Book Review

Art for All?  Their Policies and our Culture
Mark Wallinger and Mary Warnock, eds.
Peer, 2000.
ISBN  0-9539772-0-X

Art for All? is a fascinating, frequently scathing compendium of texts, images, and artistic interventions relating to state subsidy of the arts, the role of the artist, and the instrumental uses to which art is put - and by which it is measured - according to the priorities of the current UK Labour Government.  The book is fascinating because of the high level of debate within, but also because it rails against the practices of the very organizations that would generally support the artist contributors.  The Arts Council of England is the primary target, and Art for All? is a full-frontal attack - although 'the other side' is represented, too, if not necessarily ex cathedra.

The publisher/funder of the work is The Peer Trust, an independent charitable organization founded in 1998 and the same organization that the British Council assisted in its presentation of Mike Nelson's installation at the Venice Biennale.  Peer is primarily a commissioning rather than a funding body, and its mission is to foster critical debate and facilitate projects for which institutional support might otherwise be difficult to secure (from the British Council, Arts Council of England, etc.).  Art for All? fits the bill brilliantly.  Appropriately, the book launch was accompanied by a public debate at Shoreditch Town Hall this past January, the sequel to a panel discussion held at the RSA last November.

Art for All? is made up of two sections, the first comprised of contributions by diverse contemporary critics, artists, and policy makers.  The second provides an historical overview via key texts and extracts - from John Maynard Keynes' 1945 reflections on the future purpose of the Arts Council, to Raymond Williams' 1979 analysis of the failure of the Council's purported 'intermediary' distribution system, to Chris Smith's utopian-utilitarian  "A Vision for the Arts", a 1997 speech at the Royal Academy that was republished in his 1998 Creative Britain. 

A vivid and poetic curatorial intelligence is in evidence throughout the book - kudos to Warnock and Wallinger.  Chris Smith's late 'historical' text, for example, ends with reference to Hazlitt who, writing of the Fine Arts, says "They do not furnish us with food or raiment, it is true: but they do please the eye, they haunt the imagination, they solace the heart.  If after that you ask the question, Cui bono?  There is no answer to be returned."  On the following page - the last piece of the book - appears Gilbert and George's 1969 Postal Sculpture, a postcard bearing the slogan "Art for All" at top and the statement 'All my life I give you nothing and still you ask for more.'  The complaints of today's artists remain very much the same thirty years later, but Chris Smith's erudite conclusion seems rather windy in light of the recent policy that gave rise to this book. 

Thanks are also due to designer Stuart Smith, whose typographical variations and layout of images and texts, inspired by Wyndham Lewis' Blast, add both visual interest and 'between the lines' meaning.  Chris Smith and the DCMS withheld one of his texts and substituted another late in production with the requirement that it be printed in full.  A standard-size footnote provides reference to the originally desired material and apologizes for the Lilliputian typography of Smith's text, which is squeezed into the allotted two-pages above.  Preceding Smith's two-page lecture is an amusing postcard from Bob and Roberta Smith, the front and verso of which are each placed in the center of an otherwise blank page.  There is a seriousness of purpose in such egalitarian juxtapositions. 

Debate about public funding and the instrumental use of the arts is longstanding, but the explicit prioritization of their extrinsic values in recent policy and under the aegis of 'anti-elitism', 'accessibility', and the 'artist's responsibility' (all priorities in the US, too) were the raison d'être for the volume.  The work presented in the first section ranges from the whimsical (the aforementioned Bob and Roberta Smith), to the naïve (an anti-institutional plea by the artist duo BANK), to the ridiculous (Graham Higgin's proposal for revamping the Lottery distribution system), to the politic proposals of the great and the good (Lords Bragg, Gibson, Freyberg, McIntosh), to a number of direct hits at funders' literalism:  David Bartholemew's "The Proposed Sculpture" (an extensively debated sculptural proposal the appearance of which we never learn); a funding application for Martin Creed's Work No. 203 - Portico Project (shoed in to the 'community access' and participation requirements); a 5 September 2000 attendance chart from South London Art Gallery tallying 'black' and 'white' visitors (which more than anything brings perversely to mind the "colored" and "white" drinking fountains of the segregated South, at least for the American reader). 

Much of this collection, however, is impressive critical thinking - from Peer Trustee Andrew Brighton's revealing comparison of New Labour and Soviet Socialist Realist rhetoric and policy to Jean Fisher's update of Frankfurt School thinking to Mark Wallinger's rehearsal of developments in contemporary art and curatorial practice over the last fifteen years.  There are many such contributions in this engaging cornucopia.    

Given the 'civilizing' role of the arts historically and contemporary pleas in both the UK and the US for the arts to lead the way in supporting democratic debate, public dialogue, and the renewal of citizenship, perhaps the most succinct and cogent remarks are those of artist David Batchelor.  Taken to task by François Matarasso for his 1995 article "Unpopular Culture" on the grounds that artists "who refuse to recognize any ethical, political and social ties of responsibility implicitly ally themselves with anti-democratic ideologies in which value. is determined by a self selecting group and imposed on the rest," Batchelor replies:

In an interview, the artist Don Judd once said:  'Of course artists should oppose US involvement in Nicaragua. just as dentists should.' To my mind, this says pretty much everything that needs to be said on the subject of the political responsibilities of artists.  It says everyone has responsibilities as a citizen, but that these are independent of one's responsibilities as an artist.  It say that artists do not have a special relationship with politics that gives them greater or fewer responsibilities as citizens than anyone else.  It also implies that a confusion of different responsibilities does nothing very much for art or politics.

Joe Hill

jhill@aeaconsulting.com

AEA Consulting LLC

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