We watched the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday evening, the second part in the Summer House so as not to blast out the neighbours. It can get very loud when we’re singing along with the traditional, patriotic songs.

The words of songs such as Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia are of course quite controversial these days. In many people’s opinion, they hark back to colonial times when our aim was to rule the world. Others point to the role of the navy in the suppression of slavery. But then most national anthems are also pretty aggressive, particularly when you get to the second verse.

My own view is that I sing along and don’t really care about the words, any more than, as a child, I cared about whether Jack and Jill really did go up the hill to fetch a pail of water only for Jack to suffer an unfortunate head injury in the process.

What I find more difficult is to listen to is so-called atonal music, the sort written by the likes of Schoenberg. It is the sort of ‘music’ consisting of groups of notes arrived at apparently quite randomly, but actually following some mysterious formula or other devised by the composer. To say it is tuneless is simply a statement of fact.

I’m not actually convinced it is music. Others are, and so I avoid concerts featuring that sort of music and listen to ‘real’ music. Yes, I know I’m stuck in the past, but then so are most people. We all like a good tune.

Judging quality and value in the world of the visual arts is even less clear. The question of forgeries illustrates the difficulty we all have with it. Given the choice (and the money) we would all prefer to have an original work.

The TV programme ‘Fake or Fortune’ is based on this premise. Indeed I see that a new series is starting on Thursday of this week. The question is whether, in this case, a painting is an original Mondrian worth £250,000 or a copy worth, possibly, £200.

The painting itself has been through the hands of many reputable art dealers and has their stamps on the rear of the canvas so, clearly, if it is a fake, it is a very good one. Even if ultimately found to be a fake, like so many other forgeries the workmanship which has gone into its production is at least the equal of that of the artist being imitated. Although with Mondrian that may not have amounted to a great deal if it was one of his purely geometric designs.

Imitations of works by Monet and such like do however require an intimate knowledge of how he worked, how he set about producing his works of art. Those who have this knowledge are not just working in art schools, but include former convicted forgers using their infamy quite openly to make money from their new ‘forgeries’, or as they would put it ‘paintings in the style of...’.

So would I pay over, say, a spare £10,000 for a picture of a haystack which, although indistinguishable from all the others celebrating those glorious edifices, did not bear the signature of Monet?  If not, why not?

We used to go to an alpine village called Alex where there is a beautifully restored château and there was a very good restaurant. Within the château there was an exhibition of contemporary art featuring cutting-edge works brought in from all over the world.

In the grounds were works which were on permanent display, including a rusting sculpture by Anthony Gormley – and so, as always, based on himself. I was particularly struck by a work created by the Spanish artist, Jaume Plensa. It was like a telephone box built out of beautifully made transparent glass bricks with a metal door in one side, but without the phone.  The artist’s description was:

“[The sculpture] is not something material, but emotional.  It does not relate to volume or space, but time. Each work suggests an exchange, which the spectator has to complete.”

The programme said:

“The sculptures of Jaume Plensa are metaphors of the body.  As an isolation chamber, this cabin in glass follows the conducting wire of the artist’s obsessions: absence, desire, impossibility, silence. It welcomes the visitor for a voyage in colour in which he will meet himself.”

Just what I thought. Actually, my predominant thought was “I wonder where he gets his glass bricks from?”. The descriptions of virtually all of the pieces were similarly silly and pretentious, but were relied on heavily to justify the existence of works which conveyed little or no obvious emotion or message.

Not that I consider representational art to be somehow superior to abstract art. Many things in nature which we consider to be beautiful are ‘abstract’ patterns: consider a sunset. And if you look from a distance at a forest on the side of a mountain just when Autumn has come, then you will see not the leaves or the trees themselves, but shades of yellow and green, red and brown merging into one another in a random pattern. We sigh and say that it is beautiful.

If you look at the reflection of the sky in the ripples on a lake, then you will see what were originally the blues and whites of the sky, now reflected back at you through a distorting mirror. And we contemplate its beauty.

And so it should not be a problem for us to accept that colours and shapes on canvas or formed into a sculpture, and which represent nothing but the artist’s vision of beauty, or express his emotions in some way, can touch us just as much.

In times past, though, there were accepted standards for what was regarded as good art. They did of course change because, within the standards set, the artist had a certain amount of wiggle room. This in turn would over time allow mainly gradual, but sometimes sudden, change - rather like the mutations in species which enable evolution to take place.

The main leaders in the establishment of standards were, and still are, of course the people buying the art. The art world mixes high finance and state subsidies, auction sales of famous works and (still) poor artists in attics. It is a world defined at the highest level by rich investors and fashionable galleries and, for the rest of us, art by lesser known artists, prints of more famous works or what we can see in a museum.

But according to the art world, art can now be anything - a happening, a potted plant, something made by the artist or something found and organised by the artist. It can be made entirely by other people, based on a scheme created by the artist, or made by the artist himself.

It need not reflect any ideal of beauty or represent anything or anyone. It can be a political statement with some flashing lights or a pile of rubbish. It also does not need to demand any special skill in its realisation - except for the skill involved in publicity. 

Tom Stoppard, though, tells us that ‘Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.’

Is it important? Well, obviously for those who like to have things clearly defined, it creates endless discussion. But for me it simply reflects the absurdity of trying to lump such different things together under the same title - art - and then worrying when there is no clear connection between them.

But if art is what the artist says is art, how does one define an artist? Can we all self-define as artists now? And if that is how the art world defines art, then the word has lost all descriptive power.

And so, as a non-artist, perhaps I can quote the wisdom of Humpty Dumpty in ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ when he was sitting on the top of a wall: ‘’When I use a word, it means only what I have chosen it to mean - no more and no less'.  ' “The question is,” said Alice, “whether it is possible to make words mean many different things” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “who is the master. That is everything”. 

I guess Humpty was an artist - he had the intellectual pretension typical of the art world. But I also remember that after this statement the artist known as Humpty Dumpty had a great fall from his superior position and broke into many pieces – in itself no doubt a great work of art. Thank you for the sacrifice.

16 September 2024

Paul Buckingham