Television
On the side of beauty
James Delingpole
One of the more useless jobs I've ever done was as arts correspondent on the Daily Telegraph. On a bad day, I'd have to do something Daily Mail-ish and female- friendly, like 'Patricia Hodge has a baby!' And on an even worse day, I'd have to attend a stupendously dull press confer- ence at somewhere like Covent Garden, hoping to return with a thrilling story along the lines of 'Royal Opera House in new funding crisis'.
Most of the people who ran the institu- tions we arts corrs had to write about tend- ed to treat us as philistine scum. They were lofty, disdainful, paranoid and mendacious. Our function, as far as they were con- cerned, was to report verbatim their tedious whinges for more money. And when we didn't, they loathed us even more. That's why I'll always remember the extraordinary day when one of them was nice to me: Neil MacGregor.
I'd rolled up to view one of the National Gallery's latest acquisitions, possibly a Lucas Cranach the Elder. 'Nice new piccy: so what?' I thought, anticipating the news desk's reaction. MacGregor probably sensed this because he walked stiffly over — I get the impression he's naturally quite shy — and charmed the pants off me with an enthralling ten-minute lecture on the relevance of High German art. It wasn't the only reason I quit that job but it was definitely a factor: I wanted to be on the side of truth and beauty, not scandals and crises.
From what I've gathered, MacGregor has this effect on everyone. Which is why, despite his forbidding air of buttoned-up formality, he makes such a brilliant presen- ter on Making Masterpieces (BBC 2, Mon- day). It's not a trendy-looking programme. In fact, there's more than a hint of the Cholmondely-Warners about its old-school starchiness. But, my, how it quickens the enthusiasm and broadens the knowledge!
The series shows how painters' work through the ages was governed at least as much by the materials available to them as it was by artistic vision. In the days of egg- tempera, for example, it was impossible to capture the reflective effects of water: if you needed to do a convincing sea, you had to wait for the invention of more shimmery oil-bound paint.
This week's episode, directed by Jamie Muir, dealt with two mediaeval master- pieces — a Cennino Cennini altarpiece and the Wilton Diptych. It's not my favourite period — too flat, too much religion, too much gold — but MacGregor and his silent crew of restorers brought it vividly to life.
Cennini's altarpiece, we learned, was not so much a work of art as a triumph of car- pentry. A shortage of decent wood around 1390s Florence meant that he had to build it from poplar, which is especially knotty and prone to woodworm, and is today thought fit only for matchsticks. Then came the glue of boiled goat-skin, then the linen, then the eight pancake-batter-like layers of ground gypsum (gesso). And here we all are thinking Damian Hirst's so big and clever, the things he does with tiger sharks. Yet his achievements seem puny compared to those of these indefatigable Florentine craftsmen.
And did you know that pigment mixed with country eggs was thought better suited to painting old or swarthy people because the yolks were darker than those of the town eggs used for young pale flesh? Or that gold leaf needs a red underlay to stop it looking greenish? Or that Polish insects make the best red pigment? There. See how invaluable the programme is.
Another reason I made a lousy arts cor- respondent is that I lack the hard-nosed investigative skills of proper journalists like Geraldine Norman, who got Channel 4's new Art House series (Sunday) off to such a cracking start with her brilliant exposé on Van Gogh's fakes.
You remember the 'Sunflowers' that Christie's sold to a Japanese company for £25 million? Turns out that it was almost certainly faked by Emile Schuffenecker — Salieri to Van Gogh's Mozart. Not only was the picture never mentioned in Van Gogh's letters to his beloved Theo, but it lacked the master's touch. As several wit- nesses testified — turning us all into arm- chair experts — there are key points on the picture (a broken stem on the right; petals which don't join the seedhead etc.) which demonstrate the copier's misunderstanding of the still life on which it was based.
Ultimate proof may lie in the documents held by the Van Gogh museum. But the museum refuses to enter the debate, for reasons perhaps not unconnected with the fact that the Japanese company which owns the 'Sunflowers' has just given it £30 mil- lion to build a new wing.
It's the Japanese I feel sorry for. Van Gogh is one of their favourite artists. Some of them go so far as to have their ashes sprinkled on his grave. National pride demands that they have a 'Sunflowers' to replace the one that was firebombed in the last war. Even, bless them, if it means pay- ing £25 million over the odds for their copy.
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