Professional values
Sir: While John McEwen's art criticism is generally sounder and more consistent than most — his recent piece on Richard Long was excellent — I believe his reading of the Royal Academy's affairs (4 June) simply restates a peculiarly disastrous argument.
Naturally, if mumbled quickly, his idea of replacing 'amateurs' with 'professionals' sounds seductively new-broomish. How- ever, the plan's merits and demerits only begin to emerge when he specifies whom he includes in each definition. For example, are arch-careerists of the 1960s, ruthlessly dedicated to the twin goals of pecuniary and fashionable success, 'professional' in any but the most pejorative sense? After all, wealthy call-girls living off the oil-rich could similarly be described as the most dedicatedly 'professional' of their par- ticular calling.
During a quarter of a century of peculiar- ly mindless Late Modernist hegemony, which began to abate only in the late 1970s, the RA stood for something, at least, in terms of what I, by contrast, consider to be 'professional' values in art, at a time when almost every other major public outlet Serpentine, Whitechapel, Hayward, 1CA, Arnolfini, AIR, etc — abasedly worshipped at the shrines of largely superficial, media- created fashion. Even the RA's own policy-makers dabb- led their toes in the comforting waters of pseudo-liberalism at this period, dragging in supposedly unwilling avant-garde con- tributors who were already, in the view of many, considerably over-exposed else- where. Needless to add, there has never been any question of reciprocal advantage to RA stalwarts such as Weight, Dunstan, Greenham, Tindle et al. through any such tolerant 'liberalism' being shown by the other camp; imagine the ICA or such clamouring for their support!
Thus, contrary to John McEwen, I do not believe the RA will ever improve by co- opting further batches of the fashion- conscious, who are often none too clear intellectually about what they are supposed to be doing, other than making fortunes of course. For even the RA's much-abused 'galloping major' type support through sales would thereby be sacrificed for nothing and non-fashion-worshipping pro- fessional artists of merit still further discouraged from supporting an institution which had finally shown itself to be stan- ding for nothing.
In short, what the RA now needs is real vision and leadership rather than further weak kowtowing to artistic fashions which time will show to have been merely shallow and transitory.
Giles Auty 14 Riverbank, East Molesey, Surrey
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