Page 17 - Studio International - January February 1975

within a repressive state to within the whose unique achievements have been never-never land. Taken there for a ride
area of general attention, the interests of acknowledged throughout the world, by those whose job should be to ensure
art and those of the state came into they have not had much effect. In this its survival in the land of the living.
public focus with undoubted country they carry little weight within the A harsh judgement, some may say, but
repercussions. The issue of the art clamour of competing interests of the I don't think so. For only a clear critical
schools, in this country, is another state. More often there is no voice heard insight into the circumstances that pre-
matter. I spent an evening with some at all, and when it is, the state knows condition the collective ethic of our work
colleagues a while ago, at the House of well that all is well within the state of art. can offer hope of renewal in the future.
Commons, urging the Education It sometimes barks, but seldom bites. For the full realization of our collective
Secretary, a veteran of political battles And generally, within the media too, will in art, there can be no collusion
fought and won, to review the threatened art has a circumscribed and cinderella with the attitudes that confine it. It is the
merger of the art schools with the kind of life. There has been in this way we live this commitment out in our
polytechnics. The response was one of country a tradition of criticism second to work and in our life which is the substance
unyielding resistance — we were advised none. The impassioned polemics argued of our art, and from which all hope of
to go away and organize ourselves more out in public in the last century and early change must flow. Each work, a mere
skilfully. But what of those, the most in this can, from our view, be a wonder point in time — a moment preserved . . . a
influential in the land, the custodians of to behold. In our time, with few link which connects each with the other,
our culture from within the Institutions ? exceptions, it has become the territory of the past with the future, lived our here in
If they also have raised their voices to the dilettante, the voyeur, the gossip and the present. There is no point in playful
protest against this proposal to destroy the funk. I am an ardent archivist and skirmishes with the established
by legislation the integrity and have files two yards wide — and a sorry institutions, then caving in when we're
independence of a system of education tale it does unfold — of art's retreat to given a nod, a wink, a pat on the back.
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