Hockney and English comprehension

Two Op-Eds today have taken my eye. And they provide what my old English teacher would have described as a 'perfect pre-prepared package. Come on chaps, get your pens out, it's time for an object lesson in English comprehension. Compare and Contrast'.

I offer you Peter Oborne in the Telegraph, and Martin Kettle in the Guardian. Not a couple that would normally be seen together, but both are writing about the new Royal Academy show of the recent Yorkshire landscapes. What is interesting is that neither could be described as art critics, and neither are regularly writing about art at all.

Martin Kettle describes himself,

Martin Kettle is an associate editor of the Guardian and writes on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music

And Peter Oborne,

Peter Oborne is the Daily Telegraph's chief political commentator.

The art critics have already had their say in the previous few weeks, so now it is the turn of the think pieces. What is remarkable is that both these two writers come to a similar conclusion.

The central distinction in Conservative philosophy is between two different kinds of knowledge: abstract and concrete. Britain is moving back towards a world with solid, enduring values in which, for the first time in many years, public figures can make confident judgments about truth, beauty and morality. It is a world in which David Hockney OM has an honoured place as the greatest artist of his age.

And here is the other,

At the risk of pushing this argument too crudely and too far, and conscious also of my own Yorkshire pride, it seems to me that Hockney and his art express and address the kind of people and country that he and we wish we were. There is something religious in his work. And when Hockney takes a pop at Hirst, I, for one, will cheer, because he is taking a pop at the kind of country we have become, in which attitude is more important than morality, price trumps value, and in which to shock and make a name is privileged over doing something lovely or true... The modernists, like the conceptualists today, believed that the past had nothing to teach them and that the rules all had to change. They were utterly wrong. They offered 20th‑century answers to 19th‑century questions. Hockney seems to know it is time to move on. This show offers one artist's own 21st‑century answer to a quest for something beyond ourselves that is truly timeless.

Hand in you essay at the end of class.

Fatuous defence of arts subsidy

Porcine artist Mark Wallinger, who has been basted in the dripping of arts subsidy for all of his professional life has launched a 'witty defence' of his livelihood. On the Save the Arts blog he has put up a version of the Fighting Temeraire suggesting what might have been the case back in Joseph Mallard William's Time.

Of course if Mr Turner had had to cut something from the painting I suspect it would have been slightly different, say,

Denuded certainly but near bearable.

There again there are certain works for which Mr Wallinger is famous that could do with a cut. Ecco Homo for example, funded by the taxpayer could lose a little something,

to,

And lets not forget his desperately brave and groundbreaking homage to Brian Haw, also handsomely rewarded by the Taxpayer, Maybe a 100% cut would improve that one.

Save the Arts, states,

"It has taken 50 years to create a vibrant arts culture in Britain that is the
envy of the world."

Displaying for all to see the ahistorical and self obessed nature of those who sign their petition. Before public subsidy Britain was an artistic backwater it cries.

Balderdash!

Indeed his choice of painting is instructive, voted the most popular painting in a British gallery in 2005 it is sypmtomatic of Turner. Nostalgic, imaginative and critically patriotic. It was a painting that he painted in 1839 for entirely private purposes, he kept it in his studio and on his death in 1851 he gave it to the nation.

Indeed Turner had only one major public Commission, the painting of the Battle of Trafalgar,

It was a critical flop and he never received another, preffering to work to his own wishes and with private commissions.

Could lightweights like Wallinger and a vast majority of those signing the petition survive without the support of friends who have access to tax subsidy and the Committees which dole them out? I doubt it, but it would be nice and instructive to find out.

The 'vibrant arts culture' they talk about exists only in their minds. The work they generally produce is obscurantist and deliberately elitist. Those who do not, and cannot understand their elaberate contrived artifice are dismissed as ignorant, whilst the money they provide is geedily grasped into the larded bosums of the art elite.

The poster for the campaign quotes William Morris,

Of course what is comedic about this quotation is twofold. Firstly 'Art for the Few' is exactly the sort of art that gets most public subsidy, that which is genuinely popular doesn't need it.

Secondly is that William Morris espoused through the Arts and Craft movement a touching (and financially lucrative) belief in the artisticness of the ordinary and the handmade. It was a profitable business and the objects it produced (despite his sincere socialism) were never affordable to the common man.

Nor are they now, except in twee pastiche. Liberty doesn't have a concession in Bluewater.

Sometimes things work

Very slow on the uptake here, but the good news is that the Blue Rigi, by JW Turner was indeed saved for the nation. So if anybody out there got to the donation site via me, well done indeed.