ARTS
0 ne of the more unlikely places in which I might have imagined writing this week's article is Heathfield Hospital at Ayr in Scotland. I was on a brief working holi- day in the Lowlands, intending to take in exhibitions of 500 years of sculpture in Scotland at Edinburgh and of contempo- rary sculpture by Alison Wilding at Liver- pool. However, recent events have caused me to reflect that mere planning may not always provide the answer to everything.
As I write, I have just begun five days' recuperation in a public ward where I have been adjured to do as little as possible. The prospect is an uninviting one for me, which may help explain how I come to find myself here in the first place. However, I reason writing is certainly no more effort for me than reading and both are infinitely less stressful than looking at the ceiling, trying to think of nothing at all. The nurses, pro- nounced 'nosses' hereabouts, and other medical staff have been uniformly splendid and I am much moved by their collective kindness. My notes for forthcoming release suggest the taking up of a hobby and one of the consultants tells me to try in future to play sport 'for fun'. Both prospects appal me; are they telling me to modify not just my life but my personality? The great plea- sures I have derived from everyday work and sporting competition make me think I have had a particularly fortunate existence. A horror of being obliged to play sport 'for fun' gives me the incentive I need to try to get myself fit again in the weeks to come.
Like many who live relatively specialised lives, I seldom find myself in the prolonged company of a true cross-section of the community. Nonetheless I believe the visu- al arts, in which I have been involved all my life, should be of concern to people of every kind. Yet this is far from the case today, since many have come to think that art in general is the concern merely of an initiated and privileged few. I cannot help wondering how my ward-mates would react to the short-list of four candidates just announced for Britain's prestigious £20,000 Turner Prize for art, which will be restarted this autumn after a year's lapse. The names are Ian Davenport, Anish Kapoor, Fiona Rae and Rachel Whiteread and I doubt greatly whether a single member of the 16- bed ward in which I lie has ever heard of any of them. Understandably, the broad- browed and accented southern Scots rest- ing here have other, more cogent-seeming things on their minds at this moment than some silly Sassenach art award. Some have passed death quite closely of late and possi- bly look more thoughtful than usual in con- sequence.
Memento mori was a motto seldom far
Art
Breath of Ayr
Giles Auty wonders what art means to his fellow patients in a Scottish hospital from the tongues of mediaeval moralists. Painters of such times often included an inscription to this evident effect. Indeed, as recently as a few weeks ago a young woman scholar at the British School at Rome explained her exhibits to me — comprising decaying foodstuffs under sheets of glass as metaphors for mortality. That we must all die is clear. It is only the imminence or otherwise of our demise that is unknow- able. If we imagine our end is nearer rather than further how, if at all, might such Nothing to say: 'Untitled, 1990, by Rachel Whiteread, short-listed for the Turner Prize knowledge influence our thoughts and actions? The linked themes of mortality and immortality can hardly avoid being of central interest to the human kind. Being bright or dense, rich or poor provides no excuse for skirting them. They are, more- over, the kind of themes which breed oth- ers in profusion. It is hard to contemplate such issues as war and inhumanity, morality and chaos or even natural and romantic beauty without making reference to them.
Of course, to those today who consider Christianity a temporary and unfounded myth, fit only for unadvanced peoples, much of the greatest European art of pre- ceding centuries becomes literally and metaphorically meaningless. The well- recorded sufferings of Christian saints and martyrs become looked on not as exem- plary but merely as ghoulish entertain- ments of their time, early forerunners of the serial killer or sci-fi film, perhaps, and probably painted simply for profit.
Visual art need not engage metaphysical themes overtly to be significant, of course. The landscapes of John Constable or self- portraits of Rembrandt, for instance, achieve a perennial relevance through the profound nature of the visions they embody. Even art of an apparently inno- cent neutrality, such as Impressionist land- scapes, can deliver strong philosophical messages to the attentive. Pictorial realisa- tions of nature can tell, for example, of an artist's deep understanding of and accord with its miraculous intricacy and concealed meanings. Only those profoundly ignorant of or uninterested in the natural world would dream of dismissing the philosophi- cal implications raised by studying it. Draw- ing from the subject is one excellent and long-acknowledged means of engaging in this process. But clearly, looking is an inward as well as outward process. Those under risk of being parted forever from the familiar are led often to re-evaluate their surroundings quite radically. Thus the often overlooked glories of the Kentish countryside may never have been regarded with greater reverence than by young, soon-to-die aircrew engaged in the Battle of Britain. An extraordinary painting i have seen, made by a young German soldier in 1942 in a remote area of small lakes where Germany meets Belgium, carries similar, heightened intensity. The atmosphere of this work, which was shown me proudly by another German artist, testifies unsurpris- ingly to the international nature of such artistic experience and sensibility. The artist did not set out to paint anything extraordinary yet achieved this, in a sense, through the very ordinariness of his inten- tions. A transfigured inner state shone through. His was not a work of profound pictorial skill, nor may he ever have paint- ed anything so haunting again. The poignancy of the small work in question is all but inexplicable, reminding me more, in its strange light, of landscapes in films made in the Forties by the Frenchman Marcel Carrie or even of that which lies behind the figures of Abraham and the Angels in the wonderful painting of that name from 1576 by Juan Fernandez (El Mudo) which is an unremarked glory of the Irish National Gallery in Dublin.
Sometimes, but by no means invariably, the art which intrigues me particularly is a product of such urgency. But those most strongly compelled by vision seem to me to be under similar compulsion to find strong, clear language with which to make their case. Imagine, if you will, that your house is on fire. Would you telephone the fire brigade employing the complex language of lawyers, say, or educationalists? There is a lesson here for artists of all eras. It is one which has been disregarded only within our own.
If visual art could be divided broadly into two kinds, art about art and art about life, then my preferences would lie firmly with the latter. There is something pro- foundly resistible for me in the notion that the proper concerns of art, literature or philosophy should simply be themselves. Such solipsist squandering of potential seems breathtaking; it is not a waste to which the artist of vision should ever sub- scribe. Equally artists should feel no obliga- tion to assume a false mantle of profundity. Life, for those true to their inner beings, will probably direct them at an appropriate moment to causes about which they feel passionately. Indeed, the more personal, strongly felt or unpopular the cause, the greater the probability that it will not lend itself to adequate expression through the more fashionable artistic languages of our time.
The question of adequate language seems to me to be the most fundamental problem of the moment. Too frequently, young artists who are by no means short of intelligence and ideas are persuaded by others that their means of implementing their thoughts are not just adequate but wonderful. When inappropriate, as it is so often, such flattery does them few favours. The adequacy or otherwise of means of expression is fundamental to all art forms. Teachers, curators and critics of worth know this and behave accordingly. Sadly such folk are fast becoming an endangered species and, simply for their sense, are excluded generally from any influence in the self-congratulatory club that contempo- rary art has become. Which brings me back to this year's Turner Prize.
If Ian Davenport, Anish Kapoor, Fiona Rae and Rachel Whiteread were really the most worthy or significant artists aged under 50 in Britain, as claimed by the spon- sors, then the outlook would be as ubiqui- tously black as one of Mr Davenport's canvases. Rae and Whiteread were in last year's ill-received The British Art Show 1990, a typical grooming ground for an `inside-track' career. Davenport and Whiteread were included more recently in the even more portentous Berlin exhibition Metropolis, which was co-organised, inci- dentally, by one of this year's Turner Prize judges. All four lack anything to say or the means to say it.
From the happily unfamiliar perspective of a hospital bed, the manoeuvrings of the contemporary art world appear, if possible, even more irrelevant than usual. Luckily, little of such posturing has anything to do with art, which remains always and in spite of its many secret enemies one of the great potential consolations of humankind.
Giles Auty will resume his exhibitions reviews in September.
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