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



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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.


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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.


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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".


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