THE RISE OF THE
PHILISTINE
BY
BARRY VAN-ASTEN
It is hard to believe
that twenty-three years have passed since the publication in 1995 of my article
‘In a Space for Seeing’ in ‘The Celibate’, a Catholic periodical which happily
dwelt upon the priestly shelves between a well-thumbed copy of Lolita and a
much distressed edition of Sins of the City of the Plain before entering the
sacred space that is the back of the lavatory door. In my original piece I
espoused the glorious wonder that is the gallery space, that source of
inspiration since the time the great civilisations learnt to appreciate the
aesthetic beauty of art, the Ancient Greeks and Romans who upheld the essential
ethos that art should improve society and inspire those who adhere to the
aesthetic value and principles of the artist’s vision to create; the glory days
of the Salon in Paris of the eighteen-eighties where all the new young artists
jostled for space. Little has changed since those days for the artist still
wishes to be in vogue and talked about, yet the gallery space has become a
reverent hall of purity where a few delicate creations are displayed for the
appreciation of some dreadful bore who thinks they have not only the monopoly
on the critical expression of this or that piece but the clout to administer
such views to others who bow down and kiss the hem of his golden robe. I talked
about the lighting and the fundamental lay-out of the exhibition with emphasis
on the movement or ‘pace’ and the ‘mood’ of the space which invites the visitor
in certain directions, to linger here and to shuffle graciously in monk-like
fashion, intoning some prayer to the old masters there. I sang loudly over the
fate of many a contemporary art work and the psychological levels which were
being evoked… the sentimental dirges of youth are to blame and the drift of
years have rewarded me with a more cynical turn of mind. But what is new when
the flourish of those first romantic summers are hailed from the gods
themselves where we sit ‘neath lime trees sipping gin and tonic at the foot of Mount Olympus
Art has always been
seen as the realm of the bohemian, the outsider, the poor painter living hand
to mouth in his garret, wanting to be successful and well-known in the world of
art and waiting to be discovered by some rich patron. But where have all the
artistic bohemians gone? Where are the crazy eccentrics of the past? They have
not gone away; it is just that we do not notice them for we are all bohemian
eccentrics now! A curious pastime of mine which probably marks me out as a
candidate for the asylum rather than one who has entered the halloed halls of The artist of today, like the average grey politician or a member of the clergy, must be circumspect and spotless in their public life because any ripples may cause interference with their reputation and therefore the earning capacity of these greed-mongers who are looked upon as being beyond sin, but in their private life, the vile aspects of their vice and follies may overflow into many organic and inorganic recesses and resemble the last days of ancient Rome and Sodom and Gomorrah for nowadays in private anything goes! And why shouldn’t it? But where today are our Ruskins who you may remember refused to write the Life of Turner because of Turner’s relationship with women; a man, I might add who had so much soaked his brain with the sculptural image of Aphrodite as an ideal of woman that when it came to his wedding night he could not see beyond the pubic hair and bodily functions of his poor wife Effie and thus the marriage remained unconsummated; where today are the likes of Eric Gill who when he could be bothered removing himself from his daughter and his dog created some of the most sublime and powerful sculptures of the human form. It appears that the eccentric has now become the philistine, a holier-than-thou redeemer of corrupt morals always searching for sin, to misquote Wilde we are all living amongst the stars looking down into the gutters for the trash and detritus of humanity which flows endlessly, but that is all well and good, for art should never be respectable all the time, it must have its dangerous elements. We may not have our eccentrics but we have our modest, brash young (not so young now) British artists who are high on style and low on substance who still manage to cause some controversy in the art world, that old leprous, incestuous institution that still promotes these conceptual dullards like a drunken pontiff with too much power. The dangerous aspect of art should shock and explode like an angry parishioner hurling a string of four letter words at the priest during mass, or defecating in the confessional box. Whether we are speaking of dance, architecture, literature or coin collecting, the necessity to re-ignite the fuse and stand back is an accepted principle in the art of design and composition. There must be something with the power to rock the established order of things, something to spit upon the works of the past and call it to account and declare it as insignificant rubbish, but of course it is all an affectation and the old corpse never really rocks it just jolts and judders a little before returning to its deathly comfortable slumber. But through all this chaos we still have some place of refuge; we still have the Holy Trinity of art and aesthetics: Vasari, Pater and Gombrich – does anybody read them now I wonder!
When the passion has been spent and replaced with the desire for fame and fortune the art suffers and becomes insipid and the artist disengages from the ‘painterly process’ to become some squat Warholian guru affixing their mighty signature to endless replicas of the same dribbling rubbish hailed as the work of a genius like some author signing his book. And the critics damn and destroy in equal measure as the art aficionados applaud and weigh with gold the sum of their appreciation and the artist’s only reassurance is that the critics who damn him shall some day die, preferably in absolute agony, a victim of the magical universe or the will of the artist depending on what you believe, either way, justice shall prevail and be seen to be done or Lady Fate will play her hand – there is always the essential esoteric result which you can either accept or refuse to acknowledge, but I am skipping down another track and perhaps should return. Only the un-thinking poseur who wields art as some weapon in the face of his enemies take notice of critics for it provides him with ammunition and adds to his armour should the chinks, so often pasted over with dull artistic verbiage, start to show. He apes the narrow vision of critical analysis and scatters his bon-mots amongst his second and third hand views on art; these are the true philistines whose death would be sweet for they do not see beyond their own vulgarity and pretensions. Far be it from me to advocate the destruction of bad art, for who shall decide what is good and what is bad, but what better way is there for the common man and woman to show their opinion than by reverting to the violence of the mob? At least it would show that the people actually care about something and have an opinion! But then again, it would prove more effective if the opinionated critic who ridicules and attacks without remorse became a victim of his own dreamt-up damning evidence and was sentenced to death by critical insults! But the public does not have such power at their disposal otherwise the flamboyant indiscretions and misdemeanours of priests would not have gone unchallenged for so long and the streets would be lined with their dangling corpses, their cassocks blowing in the wind!
I ended my original article in a sort of naïve, wistful call to arms where I implored the gallery visitor to understand the space as a reflection of the self and to see beyond the transient, ephemeral nature into the permanence of the future and endeavour to increase one’s capacity for seeing through the subconscious language of art, perhaps it is still relevant to the screen-addicted, social-media hooked, surroundings oblivious generation that embraces technology and its devices as the new God and anything that does not scroll, light up, beep or plug into something is useless and of no consequence – not so long ago I saw a young girl, seven years of age in appearance being walked along the canal by her mother, surrounded by the horrific and confusing distractions of nature and so afraid of a gentle butterfly which came near her, to my utter horror, she attempted to stamp it out of existence! Perhaps there is not much hope after all and the philistine has already won the battle and taken over the world!
Gentle reader, if you should be journeying through the English landscape by rail and see some strange man angrily shaking his fist in your direction, think kindly of the poor imbecile for he does not rest upon the well-worn slopes of
