Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

ART OR IDEOLOGY?

Looking for paintings to consider, appreciate, enjoy, or be challenged, I walk into an art gallery with high hopes. I have been in this gallery many times over the years, and have strong memories of admiring the works of many artists, New Zealanders or not New Zealanders: those canvases that really say something to me – abstract or representative, portrait or landscape or seascape or domestic scene or crowd scene, historical or modern, confronting or soothing, of current styles or of styles now discarded, of this century or of earlier centuries. I look forward to seeing for myself what the paintings have to say, of relating to them, of admiring the structure of a painting, of how it is devised, of deciding how it does or does not connect with objective reality, of understanding how it creates its own reality, of understanding how derivative or original the painting is and whether it really matters because a derivative painting can be an absorbing painting in its own right. I do not treat paintings as puzzles. I treat them as works to be considered, absorbed, enjoyed and interpreted in my own terms. I hope that others will interpret them in their own terms.

But here’s the rub. After viewing a current “exhibition”, a collection of mediocre daubs, I find myself thwarted at every turn. I am not permitted to appreciate and interpret paintings for myself. Instead, placards tell me, often at length, what I am supposed to think about them. Instead of allowing the paintings to speak for themselves, we have a room of “themes” wherein every painting, old or new, is interpreted in sexual terms, be the painting ancient or modern, secular or religious, probably revealing the obsessions of the people who wrote the placards. An ideology is being pushed here, not an appreciation of art. And in the process many paintings are verbally sneered at by the placards or belittled and presented as something that we should not enjoy… or we’re hopelessly out of touch if we do.

This sort of verbose, ideologically-driven signalling is not unique to New Zealand. It is becoming a plague in the galleries of many countries as curators and their minions set about imposing their ideas on the art on display. The tone is bullying and the assumption patronising. People who enter the gallery are assumed to be infantile and incapable of making their own judgements on works of art.

 

So what information should ideally be attached to paintings on display in an art gallery? I suggest all that is required is the artist’s name, the dates of the artist’s birth [or birth and death if the artist is deceased], the country of origin of the artist and the painting with perhaps a very brief note on what “school” the artist belonged to. Possibly there could be a sentence or so on the circumstances in which the artist painted, or a sentence explaining a mythic or historical image.  In other words, something making no judgement on the work – for surely viewers will be aware that the painting has some merit or it wouldn’t be hung in the gallery in the first place. Otherwise, we are mired in the in the modish ideological placards that hector you about what you should think.

 

Footnote: For the record, nine years ago on this blog, I wrote a similar think-piece, called You Will Appreciate This Painting as You are Told, but it dealt with the case of one single specific painting.