Art essay prize
The state of the arts
Peter Cannon-Brookes
Critics of contemporary trends in education have been quick to allege the growing illiteracy of a disturbingly high proportion of Western society, partly under the impact of television and other forms of instant communication, and few would deny that visual illiteracy has had a long history in Britain. The generous offer of £1,000, made in 1975 by Mr Edward Goodstein of Denver, Colorado, to The Spectator in order to provide an Open Art Essay Prize, was welcomed, and the competition has evoked a sufficiently large response to allow these hypotheses to be tested. A total of 134 essays was submitted, coming from a broad spectrum of the community including remote villages as well as the House of Lords, and also a surprising number from outside Europe. As previously announced, the judges were the poet and art critic Mr Edward Lucie-Smith; Professor Hamish Miles, Director of the Barber Institute in Birmingham; and Dr Roy Strong, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, together with the Editor of The Spectator, under the chairmanship of the present author.
In giving the prize the sponsor stated that he wished to encourage clarity of thought and expression in writing about the arts, and, with a few honourable exceptions, it became abundantly clear from the essays submitted that an extended campaign to this end is long overdue. Presumably the essay as a polished literary form has had its day, and poor Hazlitt, or indeed Addison and Steele, faced with certain contributions would have turned in their graves; but the judges, perhaps unfashionably, were looking for literary merit as swell as original thought.
Not surprisingly 'The Genius of John Constable R.A.' attracted the most attention (fifty-seven essays submitted), although few competitors were prepared to analyse the personal genius of the painter and the rest were content instead to enliven short biographies with an occasional purple passage. Peter Conrad's winning entry, which is published on the opposite page, was the unanimous choice of the judges. 'John Singer Sargent R.A.' proved much less popular (sixteen entries), though more straightforward than the Constable subject. In the event, the judges were disappointed that no competitor felt inclined to challenge the generally accepted view that Sargent's strength lay in his portraits and instead to propose, even with tongue in cheek, that the Boston Public Library mural was in reality his culminating masterpiece.
On the other hand the six competitors who tackled 'The British Fine Art Trade' had few inhibitions and most adopted a good-natured iconoclasm. Inside knowledge of what Picasso is said to have described as the second oldest profession in the world was self-evident, and certain of the unkinder pen portraits of leading figures in the art trade verged on the libellous. However, much more significant was the almost unanimous concern for the future of London as the centre of the world art trade in the light of the ambiguous policies of the present government.
Even fewer (four) attempted the admittedly difficult subject of 'Twenty-Five of the Most Important Paintings in Private Ownership in the United Kingdom' and their responses to the highly subjective decisions required were unashamedly personal. It is perhaps a reflection of our times that at least two of the paintings described have now passed out of private ownership, but more revealing of the vagaries of taste is that not a single painting was selected by more than one writer. Only a few decades ago the canon of generally accepted
masterpieces, in both public and private collections, was much more limited, and this is reflected by references still to the labours of the indefatigable Dr Waagen who knew the British private collections in their mid-nineteenthcentury splendour. Canaletto was understandably well represented, and one competitor solved the problem by selecting en bloc the series of views of Venice by Canaletto now in the Dining Room at Woburn Abbey. Contemporary painters also fared well and no doubt Graham Sutherland and Victor Pasmore will be pleased to learn that for one aspiring art critic at .least they were preferred to Raphael and Titian.
'The Artist and the Welfare State' attracted almost as many writers (fifty-one) as Constable and a truly remarkable series of cris de coeur ranging from a merely deep distruct of officialdom and committee patronage in general to outright, bitter hostility. Very few had a good word to say for this aspect of the Welfare State, or indeed the Arts Council of Great Britain, and the depth of emotion revealed by many competitors can only be interpreted as expressing a subconscious fear of governmental control of creative artists. Apart from the fundamental misunderstandings of the whole nature of the Welfare State, which were disturbingly common and perforce invalidated arguments based on them, the Arts Council's role as the firincipal public supporter of living artists was repeatedly the victim of strong criticism. Much of this was poorly expressed, or guilty of circular argument, and the simple truth that the more avant-garde the work the greater the proportion of the total support tending to be provided by the Arts Council was missed entirely. Nevertheless the general tenor of these essays should provide valuable 'market research data' for the Arts: Council, and it is plain that in future greater efforts will have to be made not only to support living artists but also to explain to the rest of the community in clear terms why and how this patronage is being offered on its behalf. The paymaster has always been an object of mistrust, but when it is government policy to channel all its support for living artists through a single paymaster, communications become doubly important.
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