I was asked to give a talk tonight about whether public or private funding is better for the arts: the American model or the French model ? I had expected to be relatively even-handed about the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems because when I drew up a list of the pros and cons of private funding, the list was six of one and half a dozen of the other. But as I talked I realised that I have become an advocate of the benefits of private funding: more freedom; less regulation; more responsive to the consumer. Look at the transformation of the V&A over the last two decades. But in discussion the pendulum swung back. The metropolis can tap private funds, but not the regions. And the theatre, for example, is highly dependent on public funding for training, a diversified programme and innovation.
Tag Archives: London
Rubens and His Legacy
I missed the opening of the exhibition Rubens and His Legacy in Brussels last night, but took the opportunity of a quick day trip to see the exhibition which opens at the RA on January 24th. next year. The idea of the exhibition is to explore Rubens not just as an an artist, but his influence on other artists: Rubenism more than Rubens. The organisation is thematic, beginning with Violence: scenes of rape and rapine, including a big picture of Bulls Fighting by James Ward RA, a picture of Chevy Chase by Landseer, two Lion Hunts by Delacroix, right up to Lovis Corinth painting Hell. The references in the gallery texts are to filmmakers, as if Rubens was ‘the Quentin Tarantino of his day’, as interested in subject matter and propaganda as were Sergei Eisenstein and Leni Riefenstahl. Having done an exhibition at the National Gallery on Rubens in 2005, I’m glad that this is Rubens Plus, a way of connecting Rubens to modern audiences thematically.
Anselm Kiefer (4)
It will be interesting to see what the reaction is of the art world to our Kiefer exhibition. In talking last night to a party organised by BNP Paribas, who are sponsors of the exhibition, I was reminded that he came to public prominence in Britain in the early 1980s through the exhibition New Spirit in Painting held at the RA in 1981 which celebrated the return to subject matter in painting, and the belief that painting could and should occupy the realms of literature, philosophy and symbolism. This idea has become deeply unfashionable without it in any way affecting Kiefer’s public reputation. So, the question is whether or not Kiefer’s work will have any effect on a new generation of artists to explore, as he has, ideas of history and will respond to the profundity of the work.
Anselm Kiefer (3)
A busy day for our Kiefer exhibition. The private view last night was more crowded than I have ever known a private view, full of the European art crowd, young, rich and smart, all in their black suits. Kiefer himself arrived, immaculately lean, mainly for the dancing at the after party. Reviews have been wonderful, five stars in the Times, five stars in the Guardian. And the experience of the exhibition is overwhelming, full of a relatively small number of monumental works, tracing his career from its beginning and including works which are fresh from the studio. I strongly recommend seeing the exhibition in daylight because both the octagon, which contains a vast installation called Ages of the World, and the penultimate room, which contains seven grand works of wheatfields (they refer to the so-called Morgenthau Plan whereby Germany was to become farmland), are bathed in natural daylight.
Anselm Kiefer (2)
Yesterday, I had a first tour of the Anselm Kiefer exhibition with Kathleen Soriano, its curator. What came across was, first, the extent to which it is conceived as a paintings exhibition, not so much his work as an installation artist, in homage to the scale and history of Sidney Smirke’s grand exhibition galleries; second, the way in which it is suffused by imagery from the Catholic church, including palettes with angels’ wings; and, third, the extent to which it is informed by German woodcuts from his early ‘Attic’ series based on his studio in Hornsbach right through to the collage of woodcuts displayed as folding screens in the last room.
London Design Festival
Ben Evans took me on a whistlestop tour of those elements of the London Design Festival housed at the V&A. There is an astonishing and beautiful installation like a silver aeroplane wing by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby in the Raphael Cartoon Court:
I liked the irregularity of a line of blown glass jars by Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert:
Reimagining Mayfair
I have spent much of today thinking about, and chairing a set of presentations about, a project organised by the RA’s architecture programme and Architects’ Journal called Reimagining Mayfair. The idea of the project was to invite architectural practices to imagine how those parts of Mayfair which surround the RA could be reanimated and reinvigorated through an inventive use of art, new streetscape and architecture. One project by EPR with Kate Malone uses flags, umbrellas and hot-air balloons to draw attention to the area. Andrew Phillips has reimagined it as a Roman ruin. DK-CM used Pablo Bronstein to create the idea of a May Fair, animated by ephemeral pavilions. And Weston Williamson invited Yinka Shonibare to turn Burlington Gardens into a souk by the use of a batik awning. I hope the projects will encourage Westminster City Council to think creatively as to how the grid of streets round Burlington Gardens could be turned into a cultural neighbourhood like Chelsea in New York, by a) encouraging the art galleries to open on Saturday b) reducing the perennial traffic jam, and c) improving the quality of street surfaces and pavements.
National Portrait Gallery
It’s a long time since I’ve been back to the National Portrait Gallery and glided up the grandest escalator in western Europe to the restaurant overlooking the roofs of the National Gallery and down Whitehall. I remember the moment when Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones triumphantly described how they had persuaded a warder to let them out onto the roof, which I had never done, and discovered the greatest possible view of the institutions of British goverment to match the portraits below. I was always a bit sceptical that people would find their way up to the top of the building for a cup of tea, but I was quite wrong.
Virginia Woolf
A trip to the National Portrait Gallery to hear Catherine Goodman in conversation with Rachel Campbell-Johnston gave me an opportunity to see the exhibition of Virginia Woolf portraits, not a wholly easy subject because there are not so many of them, mostly photographs, the best of them (and best known) taken when she was 20 by George Beresford, supplemented by studio portraits by Man Ray in 1934 and Gisèle Freund in 1939. But Frances Spalding has done a good job in giving a sense of her life as a whole, her family and friends, all of them intellectual and intense, dominated by Virginia herself with her fragile beauty and thyroid eyes.
Jock McFadyen
We had a meeting and studio visit in Jock McFadyen‘s studio in darkest Hackney underneath the railway arches off Mare Street. It was wonderful to see his epic paintings of urban decay as seen from a car window in Dagenham. They belong to an imagery of the 1980s east London picturesque, alongside Patrick Wright, who once wrote a column called London Fields, and Iain Sinclair, the poet of the A13. I also like and admire Jock’s meditations on the theme of Walter Sickert, inspired by an exhibition at Somerset House and updated for the 21st. century.
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