Page 16 - Studio International - January February 1975

The Royal Academy dinner, Sir Winston Churchill
So what do we do — artists and others — kind of Madison Avenue Kim Philby speaking
who sense art's role in the middle ground living out a life of stealth in the heart of
knowing that something is wrong. media land is a melancholy one. And defence, all cultural life suffers, and the
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Norman Mailer said somewhere that distant from the view that still at times self nearly dies in the cold'. Is it this
writers in New York sit around all day, prevails here that art, far from being which leaves little capacity here for
waiting to hear bad news about each anything to do with politics, is just a kind renewal and regeneration ? For the
other. But somewhere else, he spelt out a of hobby that some have the good fortune notion that there is no natural place for
kind of rambling scenario for acting upon to be able to do all of the time. The idea art within the life-pulse of the state has,
their disaffection: 'If one is a leftist or a of art as an instrument of change in a way, become an axiom, despite some
radical', he said, 'if a man becomes an involving a lifetime of solitude and token excursions of each to the territory
anarchist, a hipster, some kind of proto- single-mindedness is not one that we take of the other. The way the institutions
communist, a rebel, a wild reactionary, I to willingly. We seem to have the vigour, sometimes operate does not offer too
don't care what. If he's someone who's the toughness and the insight to sustain a much hope of change. I can think of
got a sense that the world is wrong and big idea for a little moment only, and nowhere else, for example, that sustains
he's more or less right, that there are then it's gone. As artists, our collective the idea of dynastic succession even in
certain lives he feels are true . . . worth will has from time to time raised such a such distant and far-flung territory as the
more than the oppressive compromises clamour that countless theses are institutions of art, as we do. It is not often
he sees before him every day, that he feels written about these moments. But they that opportunity for change within
that the world has got to be changed or pass, the will dissipated and spent. administration occurs at all. But ten
is going to sink into one disaster or Events leave them stranded, times or so in the last ten years the status
another . . . well if he thinks all these anachronisms to be tied up later as quo survived intact, the survival of a line
things, the thing to do, if he wants nostalgia gives a profile to their time. But ensured, and the traditions that it
political action, is not to look for revival time is here again, and nostalgia embodies. I am reminded, I don't know
organizations which he can join . . . but isn't what it used to be. The Hayward why, of a friend of mine who used most
rather to devote his life to working show, a put-up by the state that succeeds devoutly to believe that Harold
subtly, silently, steelfully against the only in putting down its art is a mournful Macmillan and his wife Lady Dorothy
state. And there's one best way he can echo from the past. were in fact one and the same person.
do that', Mailer continues, 'he can . . . An event, above all, that confirms to `Have you ever seen', he would demand,
bore from within. He shouldn't look to those who wish us ill, that we are indeed `a photograph of them together ?' The
form a sect or cell, he should do it our own worst enemies. A symbol of the thought just comes to mind. Art has its
alone . . . It's better to work alone, trusting spirit of diffidence and uncertainty that politicians too, and if all of them were
no one, just working . . . not to sabotage troubles a threatened culture, diminishing photographed together, would there not,
so much as to shift and to turn and to its vision and adaptive capacity. on the exposure, perhaps be a single
confuse . . . and hold a mirror to its guilt, grey composite figure ? Room enough in
keep the light in its eye. The way . . . is to Writing of 'fear', one writer says : one for the spirit of them all ?
look for a job in the heart of the enemy. `What we see . . . is loss of adaptability, a Equally there is little room for art
Few of us,' he adds, 'are strong enough to tendency to become frozen in unchanging within the political life of the state, its
live alone in enemy territory, but it is patterns of behaviour and thought . . . voice is seldom heard, though there are
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work which must be done'. Mailer was When fear penetrates a culture and exceptions sometimes. The recent
referring of course to the mass-media in becomes a driving force, the culture decision by the Director of the Tate not
America. The notion of each man as a freezes in fixed attitudes of attack and to go to Moscow brought the status of art
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