, back to Nature, human or otherwise, within which lurks the Good, if only we can find it. Is that the age-old and continuing role of the artist and the desire of his or her public? How may that be achieved? A current project brings together scientists and artists to find a way forward- their introductory comments explain their approach – ‘Post-modernism, critical theory, radical science and cultural relativism have together built something of a new orthodoxy, which contends that human nature does not exist, but it is becoming clear that the roots of many human characteristics run deeper than culture alone’. So Professor Stephen Pinker, for example, seeks a ‘universal aesthetic’ with, he claims, ‘implications for many kinds of modernist art- atonal music, abstract paintings, etc.’. Philip Pullman believes that ‘ there is something in human nature that is innate, not acquired’. Ian McEwan says that his view of literature ‘is that one of its purposes or consequences is the investigation of human nature’.

Are we condemned to an eternal struggle by ever-changing elites, which leave confused and sceptical publics trying to catch up or could the holy grail of a ‘universal aesthetic’ be revealed for all of us in the musings of history? How is the Common Man to approach the matrix of rods now being created by Anthony Gormley, under the title ‘Clearing’, when he suggests that Newton, Leibniz and Kant have helped in the project? In a comment on ‘chameleon’ David Hockney’s new water-colour paintings, a TIMES leader writer wrote –‘ Tricks and experiments are all very well, the artist now believes, but only the weight of hand on brush can truly convey the subtleties of the reality we see. To say this in an art-consuming era of pickled sharks and unmade beds is brave beyond most people’s dreams. Mr Hockney deserves praise for daring to experiment with tradition.’ Shades of 1900- which ‘tradition’ and which ‘experiment’? Does this provide answers or more questions?

Discussion Following the speaker’s exposition, a variety of views were expressed. It was agreed that the history of the arts indicates that each generation has its own culture, which the arts reflect, and that science is a radical influence today. Also, it was suggested that young people now seek novelty and a significant emotional response rather than contemplation of traditional artworks. Public judgments of value can only reflect public values, whereas the artists will judge their own works in their own terms. The value of particular works of art may be judged publicly through the longevity of their approval, but many may not be evaluated because many do not achieve widespread exposure. As well as being consumers of the arts, members of the public should be active producers, according to their interests, in order to be able to appreciate what is entailed both in production and appreciation. Appreciation of the arts will develop through familiarity with modes and styles and people should stay ‘open-minded’. In formal education, experiences which provide stimuli for the appreciation of the arts should be arranged as early as possible in a child’s school life- e.g. through the provision of drawing experiences which may stimulate interest in aspects of shape and form, etc.

Geoffrey Catchpole

References

E.H.Gombrich – ‘The Story of Art’

Iris Murdoch - ‘Existentialists and Mystics’

Susanne K.Langer – ‘Feeling and Form’

Fred Inglis – in ‘The New Humanist’ (November 2003)