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Labouring under an illusion
Jason Walsh
Remember Cool Britannia? Creative Britain? Under New Labour, Britain was
rebranded as a creative nation, a multi-cultural wonderland where the
arts and business could flourish in a partnership that was beneficial
for all. After the dark days of Thatcher, where fine art was the preserve
of individual collectors such as Saatchi, and John Major, who had no readily
discernible arts policy, this seems wonderful. After all, it cannot be
a bad thing for an administration to pay attention to cultural matters.
Or can it?
Well, Labour have begun their second term in power and surely now it's
time that their cultural policy really began to show itself. A first term
government can be forgiven for not being all we would like it to be, especially
in Labour's case. After eighteen years in opposition Labour saw its
election as a delicate balancing act between keeping its core constituency
happy and not upsetting Daily Mail readers. In all of the debates regarding
this, few seem to have mentioned that Labour's constituency includes
not only stodgy NUM members, but also creative, left-wing types. Dilettantes,
if you like.
However, that said, Labour's first term was for many a downright
disappointment. The relationship between art and the institutions which
support it is a delicate balancing act which has always been deeply related
to the policy of the administration which is in power. But the ideological
management of art has deeper roots than the fickle tastes of an elected
government. Most cultural critics on the left have long rejected the Ruskinian
cultural analysis of 'art for art's sake', most especially
in its 1980s Thatcherite incarnation under Peter 'Modern Painters'
Fuller.
Since the development of Modernism the left-wing view of art has been
traditionally divided into two separate analyses, one favoured by the
social democrats and Stalinists and one by the others including Trotskyists.
For social democrats realism was the preferred art form as it most closely
represented the means of production - this was of course perverted
into the grotesque fantasy world of Socialist Realism under Zhandov in
Stalinist Russia. The Trotskyite position argued for the complete freedom
of the artist as an individual creator. As with so much in contemporary
politics, these traditional positions now seem to have declined almost
beyond relevance.
For the Labour government art is not so much a cultural product but a
tool with which to combat 'social exclusion'. This is seen most
obviously in Labour's attempts to replace moribund heavy industry
with so called creative enterprises, but it is also obvious in how the
arts are expected to be major contributors to causes such as urban regeneration.
The concept of social exclusion is often mocked by the remnants of the
Labour left as a new term to define poverty, but in reality it is an entirely
new agenda. Rather than seeing deprivation as an exclusively economic
issue with social ramifications, it redefines it as a purely social one
and in doing so vastly widens the definition of the problem and dilutes
the possible solutions. Poverty is, in theory, an easily solved problem - a
strong economy, job creation and wealth redistribution should be able
to put an end to it. Social exclusion, on the other hand, is a moving
target and not a problem that will be solved by throwing around wads of
cash (very convenient for an administration unwilling either to do so,
or take the flak for not doing so), instead it is combated by a whole
raft of measures including the creation and promotion of community groups,
lessons in citizenship, promotion of culture as a vehicle for inclusion,
the further recreation of education as training, counselling and a seemingly
endless re-education process, sorry 'life-long learning'. Social
exclusion seems to me to be quite sinister as it shifts much of the focus
from the situation faced by an individual or community, directly on to
them - it is they who need to be re-skilled, re-educated and reconstructed.
A worthy cause nonetheless? This article is not the vehicle for that discussion,
but what it is interesting to contemplate is whether this situation is
really healthy for art and culture. There are several issues involved
and they deserve to be dealt with separately.
Firstly, inclusiveness is not what great art is good at. The critic Robert
Hughes pointed out that art institutions in the United States have reacted
to coming under fire from radical critics by distancing themselves from
the perception that they are elitist institutions which are part and parcel
of a white, patriarchal culture. In order to do this they have reinvented
themselves as places which can equally promote art which is inclusive,
open to ethnic minorities and women and willing to blur the distinction
between artist and viewer.
Few today would doubt that the institutions of the past have been white
and patriarchal, but their response to changing times has had them lurching
all over the place looking for examples of more liberal friendly art,
and in many cases instead of looking hard enough to find it, they have
simply elevated that which is not great art. It simply doesn't matter
if a great work of art was created by a person from background a, b or
c, either sex or any race. A great work of art is great, a priori, it
is supposed to have universal qualities.
Returning to Hughes: he pointed out that radical critics have so far eroded
qualitative judgement that "the idea of 'quality'"
is now considered the "enemy of justice...Quality, the argument goes,
is a plot. It is the result of a conspiracy of white males to marginalise
the work of other races and cultures." In these post-modern times
it is easy for qualitative judgement to be railroaded and condemned as
a tool of cultural domination, but the answer to problems of social injustice
does not lie in depreciating the value of the artworks of the past simply
because the societies which created them featured inequity. For all of
the wrongs of the Soviet Union and its horrendous cultural policy, at
least Lenin recognised, much to the distaste of the Procult (Proletarian
Culture) faction, that the culture of the past must be built upon, not
destroyed. The politically correct values of today's post-modern
critics suddenly do not seem very far removed from book burning.
As for the distinction between artist and viewer, well it may not be popular
to say it, especially in today's world of interactivity, the internet,
digital television and instant gratification, but it is pertinent to do
so - if we view a work of art, concentrate on it, contemplate it, think
about it, decide if we like it or not, then this is all of the interaction
which is needed. The idea of replacing a Caravaggio with a flashy kiosk
which tells us about the painting, the artist, his life and allows us
to 'move around it' in three dimensions (a la the Van Gogh in
a recent television advertisement for chip manufacturer Intel) is horrifying - and
you don't have to be a screaming reactionary like Brian Sewell to
think so.
Secondly, art can have a useful place in regeneration, urban or rural,
and I certainly do not want to deny artists some municipal commissions.
But is it really the answer to socio-economic problems? More often than
not, it seems that art is used to give an area ear-marked for gentrification
a quick boost, or as a sop to those whose futures have become bleak in
a nation with growing industrial unemployment which is now becoming increasingly
'post-welfare socialism'. To use art merely as a vehicle for
problem solving degrades it, if it becomes nothing more than a talking
point or an education session or even a pretty mural it begs the question,
why should we pay it any more attention than any of the other meaningless
images which we are barraged with? Why even ask ourselves if a work in
question is great art or not?
Labour's policy can seem to merely be an extension of the social
democratic position of yesteryear, certainly it has some clear continuities
such as the patronage of those least likely to come into contact with
art. But the differences are more striking than the similarities, the
policy of the past patronised the masses by trying to engender in them
an interest in that which was often viewed as too complex for them, today
no one gives a hoot about exposing people to big ideas. The focus has
shifted from the work of art to the context in which it is seen and if
the art can be stripped of all meaning, all the better. It is now seen
as more important to fill peoples lives with art, any art, than to offer
them the opportunity to see works of creative genius, and I use that word
knowing how it has become the ultimate heresy.
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