All freedom is at death’s door – indeed it has passed the threshold. Ordinary employees are sacked for the “wrong” sort of jokes much as they were in East Germany; “wrong” opinions – over “BLM”, migration, “gender”, abortion, race, identity and marriage are close to being punishable by law. The left has skewed the impartial arbiters of freedom into the enforcers of ideological submission or conformity. Which is why a genuinely Conservative government would purge the judiciary, close down tens of mickey mouse universities, outlaw “positive” discrimination, repeal the whole legislative underpinning of Blair’s PC State and flatten the BBC.
But there hasn’t been a “genuine” conservative (small or large C) government for at least 3 decades.
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
The police advised closure on safety grounds, effectively abandoning their duty to uphold the free speech of those involved When govt abandons its primary duties of public safety and protecting individual rights, that’s a problem. I don’t expect much of govt, but I do expect those two things to be done. The left has become the fascists it always accuses everyone of being and, in truth, the impulse has always been there. It’s just that the cancel movement has begun eating its own, and those who are suddenly judged as infidels are noticing.
For about 15 years I spent every weekend and every holiday visiting the public and private art galleries of London, New York, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, LA and Houston, to name just a few. (It helped that I lived in some of these places). I remember the excitement of going to the first public exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in 1987, and of happening upon a major Tim Rollins/KOS exhibition in LA.I even bought quite a lot of art.
No longer. Because all too often the art world seems to be dominated by the type of nonsense outlined about. If they’re cancelling someone like Guston, what hope is there? I’ll pop into a small private gallery from time to time to have a look, but that’s all.
The prospects for Philip Guston in four years time don’t look promising, given that the director of Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art ” one of Tate Modern’s collaborators in the exhibition ” has already condemned the artist by stating that his work “appropriates black trauma'”
Aaargh.
The paintings depict white klansmen in a mocking manner. If that is “appropriating black trauma”, then mockery of Hitler and the Nazis must be appropriating Jewish trauma. If the gallery director actually thought about this, instead of just cobbling together some emotive buzz words, he would realise he is effectively deterring white people from mocking or criticising anything bad done by white people against non-white people.
It’s like the equivalent idea that white authors should not write black characters because they can’t possibly understand them. If a white author isn’t able to understand black characters, why would a white reader be able to?
Yeah but what if they stopped for Covid, and the art is already booked up for the next 4 years? They wouldn’t have said “We’re stopping for Covid” because they want people to come to their gallery, just not too many.
Andrew Harvey
3 years ago
I went to an opening night reception at the Tate a few years ago. Of the roughly thousand people attending, most of whom looked like your typical London-based Guardian-reader, there was exactly 1 non-white person (excluding the wait staff). It was, I honestly believe, the whitest event I have ever attended. The idea that the art bureaucracy has anything to contribute to the world is laughable.
Often the white people shouting loudest about ‘white privilege’ are desperate to divert attention from themselves. Rather like BBC senior management.
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago
It’s about the money. Create taxpayer subsidies for the arts and networks will spring up to decide who gets that money and who gets paid for deciding who gets that money. The focus of the bureaucrats and of the artists they patronise is to exclude outsiders so that current patterns of patronage can be continued. Other considerations such as the wishes of the general public and support for freedom of speech will be ignored.
These arts (self-)censors are the staunch allies of the apologists for Islam now condemning Macron’s brave stand for freedom of expression on religion. They represent a watershed moment for Western culture – do we believe in the project or shall we abandon it to ideological fascism?
Clem Alford
3 years ago
Free speech and artistic expression should be preserved at any cost especially in these Orwellian times. I am finding ‘identiy politics’ a real problem as I have been performing a culture different from what some in the arts world say is my ‘own’ native culture. I was born in Scotland 75 years ago but chose to perform and teach South Asian music after years of study in India. I am often told ‘but you are not Indian’ that is, an authentic brown ethno musician. This to me smacks of an inverted racism. In India there didn’t seem to be a problem accepting my ability as a not very privilged white man. Yet the so called western progressive liberals do. So the multicultural society is functioning as long as you remain within your cultural identity and don’t step outside of it.
I feel for you. It’s interesting. I lived in Japan for six years, and there whenever an outsider chooses to take up and master a Japanese art, such as aikido, bonsai, calligraphy, tea ceremony, or even speak the language, the people of Japan tend to view it with amusement and are skeptical the foreigner can even or ever achieve the skill, sometimes using the expression, ‘henna gaijin’, which means ‘what a strange foreigner!’. But one thing they are not is offended, far from it. Nobody tells you to stay in your lane.
David Bell
3 years ago
One thing is inevitable about all left wing mob’s, they will eventually come after their own leaders because they will have transgressed some previously unknown line.
Then we will see these same people demand the rights they want to take from others!
David Drumright
3 years ago
There have always been censors. Today’s censors deprive artists of big audiences and funding. They don’t chop off heads, as monarchs in previous times did.
The answer to deprivation of big audiences is to find smaller audiences and smaller sources of money. Fortunately there are lots of ways to do this.
Artists in earlier eras weren’t fooled by idiotic concepts like “freedom” and “democracy”. They simply found ways to use their talents and skills within the existing framework.
Goya was an exception. He painted the royals to look stupid abd were too stupid to realize what he had done! And they paid him for doing it.
Bruno Noble
3 years ago
In my novel – A Thing of the Moment – published two years ago, I explored the notion of identity through the eyes of three women. At book club readings, I was asked, By what right did I dare to write from the point of view of a woman? (Let alone three women!) Wishing, amongst other things, to explore the Cartesian notion of the mind/body split and having met women who spoke of having coped with sexual abuse by disassociating their minds from their bodies (as in, This didn’t happen to me but to my body), I was asked, By what right did I dare write about abuse if I hadn’t been abused myself? One woman who had said she thought my book wonderful because a confessional declared it sensationalist and voyeurist because imagined. I simply couldn’t win. I resorted to having Elif Safak’s wonderful TED Talk to hand, in which she complains that writers are no longer allowed to use their imaginations. “There is nothing in me,” she says, “that is not in everybody else.” Brilliant. Here it is: https://www.ted.com/talks/e…
All freedom is at death’s door – indeed it has passed the threshold. Ordinary employees are sacked for the “wrong” sort of jokes much as they were in East Germany; “wrong” opinions – over “BLM”, migration, “gender”, abortion, race, identity and marriage are close to being punishable by law. The left has skewed the impartial arbiters of freedom into the enforcers of ideological submission or conformity. Which is why a genuinely Conservative government would purge the judiciary, close down tens of mickey mouse universities, outlaw “positive” discrimination, repeal the whole legislative underpinning of Blair’s PC State and flatten the BBC.
But there hasn’t been a “genuine” conservative (small or large C) government for at least 3 decades.
The police advised closure on safety grounds, effectively abandoning their duty to uphold the free speech of those involved
When govt abandons its primary duties of public safety and protecting individual rights, that’s a problem. I don’t expect much of govt, but I do expect those two things to be done. The left has become the fascists it always accuses everyone of being and, in truth, the impulse has always been there. It’s just that the cancel movement has begun eating its own, and those who are suddenly judged as infidels are noticing.
Or as it should be re-written: “The police advised closure on the grounds that they weren’t prepared to do their job”.
Their job has changed…we are the job now.
For about 15 years I spent every weekend and every holiday visiting the public and private art galleries of London, New York, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, LA and Houston, to name just a few. (It helped that I lived in some of these places). I remember the excitement of going to the first public exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in 1987, and of happening upon a major Tim Rollins/KOS exhibition in LA.I even bought quite a lot of art.
No longer. Because all too often the art world seems to be dominated by the type of nonsense outlined about. If they’re cancelling someone like Guston, what hope is there? I’ll pop into a small private gallery from time to time to have a look, but that’s all.
I’ve stopped going to theatre for same reason.
Aaargh.
The paintings depict white klansmen in a mocking manner. If that is “appropriating black trauma”, then mockery of Hitler and the Nazis must be appropriating Jewish trauma. If the gallery director actually thought about this, instead of just cobbling together some emotive buzz words, he would realise he is effectively deterring white people from mocking or criticising anything bad done by white people against non-white people.
It’s like the equivalent idea that white authors should not write black characters because they can’t possibly understand them. If a white author isn’t able to understand black characters, why would a white reader be able to?
Yeah but what if they stopped for Covid, and the art is already booked up for the next 4 years?
They wouldn’t have said “We’re stopping for Covid” because they want people to come to their gallery, just not too many.
I went to an opening night reception at the Tate a few years ago. Of the roughly thousand people attending, most of whom looked like your typical London-based Guardian-reader, there was exactly 1 non-white person (excluding the wait staff). It was, I honestly believe, the whitest event I have ever attended. The idea that the art bureaucracy has anything to contribute to the world is laughable.
Often the white people shouting loudest about ‘white privilege’ are desperate to divert attention from themselves. Rather like BBC senior management.
It’s about the money. Create taxpayer subsidies for the arts and networks will spring up to decide who gets that money and who gets paid for deciding who gets that money. The focus of the bureaucrats and of the artists they patronise is to exclude outsiders so that current patterns of patronage can be continued. Other considerations such as the wishes of the general public and support for freedom of speech will be ignored.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Sadly.
These arts (self-)censors are the staunch allies of the apologists for Islam now condemning Macron’s brave stand for freedom of expression on religion. They represent a watershed moment for Western culture – do we believe in the project or shall we abandon it to ideological fascism?
Free speech and artistic expression should be preserved at any cost especially in these Orwellian times. I am finding ‘identiy politics’ a real problem as I have been performing a culture different from what some in the arts world say is my ‘own’ native culture. I was born in Scotland 75 years ago but chose to perform and teach South Asian music after years of study in India. I am often told ‘but you are not Indian’ that is, an authentic brown ethno musician. This to me smacks of an inverted racism. In India there didn’t seem to be a problem accepting my ability as a not very privilged white man. Yet the so called western progressive liberals do. So the multicultural society is functioning as long as you remain within your cultural identity and don’t step outside of it.
I feel for you. It’s interesting. I lived in Japan for six years, and there whenever an outsider chooses to take up and master a Japanese art, such as aikido, bonsai, calligraphy, tea ceremony, or even speak the language, the people of Japan tend to view it with amusement and are skeptical the foreigner can even or ever achieve the skill, sometimes using the expression, ‘henna gaijin’, which means ‘what a strange foreigner!’. But one thing they are not is offended, far from it. Nobody tells you to stay in your lane.
One thing is inevitable about all left wing mob’s, they will eventually come after their own leaders because they will have transgressed some previously unknown line.
Then we will see these same people demand the rights they want to take from others!
There have always been censors. Today’s censors deprive artists of big audiences and funding. They don’t chop off heads, as monarchs in previous times did.
The answer to deprivation of big audiences is to find smaller audiences and smaller sources of money. Fortunately there are lots of ways to do this.
Artists in earlier eras weren’t fooled by idiotic concepts like “freedom” and “democracy”. They simply found ways to use their talents and skills within the existing framework.
Goya was an exception. He painted the royals to look stupid abd were too stupid to realize what he had done! And they paid him for doing it.
In my novel – A Thing of the Moment – published two years ago, I explored the notion of identity through the eyes of three women. At book club readings, I was asked, By what right did I dare to write from the point of view of a woman? (Let alone three women!) Wishing, amongst other things, to explore the Cartesian notion of the mind/body split and having met women who spoke of having coped with sexual abuse by disassociating their minds from their bodies (as in, This didn’t happen to me but to my body), I was asked, By what right did I dare write about abuse if I hadn’t been abused myself? One woman who had said she thought my book wonderful because a confessional declared it sensationalist and voyeurist because imagined. I simply couldn’t win. I resorted to having Elif Safak’s wonderful TED Talk to hand, in which she complains that writers are no longer allowed to use their imaginations. “There is nothing in me,” she says, “that is not in everybody else.” Brilliant. Here it is: https://www.ted.com/talks/e…
Just wait until they read Vachel Lindsay…