The Times
April 2, 2008
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent



Theatreland will have to give up its bedroom secrets in the quest for funding, under new Arts Council requirements. Organisations applying for grants are being asked to state how many board members are bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, lesbian or whose inclinations are “not known”.

Audrey Roy, the director of grants, said that the council needed to understand who its audience was and to whom its funding was going. “We see diversity as broader than race, ethnicity, faith and disability,” she said. Question 22 of the Grants for the Arts forms, relating to sexual orientation, was not compulsory, she added, although the form states that it must be answered.

The question caused anger and bemusement among leading figures of the arts world yesterday. The Oscar-nominated actor Sir Ian McKellen, who is openly gay, said: “It sounds extraordinary. It shouldn’t be on a form. It’s quite inappropriate.”

Vanessa Redgrave, the actress and human rights campaigner, said: “Everyone should put down ‘trisexual’, whoever you are. Britain has become the world’s leading population of trisexuals.”

Michael Frayn, the author of the farce Noises Off, suggested boxes to “specify how many members are longsighted or shortsighted, how many wear black socks or brown socks”.

Christopher Hampton, whose adaptation of God of Carnage is showing in the West End, said: “It’s bureaucracy and political correctness gone mad.”

The application form notes that the question is for government purposes only and will not enter into the grant decision, but that claim was contradicted by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Its spokesman said: “We appreciate that, as a responsible public body they need to monitor their overall grant-making programmes. But it is absolutely not the case that sexual orientation monitoring is a government requirement.”

Condemnation of the question spanned the arts. Julian Spalding, the former director of galleries and museums in Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow, said: “I can’t see what relevance it’s got. It’s a horrible invasion into one’s personal and private life.” He added: “What they like to do in bed is not the Arts Council’s business.”

Maggi Hambling, the painter who describes herself as “queer”, said: “It’s insidious, insulting and quite outrageous for the Arts Council to consider anyone’s sexual orientation of any kind to be their business. It appears to be somewhat Hitlerian in its suggestion that grants will be given if, among the applicants, there is a nice smattering of dykes and queers.”

Nicolas Kent, the artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre in London, said: “This is ridiculous. It has no relevance. The Arts Council is prone to huge overregulation, as seems to be the case with the whole of society. But the Arts Council has caught it very badly. They should advance the arts instead of ticking every box they invent.”

Referring to the recent protest over the council’s decision to cut the grants to prominent companies, Simon Callow, the gay actor, said: “The Arts Council comedy continues. What is difficult is to divine to what conceivable use they could put this information. I love the presence of a category for the Not Known — a despicable heresy, surely, in 2008?”

Almost a year ago James Purnell, then the Culture Secretary, vowed to relieve arts organisations of the burden of meeting “crude targets” as a condition of funding. Yet the Arts Council’s application form also asks about ethnic backgrounds.

The council said that the answers were confidential and exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act. It said that it does not issue guidelines on how to persuade board members to reveal details of their sex lives.




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英国の大手新聞は、この日を忘れることはありません。
今日こそはとこぞって、どの新聞もあの手この手で攻めてきます。



Calling Carla: Brown enlists first lady to give Britain style
Continental good taste and sophistication should be a birthright for all, says PM

Avril de Poisson
The Guardian, Tuesday April 1 2008

About this article
This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday April 01 2008 on p5 of the UK news section. It was last updated at 11:52 on April 01 2008.
Carla Bruni april fools day montage




Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the first lady of France, has been appointed by Gordon Brown to spearhead a government initiative aimed at injecting more style and glamour into British national life, the Guardian has learned.

Moving rapidly to capitalise on the national explosion of Carlamania, which saw Bruni-Sarkozy heralded as a new Princess Diana during the French state visit to the UK last week, Brown will formally announce the latest addition to his "government of all the talents" in a speech tomorrow at the Institut Français in South Kensington, London.

For too long, he will say, Britain has suffered an inferiority complex with regard to mainland European countries such as France and Italy, whose citizens are seen as effortlessly stylish and sophisticated.

"I want a Britain, now and in the future, where good taste and sophistication are the birthright of the many, not the privilege of an elite, whether in fashion, in food and drink, or in cultural pursuits," Brown will say. To launch the scheme, the Italian-born Bruni-Sarkozy, 40, will relocate to London for three months, starting in June, according to one Brown aide. She is expected to commute back to Paris via Eurostar for French state engagements involving her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"At first, when it became clear she was going to upstage [Sarkozy] during the state visit, we got a bit worried about it all looking a bit frivolous," the aide said. "But it was during the banquet at the Guildhall that the prime minister had his eureka moment. Yes, she charmed him. But the key point is that he is committed to putting that charm in the service of a better Britain."

Bruni-Sarkozy will focus initially on improving the UK's dress sense and cuisine. The aide joked that she would steer clear, for the moment, of the other popular British assumption about the French and Italians - that they have more exciting sex lives.

She is understood already to have spoken to the chief executive of Marks & Spencer, Stuart Rose, to discuss the launch of an affordable range of high-street designs inspired by the demure tailored grey suits that won her so much acclaim during last week's visit. They were created for Dior by the British designer John Galliano, who has signed up as a supporter of Brown's plan. The M&S versions will be roomier, and may incorporate several more practical features, such as zip-up pockets and mobile phone holders.

Bruni-Sarkozy has also expressed an interest in meeting Jamie Oliver to develop plans to introduce a more "continental" approach to eating and drinking, which could see British parents encouraged to serve small volumes of red wine with meals to children as young as seven or eight.

To coincide with the prime minister's announcement, the thinktank Demos will release a report this week arguing that the answer to a wide swath of social and economic problems facing Britain may lie in adopting a more French approach.

"The missing ingredient in the UK's approach to a range of pressing policy challenges is straightforward: it is savoir-faire," the report's authors said in a press release.

The study concludes that numerous national problems - including the decline of Britain's railway infrastructure, the collapse of Northern Rock, and the scourge of binge drinking - could all have been more successfully addressed had politicians and bureaucrats demonstrated "a certain je ne sais quoi".

The elation that greeted Bruni-Sarkozy in the UK last week, including rapturous newspaper and television coverage, frequently threatened to sideline the president, who unleased a tirade against one French journalist who asked him if she was stealing his limelight. But Bruni-Sarkozy herself enjoyed the state visit enormously, an Elysee spokesman said yesterday.

"The riotous scenes that greeted her wherever she went made her feel right at home, just as if she were in France," he said.

French diplomats in London expressed delight at the apparent rekindling of the often chilly relationship between the two nations. "This week has been so wonderful - such a change from the usual British media coverage of France and the French, which is based on a handful of ill-founded stereotypes," said Jean-Claude Forestier, assistant attache for cultural affairs at the French embassy in London. "It has been crazy here, with all the international media enquiries about Carla.

We have been working absolutely round the clock, from 9am to 3pm, just to
keep up."

---

The Top 10 Historical Hoaxers
If the pranksters among you need some inspiration for April Fools' day, look no further than this list of the most successful hoaxers from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Michael Moran, The Times

最近、英国では「Banksy（バンクシー）」によるアートのような落書き、落書きのようなアートが注目を集めています。通常、落書きが建物にあると不動産価値も下がり、すぐに消されたり、落書きを行ったものはvandalism（公共物汚損や破壊）などで厳しく罰せられます。

が、Banksyはその逆で、今や「落書き」を超えた扱いを受けています。オークションに出れば、とんでもない額で落札され、新しい「作品」がみつかればメディアがここぞと押し掛け、観光客もいく。「作品」は時にコミカルで、時にシニカル。政治風刺のような一面もあります。でも、そのartistsが一体誰なのか…、yet still in shadows!!



最近のニュース面より

Underground art: how Banksy gave Swiss embassy an image makeover
Mark Brown, arts correspondent
Guardian, Friday February 29 2008
Switzerland's ambassador knew his country had an image problem. It was in the headlines for the wrong reasons, with the banks being accused of hanging on to Nazi gold, and he wanted to do something positive. So Bruno Spinner invited some young graffiti artists into the embassy's underground car park and let them do what they wanted.


‘Banksy’s ideas have the value of a joke’
Matthew Collings
28 January 2008 The Times
The respect given to ‘street art’ is a measure of how puerile and idiotic contemporary art has become. The auction? You can be the owner of Banksy’s Laugh Now, in stencil paint. A work by Banksy sold at auction for 288,000 last April.



Banksy wall art could top 200k on eBay internet auction
Simon Crerar
14 January 2008 Times Online
A wall adorned with a painting by elusive graffiti artist Banksy looks set to fetch more than £200,000 on eBay.


Let us spray: Banksy hits Bethlehem
Claire Frenkel
03 December 2007 The Times
The “guerrilla artist” Banksy has helped to transform the security barrier that surrounds the town with more than a dozen satirical images painted, plastered and sprayed on to the 8m-high (26ft) concrete. The work winds a trail to the heart of the city at Manger Square, where more than a dozen pieces are housed directly across from the Church of the Nativity.



Banksy brings graffiti art into auction room
Richard Brooks
25 November 2007 The Sunday Times
Graffiti is to complete its journey from urban eyesore to saleroom respectability with the world’s first auction devoted entirely to “street” art. Although no single work in the sale is expected to reach these prices, one Banksy, a stencil spray painting on canvas, is estimated at £60,000 and a screen print of Kate Moss is priced at up to £30,000.

---

How Banksy turned the wry wit of his home town into million-dollar art.
By Lindsay Baker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 28/03/2008



There's one Banksy mural that stands out when you visit Bristol, home town of the guerrilla artist who has become an art-world phenomenon. The title of the piece is The Mild Mild West and it depicts a huge, smiling teddy bear with a Molotov cocktail in his paw, facing three policemen holding up riot shields.


"People here are fond of that particular piece," says Steve Wright, author of a new illustrated book, Banksy's Bristol: Home Sweet Home. "Maybe because it's a kind of comment on an aspect of the Bristolian character - a laid-back cider-drinking hippy who can nevertheless be roused into action. Fluffy but defiant."

It's not just Banksy who is getting Bristol noticed at the moment. This year sees the release of new albums by a number of Bristol bands who first came to prominence in the mid-Nineties - Portishead, Tricky and Tricky's former collaborator Martina Topley Bird. It also looks like being an unusually busy year for Massive Attack, who will also release an album as well as curating the Meltdown festival on London's Southbank and playing at Glastonbury. Much of the music made in the Nineties by these bands has lasted particularly well. The Bristol creative scene, it would seem, was more than just a passing moment.

At a Sotheby's New York charity auction in February, a record $1.9 million was achieved for a Banksy image of a cleaning lady spray-painted on top of a Damien Hirst spot painting. The previous record for a Banksy piece was £330,000. His art is collected by pop stars, actors (among them Angelina Jolie) and hedge funders. For someone who cultivates anonymity (he is famously elusive), Banksy has quite a profile.

Although clearly an original talent, he is also very much a product of the environment he grew up in, as Wright explores in his book. "Fluffy but defiant" seems as good a description as any of the typical Bristol mindset.
advertisement

Undeniably, there's something about the city of Bristol. Geographically cut off from the North/South power-and-money axis, the only city for miles in the rugged West Country, Bristol sits in splendid isolation, with its own distinctive view of the world and a peculiarly strong sense of its own humour and identity. Many who study there don't ever leave - the city has unusually high graduate retention.

Although I did eventually leave the city, I was a student there in the mid-to-late Eighties. Then we frequented clubs such as the Dug Out and the Tropic, and attended countless impromptu parties in unlikely venues thrown by the Wild Bunch sound system who later became Massive Attack.

It always felt a very relaxed place to be - sometimes too relaxed (it has even been referred to as the "graveyard of ambition": it is easy to while away days, weeks, even months there achieving very little). But it also seemed a harmonious place, not only a city where locals and students mixed well, but also a racially integrated one.

Racial matters have always carried a historical resonance in Bristol, a city made affluent on the profits of tobacco and slave-trading. Street names such as Blackboy Hill and Whiteladies Road remain as reminders.

"It's a past that we feel equivocal about," says Steve Wright. "It's a double-edged thing. There are the beautiful Georgian terraces that we love, but they were built on the profits of slavery. It's our shady past, and Bristolians are a bit self-effacing, a bit ashamed of it and are quite keen to layer new associations on top of it. There's always been a defiant, subversive streak in Bristol, and Banksy's work is very much in that tradition."

His works showing two kissing policemen, for instance, or his rioter poised to throw a bunch of flowers as if it were a bomb, are typical of his style - subversive, yet always with a touch of humanity and wry humour. As the artist himself has put it: "I want to show that money hasn't crushed the humanity out of everything."

In the 1950s and '60s immigrants from the West Indies were encouraged to come to Bristol to live and work, and many settled around the areas of St Paul's and Montpelier. Nightlife there took off in the Seventies, with blues clubs and all-night shebeens soon popping up (St Paul's festival is still an annual summer event, mellow and relaxed, like a smaller, less frenetic Notting Hill carnival). In 1980, following a police raid on the popular Black and White Café, the St Paul's riots erupted, the first of the decade's civil disturbances.

Around this time, the Bristol underground scene was steeped in punk and reggae influences, and soon embraced hip-hop - and with it the colourful New York-style lettering at the most creative end of the graffiti art spectrum.


Continued
Next page

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

Telegraph
Andrew Pierce
Last Updated: 2:15am GMT 26/03/2008


The Royal Opera House has been accused of dumbing down by using Tesco's favourite market research company to try to generate younger audiences.

A performance of the popular opera, Carmen, at the Royal Opera House
A performance of the popular opera, Carmen, at the Royal Opera House

Opera magazine, the bible of the industry, has accused Tony Hall, the venue's chief executive, of "having a mid-life crisis" in his attempt to reach out to a new "cool crowd".

The magazine said the decision to devise a programme of events based on market research by Dunnhumby, a consultancy best known for its demographic analysis of Tesco Clubcard customers, was misguided.

In a thundering editorial, the magazine said: "The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, turns 150 this year. It is ageing well, thanks not least to refurbishment a decade ago. That's more than can be said of some of its policy-makers, currently showing classic signs of mid-life crisis and going to unseemly lengths to get younger flesh on its seats."

The editorial, written by John Allison, the magazine's editor and an opera critic for The Sunday Telegraph, mocked Mr Hall, 62, for stating in his marketing material: "We want to get that buzzy, cool crowd to come in."

"Quite apart from the sad spectacle of a 50-something deciding that 30 is the height of cool, Hall is demonstrating a more fundamental crisis of confidence and a lack of belief in the art forms his institution should be serving" it added.


Tony Hall, the chief executive of the Royal Opera House
Tony Hall, the chief executive
of the Royal Opera House


The magazine said Dunnhumby had reached the conclusion that the opera house appealed to opera and ballet lovers but not to professionals in their 20s and 30s.

"There - the secret you'd never have guessed is out!" gushed the editorial. "In direct response to these supermarket whizzes, the opera house is putting on a three-day festival featuring 'the coolest names in town'."

These "names" include Julian Opie, who illustrated a Blur album cover; Scanner, a conceptual artist and musician who will be putting on a club night at the venue; and the performance group, Blast Theory, who will be organising digital games.

Max Loppert, a former opera critic of the Financial Times, also attacked the marketing strategy, particularly the venue's schedule booklets: "Adorning a picture of Antonio Pappano [the conductor] I read in disbelief: 'ELEMENTAL FORCE. Meet Tony. One Of The Most Electric Men In Opera. Only Silver Conducts Better. But It Can't Give A Performance Of Pure Gold. This cover seems to me a threefold affront: to a serious artistic institution, to those of us who have admired and supported its work … and to the image of the conductor as a serious artist."


The Royal Opera House was unavailable for comment.



Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 931 2921 or email syndication@telegraph.co.uk

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

イヤでも何でも、歳月の流れには叶わず、22日をもって、25歳になりました。
この状態で、この無成長っぷりで25歳でいいのか、至極不安です。

最近の過去３年間を振り返っても、今までを振り返っても、誕生日に「パーティ」をしたことがなかったので、今年は思い切ってやってみました。自分で自分のパーティを企画しないといけないのが、悲しいトコロです。サプライズとかだったらいいのにとも思いますが、イベント企画も業の一部なので、仕方ありません。

当日、イースターの忙しい時期にごつきあいくださった皆様、本当にありがとう。
メッセージを送ってくださった皆様も本当に有難うございます。
予期せぬプレゼントがいっぱいで、人生初めて、プレゼントとカードの山を体験しています。想いもかけないぐらい沢山の人と過ごせて、すごくすごくすごーくシアワセでした。


どんな日だったかというと、ヒョウのようなユキのような白い物体がちらつく寒い日でした。午後からSohoで美味しいクレープを食べて、夜は夜中１時までワイワイ。当事者は徒歩１０分で帰れるので気楽なもんでした。ウッシッシ。でも、本当はもっと早く帰りたかったですが、主催者がゲストを置いて買えるわけにも行かず…。あは。


　　●○●○●○　　●○●○●○　　●○●○●○


25歳って本当に重いです。苦笑
これからの５年間について、色々と考えます。
５年後、社会的にも経済的にも自分がどうなっていたいのか。
もうフワフワとしてられないことだけが、確かで、でも、目の前にはこれといって確かなものは見えなくて、なんの手応えもなくて。


最近、『外資系トップの仕事力』という本を読んでいます。
彼らは全員「男性」で、仕事にのめり込んで、打ち込んで、夢中になって、そういう20代後半〜30代の様子を読むと、少し羨ましく思えます。たくさん気づかされる言葉が詰まっていて（今の私とこれからの私へのエールのごとく）、ちょっとだけココロがほわっとできる本です。その中に、今の私への一番の言葉があります。

「値踏みはしない」
「四の五の言わずに仕事をする」
「仕事を利用して、自分を高める」


なので、この１年は↑の言葉を念頭において、何事も好き嫌いしないで与えられたチャンスを大切に勉
学に励みます。目の前に確かな目標があっても、なくても、今思い描くことが全て現実になるように、日々修行です。

# Martin Hodgson
# The Guardian,
# Friday March 7 2008



Ken Livingstone's campaign for re-election as mayor of London received a shot in the arm last night, when an art auction raised £230,000 in support of his candidacy in just over an hour.

The sale featured 38 works by artists including Anthony Gormley, Marc Quinn, Banksy, Mona Hatoum and Ralph Steadman, and in all it brought in nearly a quarter of the total amount each candidate is permitted to spend on campaigning.


All rights : Guardian.co.uk


Speaking after the auction at the Aquarium gallery in Islington, Livingstone said the event had yielded more than any fund-raising event so far, enabling him to match the sums already raised by his Conservative rival, Boris Johnson.

"We are allowed to spend up to £1m on campaigning. We know that Boris has got a quarter of a million or more, and now we've caught up with him. It's going to be a much fairer fight now."

Most of the money came from a single canvas by the graffiti artist Banksy, which sold to an anonymous bidder for £195,000. The painting shows two children pledging allegiance to a Tesco shopping bag, and is a preliminary sketch for a life-size graffito which appeared on Wednesday on the wall of an Islington pharmacy.

Livingstone himself bought a print of a Steadman cartoon for a £140. He said: "The art world is very in touch with what happens in London. They recognise that if Boris gets in, society would collapse back into barbarism."

A spokeswoman for Rootball, which organised the event, said: "The artists here do not consider themselves political artists, but they do want to affect the political process and support progressive policies for the capital."

Acts of cultural supremacy

The Guardian,
Thursday March 6 2008


This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday March 06 2008 on p35 of the Leaders & reply section. It was last updated at 00:07 on March 06 2008.

Margaret Hodge is to be congratulated for having chosen the least appropriate of all musical events for her ill-advised attack (Hodge attacks Proms, March 4). The Proms are celebrated worldwide for their appeal to all possible audiences, from the most dedicated classical music anorak to the first-time concert-goer of any age or background. Had she singled out one of the opera houses where a dinner-jacket and bottle of champagne are required audience accessories, there might have been some point to her claims; but to attack the world's most popular classical music festival is ridiculous.

I very much doubt she has ever stood with the dedicated Prommers, listening intently to music ranging from medieval to hard-line contemporary. Having played several times at the Proms, I can testify to the unique atmosphere engendered by such open-minded concentration; every year, the festival reaffirms the joy that music can bring to people everywhere.

Interesting, too - and wearily predictable - that the minister should choose to attack a classical-music institution. She wouldn't dare attack a concert by a rap artist for failing to appeal to the vast majority of British listeners for fear that it might lose her votes. We classical musicians resent having the art that we love assigned to one particular class of society. It is neither the players nor the promoters - and certainly not the music itself - who are responsible for this; it is a position thrust upon us by the mindless twitterings of people who understand absolutely nothing about music.
Steven Isserlis, London

Poor show for using a picture of a bunch of white, mainly male, black-tied punters with the caption "the audience at the Royal Opera House" (All white on the night?, G2, March 5). I always sit in the stalls, often wearing jeans. This is probably a gala evening and so not repesentative of "the audience".
Ciarán O'Meara, London

Margaret Hodge's attack is ill-informed. The BBC has significantly widened the range of music in the Proms each year and the audiences it attracts, but it remains first and foremost a festival of western classical music and probably the most accessible one in the world, of which our culture minister should be proud. The Notting Hill carnival is a wonderfully vibrant celebration of street performance, music and costume reflecting another aspect of British life. Neither is diminished by the fact that its appeal is only to a section of the community.

Events at the Albert Hall this year include not just the party high-jinks of the last night of the Proms (unrepresentative incidentally of the Proms as a whole), but concerts of Asian music, jazz, world music, rock and pop, ballet, circus, celebrations by the Sikh community, and performances by schoolchildren from every kind of background. The essence of culture is its diversity and distinctive quality, and the essential British value that Margaret Hodge seems to have forgotten is liberty: our freedom to enjoy and participate in whatever form of cultural expression we choose.
David Elliott, chief executive, Royal Albert Hall

I don't always agree with Margaret Hodge, but The Last Night of the Proms demeans the world class festival of music that has gone before and denigrates British classical music and composers. It retained Rule Britannia last year, ignoring appeals that in the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade it was a gross anachronism.
Dr Graham Ullathorne , Chesterfield, Derbyshire

First, Margaret Hodge seems to think that the kind of people who attend the Proms - middle-class, law-abiding, mostly employed, culturally engaged - are not good examples of British identity. Second, she thinks that Henry VIII - an English, not British, king - is.
Iain Hill, Glasgow

Henry did quite a bit of separating, as we know, but not of state and religion - indeed, quite the opposite. The Acts of Submission and Supremacy established the king as governor of the church.
John Stilwell, Penzance, Cornwall



guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

---

Who says nationalism can't make good art?

Mark Ravenhill
Monday March 17, 2008

Guardian


I remember 1975. Rows of men on British Rail platforms wearing bowler hats and waiting for the 7.52 to Victoria, looking no different from their Edwardian grandfathers. Theatre audiences standing unthinkingly as a crackling record played the national anthem after the performance. Strange to think it was Margaret Thatcher who got rid of that world. Maybe she never meant to. Certainly, she eagerly wrapped herself in the British flag for the Falklands conflict and spoke fervently of the need to return to Victorian values, even if she did have another, stronger impulse: to kick away the cosy insularity of British economic life and expose us to the monetary storms of the global market.

Like almost every artist of the time, I despised Thatcher. But I also despised the obedient docility that, as the national anthem began, saw us all stand staring proudly ahead, as though we still ruled over that mighty empire - even though it had actually crumbled away. Indifference or hostility to nationalism was a mark of the artist then, and is largely so now. Of late, though, we're starting to feel a little more conflicted about it all - but not as conflicted as our current government. Earlier this month, Margaret Hodge, one of our culture ministers, attacked the great British institution that is the Proms, while ideas were floated by her colleagues for school-leavers to pledge allegiance to the Queen. Waving the flag on telly once a year to Land of Hope and Glory is wrong, it seems, while inculcating young people into the outdated rhetoric of monarchy is right.

In all the reporting of Hodge's clumsy comments, I saw little that drew a distinction between the hugely popular, diverse music that makes up the bulk of the Proms and its crassly triumphant Last Night. Maybe Hodge herself doesn't know the difference. But whatever's wrong with the Proms is right there in those final hours. Anyone brave enough to kill off that behemoth would reveal the Proms in all their glory: excellent programming, diverse live audiences and a huge national following on radio and TV. It's a model that any arts organisation would be eager to emulate, if only Land of Hope and Glory didn't come along and defecate messily on everything that had come before.

Nationalism hasn't always produced bad art. In fact, it has created some of the very best. Recently, I read The Maid of Orleans, the great German playwright Schiller's drama about Joan of Arc. It swept me along. Coming from the people, Joan has the visionary ability to lead them, when the monarchy and the aristocracy have failed. National heroes were a great draw for Schiller: his William Tell defends his people against invaders just as Joan does, while his Mary Stuart is more fired by her patriotic Scottish spirit than by her ties to family and royalty, in the form of Elizabeth, her cousin and queen.

Schiller was writing at a time when nationalism was a radical idea. In Schiller's world, monarchs are an untrustworthy breed, always looking over the heads of their people to the supranational interests of an elite. The way forward, Schiller implies, is for the people to identify their national spirit and unite. No wonder the composer Verdi, dreaming of uniting Italian city states just as Germany's principalities were being united, so often used Schiller's work.

Earlier this month, I saw Eisenstein's epic film Alexander Nevsky, with Prokofiev's thunderous score performed live by the London Symphony Orchestra. So little was known about the real Nevsky, Eisenstein once said, that he could make up almost anything about him. And so he created the story of a prince who lives among his people as a fisherman and - imbued with their national spirit - gives them the strength to see off German invaders. Although a clear call to arms for the Russian people, as Hitler's army set its sights on Stalin's Russia, it is nevertheless a wonderful film. Propaganda it may be, yet it is realistic, never flinching from showing us the butchery of medieval warfare into which the almost godlike Nevsky leads the people. Eisenstein's film proved to be a major inspiration for Olivier's screen adaptation of Henry V, even if Olivier never offered such an honest portrait of war's horrors.

We on the political and cultural left have come to think of the nationalistic urge as a necessarily bad starting point for making decent art. And yet international art can be just as terrible: the film with so many international co-producers that it becomes an unwatchable mulch, the vaguely "one world" impulses of some world music and fusion. It's time to re-examine our attitude. We need to look at what being British really means and end all this talk of oaths to a redundant monarch. The result could be something truly progressive and radical - and artists could lead the way.


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Margaret Hodge criticised for Proms attack

By Laura Clout
Last Updated: 2:40am GMT 05/03/2008

Telegraph



The culture minister, Margaret Hodge, is facing a chorus of criticism from across the political spectrum after attacking the Proms for not being multicultural enough.
# Have your say: Is Margaret Hodge right?
# Leader: Margaret Hodge on Promenade

The minister said the annual series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall failed to attract a diverse audience and unite different sections of society.

The proms don't promote new British values
The Proms traditionally includes patriotic favourites such as "Jerusalem" and "Rule Britannia"

Many view the flag waving and patriotism of the Last Night of the Proms as one of the greatest expressions of Britishness and a high point of the cultural calendar.

But the minister suggested that it failed to attract all those living in multicultural Britain.

Downing Street was forced into an immediate U-turn and denied that the Government, or Mrs Hodge, had attacked the Proms.

Gordon Brown's spokesman praised the concerts as a "wonderful, democratic and quintessentially British institution".
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He said: "The Prime Minister's position on this is quite clear – he thinks the Proms are a good institution."

Privately, Mr Brown, who has championed the values of Britain, was said to be angry that Mrs Hodge's remarks had not been cleared with Downing Street.

David Cameron, the Tory leader, said: "Margaret Hodge is wrong. We need more things where people celebrate Britishness and people think the Union Jack is a great symbol of togetherness. It is a classic example of a Labour politician not getting the sort of things people like to celebrate - culture and identity and a great British institution."

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, said: "There is probably no better example in the world of a series of concerts that attracts a huge audience to often quite challenging classical music."

Mrs Hodge's comments came in a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research think tank.

She praised "icons of a common culture" including Coronation Street and the Angel of the North and said culture could enhance a sense of "shared identity", but she singled out the Proms for not doing that.

She said: "The audiences for many of our greatest cultural events - I'm thinking in particular of the Proms - is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this.

"I know this is not about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect they will do that wherever they can."

A BBC spokesman defended the Proms saying: "We are proud that the BBC Proms is world-renowned for the way it combines excellence in classical music with an ongoing commitment to bringing it to the widest possible audience.

"Indeed, this has recently been recognised by three nominations for audience development in the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards."

The Proms were founded in 1895 to give everyone the chance to hear live classical music with low ticket prices.

It is the biggest classical musical festival in the world with more than 70 concerts in the Royal Albert Hall over eight weeks in the summer.

It climaxes with the Last Night which features patriotic pieces including Land Of Hope And Glory, Rule Britannia and the national anthem.




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Officials 'broke arm's-length rule' over arts funding

Mark Brown, arts correspondent
Monday March 10, 2008

Guardian


Government officials have been accused of undermining the well-established principle of staying at arm's length when it comes to arts funding.

The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, and his predecessor, James Purnell, have refused to become involved in or comment on funding decisions made by Arts Council England because there is a principle that they should be made without government interference. During the recent debate over cuts to nearly 200 organisations, Purnell said his view was that he should not have a view.

Now the Conservatives have obtained an email from a government official to the Arts Council making representations about an organisation which faced having its £51,000-a-year funding cut. Tory culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt said the email showed that ministers were paying lip service to the arm's length principle.

The email, obtained under freedom of information legislation and dated November 28 last year, concerns the Anne Peaker Centre, a Kent-based organisation which is an umbrella group for the arts in criminal justice.

The name of the sender has been removed but his or her title is given as head of arts funding, Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It begins: "We spoke about the Anne Peaker Centre (APC) and I wanted to make sure you were aware of some of the issues in this area." It goes on to say that an inter-ministerial group on reducing reoffending was paying close interest to the contribution arts and sport can make to reducing reoffending.

The email says a new Alliance for the Arts in Criminal Justice is being planned under Lord Ramsbotham, the former chief inspector of prisons. And it says the APC has been successful in raising money from non-Arts Council sources. The email concludes: "As we discussed, some or all of these national initiatives may be put in jeopardy if the APC is no longer viable ... I wanted to make sure you were able to feed this into the decision-making process."

As it turned out, the Arts Council did axe funding. But Hunt believes the email shows interference in its funding decisions. "I'm concerned that they're paying lip service to the arm's length principle. In some ways it's a healthy thing that the Arts Council did not pay attention. This is more of a worry about the DCMS than the Arts Council." The council said it did not believe the email was a form of lobbying. Its executive director, Andrew Whyte, said: "We felt it was our sponsor department passing on concerns which had been raised by other departments."

A spokesman for the DCMS said: "Very clearly the email was simply setting out the facts about work going on in government." The email was news to Bridget Edwards, chief executive officer at the Anne Peaker Centre, who said she was glad of the support. Edwards said they were waiting to hear if the Arts Council would give transitional funding for six months while they sought alternative sources.


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
Thursday, 6 March 2008


Antony Gormley made his name as the creator of grand sculptures with his monumental Angel of the North. So it may surprise many artists attempting to emulate his success to hear that he has condemned the current crop of modern public artworks across the UK as "crap".

"On the whole," he said, "We have not reinvented the statue very convincingly for the 21st century," adding "There is an awful lot of crap out there."

A decade after his experimental 65ft-high figure was erected in Gateshead, Gormley said the success of the sculpture had inadvertently set a precedent for the proliferation of unchallenging works of art in public spaces.

He singled out The Meeting Place statue of two lovers embracing at St Pancras International Station for criticism. Other works he dislikes are a statue of Churchill and Roosevelt on Bond Street and David Wynne's Boy With a Dolphin in Chelsea.

He went on: "I don't like the way the Angel of the North has been used for some kind of precedent to encourage people and local authorities looking for European funding or investment. When we made the Angel, it was an experiment. We managed to get lottery money and European funding but it was a huge risk."

To many, Gormley, who is currently on a shortlist for creating a sculpture for the fourth plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, is the most prominent producer of public art alive in Britain today. Aside from the Angel sculpture of 1998, he also produced Another Place for Crosby Beach near Liverpool and Iron:Man, placed in Birmingham's Victoria Square.

He said it was not the quantity of public artworks in Britain that offended him but the prevailing lack of creativity.

"So much of the art of the 20th century has ended up being corralled into museums. I would love to see more significant work in public spaces that is not institutionalised – work that is truly everyone's. There are works that really challenge you that maybe you don't understand at first but you keep going back to see them because they niggle. But art placed in public spaces that does not challenge does a disservice.

"A lot of public art is gunge, an excuse which says, 'we're terribly sorry to have built this senseless glass and steel tower but here is this 20-foot bronze cat'," he said.

The artist also felt that Britain needed a proper structure to shortlist and judge commissions, similar to that currently in place in Germany and Holland, which he claimed have greater forms of quality control for a commissioned piece of public art.

"Here, the standards are very low [for] the way submissions are judged," he said.

Gormley's outspoken comments came as he unveiled an indoor sculptural piece, Lost Horizon, priced at £1.35m and displayed at White Cube Gallery in Mason's Yard, London. It follows last year's public art project 'Event Horizon', which he did with the Hayward Gallery, in which he placed several statues modelled on his own body on buildings around central London.

Another new work, Firmament, priced at £850,000, is a geometrical structure based on the human body and could also be suitable for outdoor display.

The artist joins a long-running debate on the value of public art which was reinvigorated by Marjorie Trusted, senior curator of sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, who said many commissions were "disappointing, old-fashioned and awkward" while Tim Knox, director of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, dismissed them as "horrors".


Is Gormley right? Share your views at independent.co.uk/gormley


All RIghts: Independent.co.uk