LETTERS Art wars
Sir: The response (Letters, 13 February) of the director of the Tate Gallery, Nicholas Serota, to my article 'A new age for art' (23 January) is either uninformed or disingenu- ous. I prefer the former interpretation. He was right to point out that a traditionalist is Professor of Sculpture now at the Royal College of Art, but his is a very isolated instance of a traditionalist occupying a senior post, so far as living art goes, whether in art schools, funded arts bodies as a whole, arts broadcasting or his own field of museum administration. How many non-modernists help preserve the balance essential within the staff of his own modern collection, or on his board of trustees? My case rests that the unacceptable result of the almost complete modernist hegemony which exists in influential posts in living art is that we live now in Britain under an imposed culture. Mr Serota must know that open manifestations of this cultural imposi- tion, such as the Turner Prize, show that it is unpopular among thinking people inside and outside the artistic community. For at lest 25 years the avant-garde in art has been not so much the threatened fledgling some claim, as the young cuckoo which has suc- cessfully expelled all other occupants of the nest.
I agree with Mr Serota that major 20th- century British artists of a non-modernist persuasion do get shown in prominent pub- lic spaces — e.g. Bomberg when dead, Freud when in his late sixties, Weight (whom he quotes, though not a major artist) when in his eighties. Damien Hirst of shark-in-a-tank fame is 27. The artistic val- ues inherent in exhibitions to which the public responds in great numbers Monet, Constable etc — rarely get a look- in when these are demonstrated by present- day artists who wish to continue the great European traditions. In fact, the revenue derived from highly popular shows of past artists merely gets used to subsidise exhibi- tions of avant-gardist works which increas- ingly few have any desire to see.
I fear Mr Serota's response fails to dis- suade me of the absolute justice of my claims.
Giles Auty
14 Riverbank, East Molesey, Surrey
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