i was at a talk given by ken livingstone the other night. ostensibly it was about art, mostly it was about how ken was a nice chap and should be mayor of london, and nothing wrong with that. it was the first time that i have seen ken live - he is a comfortable public speaker who gets his point across very well and knows how to keep an audience listening. there is a nice level of self-deprecating humour mixed in the serious political message.
as with most of these sorts of 'self-interested' meetings there is a level of bollocks (to use a word ken is fond of) spoken. so you have the argument that art should not be elitist - but everyone was quick to deride the music/tv of simon cowell or the movies of large hollywood studios. or that artists are there to challenge and, if needs be offend, though not if that challenge/offensive is towards a group that needs to be 'protected'. art should be free of control or censorship but should be funded by the state (not by big corporations because they are bad, they are very bad, no in fact they are scum - until they start buying my work).
the contradictions didn't seem to bother people there.
mr. livingstone was making a point about access to art and ethnic miniorities he did it in terms of economic prosperit/security. his wider point was that when we are comfortable and secure we are more likely to be progressive in our outlook. when we are trying to make ends meet we just concentrate on the necessities (it is only when we have nothing to lose that we become revolutionary). so he went on because the black community is very poor art is not high on the list of priorities. i guess it depends on how you define art (and mr. livingstone had a very wide definition), but it is true go to any major art gallery in london and the proportion of ethnic faces you see is small. go to the smaller commercial galleries and seeing an ethnic gallery goer is rarer than seeing a decent piece of work by bob and roberta smith.
yet poverty can't be held up as the cause as the national gallery, the national portrait gallery, tate modern and tate britain are free to enter and there are enough works in them all to keep people busy for quite awhile.
it may just be that some people depending on their age or cultural background are just not interested in gallery art. or it may just be that they are not aware that this stuff is there and it is free to them to go and view.
mr. livingstone said he was keen to keep museums and galleries in london free to enter. yay him.
yet there was an animator in the audience who wanted to know what ken was going to do for their animation company. the question i wanted to ask was: why should anyone do anything to help your company? most of us who work in the more mundane world of offices don't get subsidies to do the things we like - so i am not sure that just because you can't make an adequate living (though the expensive blinged branded jeans the questioner was wearing implied they were not short of a bob or two) doing the job you have decided is arty enough for you that you should be able to dip into the public purse.
subsidy is good if a mass of people can appreciate or enjoy the benefits of it.
subsidy is a waste of money if it just means a minority group gets to enjoy a minority interest art form while the rest of us scratch our heads and look on.
on the one hand we hear about the democratisation of creativity due to the internet - we can all be singers, dancers, actors, directors, artists now - the web frees us. on the other hand we are still being told that it only matters when it is in the 'defined' space for it.
the problem is artists want to be 'different' from the rest of us - they are elitists because only they have the vision to turn the squiggles or blurred images into art, when the rest of us do it is is just doodling or taking snaps. at the same time artists want to be of the people - they want us to accept that they speak to us through shared emotions and experiences that really we are the same just they have found a way to express what we all feel.
like any club the creative world wants to exlude the mass - it develops its own language and if you do not understand that language you are not part of the fraternity. woe betide anyone who just happens to say something along the lines of 'i don't know much about art but i know what i like' because it isn't about what you like it is about using polysyllabic words and dense concepts to explain why it is worthy of attention.
yet none of this was why i started writing this - it has been one long digression.
one of ken's techniques is to appear to be one of the people. we are just alike me and him.
he was keen to piont out that politics was not exciting, that is was really just a series of long dull meetings going over the minutia of plans. how we all giggled to discover that politicians had to do mundane work like the rest of us.
ken: just like us.
ken who has a pedestrian life: just like you and i.
except he undercut it a little by his regular references to his trips to shanghai and beijing as guest of the chinese government.
or how he had just finished his autobiography. something very few of us will ever do.
or how his autobiography had been offered up in a bidding war. something that is going to happen to even fewer of us (though rumour has it that the 'good english society' is getting a fund together in pay jay to stop writing a hobbit's journal).
still ken is a good speaker, isn't a tory and isn't boris so he should be the next mayor of london and you can sign up for his campaign website here. go on you know it makes sense.
as with most of these sorts of 'self-interested' meetings there is a level of bollocks (to use a word ken is fond of) spoken. so you have the argument that art should not be elitist - but everyone was quick to deride the music/tv of simon cowell or the movies of large hollywood studios. or that artists are there to challenge and, if needs be offend, though not if that challenge/offensive is towards a group that needs to be 'protected'. art should be free of control or censorship but should be funded by the state (not by big corporations because they are bad, they are very bad, no in fact they are scum - until they start buying my work).
the contradictions didn't seem to bother people there.
mr. livingstone was making a point about access to art and ethnic miniorities he did it in terms of economic prosperit/security. his wider point was that when we are comfortable and secure we are more likely to be progressive in our outlook. when we are trying to make ends meet we just concentrate on the necessities (it is only when we have nothing to lose that we become revolutionary). so he went on because the black community is very poor art is not high on the list of priorities. i guess it depends on how you define art (and mr. livingstone had a very wide definition), but it is true go to any major art gallery in london and the proportion of ethnic faces you see is small. go to the smaller commercial galleries and seeing an ethnic gallery goer is rarer than seeing a decent piece of work by bob and roberta smith.
yet poverty can't be held up as the cause as the national gallery, the national portrait gallery, tate modern and tate britain are free to enter and there are enough works in them all to keep people busy for quite awhile.
it may just be that some people depending on their age or cultural background are just not interested in gallery art. or it may just be that they are not aware that this stuff is there and it is free to them to go and view.
mr. livingstone said he was keen to keep museums and galleries in london free to enter. yay him.
yet there was an animator in the audience who wanted to know what ken was going to do for their animation company. the question i wanted to ask was: why should anyone do anything to help your company? most of us who work in the more mundane world of offices don't get subsidies to do the things we like - so i am not sure that just because you can't make an adequate living (though the expensive blinged branded jeans the questioner was wearing implied they were not short of a bob or two) doing the job you have decided is arty enough for you that you should be able to dip into the public purse.
subsidy is good if a mass of people can appreciate or enjoy the benefits of it.
subsidy is a waste of money if it just means a minority group gets to enjoy a minority interest art form while the rest of us scratch our heads and look on.
on the one hand we hear about the democratisation of creativity due to the internet - we can all be singers, dancers, actors, directors, artists now - the web frees us. on the other hand we are still being told that it only matters when it is in the 'defined' space for it.
the problem is artists want to be 'different' from the rest of us - they are elitists because only they have the vision to turn the squiggles or blurred images into art, when the rest of us do it is is just doodling or taking snaps. at the same time artists want to be of the people - they want us to accept that they speak to us through shared emotions and experiences that really we are the same just they have found a way to express what we all feel.
like any club the creative world wants to exlude the mass - it develops its own language and if you do not understand that language you are not part of the fraternity. woe betide anyone who just happens to say something along the lines of 'i don't know much about art but i know what i like' because it isn't about what you like it is about using polysyllabic words and dense concepts to explain why it is worthy of attention.
yet none of this was why i started writing this - it has been one long digression.
one of ken's techniques is to appear to be one of the people. we are just alike me and him.
he was keen to piont out that politics was not exciting, that is was really just a series of long dull meetings going over the minutia of plans. how we all giggled to discover that politicians had to do mundane work like the rest of us.
ken: just like us.
ken who has a pedestrian life: just like you and i.
except he undercut it a little by his regular references to his trips to shanghai and beijing as guest of the chinese government.
or how he had just finished his autobiography. something very few of us will ever do.
or how his autobiography had been offered up in a bidding war. something that is going to happen to even fewer of us (though rumour has it that the 'good english society' is getting a fund together in pay jay to stop writing a hobbit's journal).
still ken is a good speaker, isn't a tory and isn't boris so he should be the next mayor of london and you can sign up for his campaign website here. go on you know it makes sense.
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