Art
Petnajst-trideset (15-30)
From Slovenia, Giles Auty reflects that art, like tennis, needs clear-cut rules At the risk of straining the credulity of readers and the patience of my editor, this week finds me in Rogaska Slatina playing in the 16th world tennis championships for professional journalists. If you cannot locate this venue immediately either in your mind or on a map, it lies in Slovenia not far from the border with Croatia. The peace and serenity of early September in this region almost defies description. Of course, much the same applies to what peo- ple are doing to each other somewhat fur- ther to the south in former Yugoslavia.
Slovenia is a country of roughly the same size as Wales but with a population of just two million. It boasts regions and towns of outstanding and even unique beauty — the limestone Karst, for instance. The early September weather approaches perfection and everywhere there is evidence of mellow fruitfulness: vines, pumpkins, apples, hops. The tournament is played on continental clay courts which tend to upset the ability to time the ball even of good players from elsewhere. I do not expect the tennis to make major inroads into time set aside for reflection. This said, it is the belief of some competitors that the age and levels of artic- ulacy of certain former winners of this tournament suggested they delivered papers rather than wrote them.
As you would imagine, many of the assembled journalists write or broadcast about sport. I suspect I may be the only art critic present. Although my surname is one of the shorter, it seems to provide peculiar difficulties of spelling and pronunciation for the organisers; this may be because the letters c, j, k and z do not feature in it either prominently or in sequence.
With some time on my hands I have asked myself not for the first time why, as a person of strong artistic inclination, I have found such keen pleasure all my life In playing sport. As I have grown older, the answer has become clearer: in marked con- trast to the world of contemporary art in which I work, most of the sports I have played have clear-cut rules. Thus tennis provides a searching test of technique and character as well as athleticism. But how big a role do the two former aspects play today in the making of reputations in living art? In spite of the dissent of a few, the shallow, dishonest and modish has been praised so frequently in contemporary art that many think no rules of any kind can be applied any longer.
Most young artists with whom I speak seem to believe this by now and have become cynical and disillusioned in conse- quence. They think success in art is simply a lottery and so lose the incentive to devel- op 'and hone accepted skills. By contrast, the general clarity of rules in sport pro- motes mutual respect — among amateur players, at least. Although some sharp practice exists, results in sport generally promote a feeling that justice is done. What a difference from the art world!
Yet art, too, could be much more reas- suring to a human race currently in greater need of confirmation than destruction of values. In the village of Olimje near the town of Atomske Toplice which, like Rogaska, is a spa, the carved and gilded wooden figures behind the altar in a paint- ed, baroque church reveal a level of crafts- manship and artistry all but extinct in the present-day world. Yet they were the work not of professional artists but of monks. Their subjects concern what were thought of once as the great verities of human exis- tence which, like the great truths of art, have been submerged for a long time now under seas of questioning. Indeed, almost every worthwhile thing in art is queried or deconstructed today, yet little or nothing is offered by way of answers.
When we look at the European art of previous centuries, clear hierarchies have been established based on the skill, imagi- nation and talent of artists. These hierar- chies did not occur by accident. In days gone by, artists learned their business from acknowledged practitioners — the tennis coaches of art — and practised daily in stu- dios rather than out on the courts. Some- times those of less obvious or flamboyant skills triumphed in the end through sheer application — just as in tennis.
The setting of personal targets is one of the pleasures of sport. Those who are not content to lose can work out for themselves or be shown by others how to improve their performance. The saddest aspect for me of visiting studio complexes full of young artists is that none seem to have the slight- est idea what to do now or how to improve their work in the future. Would adding bits of old wallpaper to their latest productions unlock the door to fame and fortune? With the silliness of current critical criteria it might very easily.
In the meantime, nearly every such young artist I see is hopelessly adrift, ill- advised, appallingly taught, sold out by the rottenness of our fashionable system. Even when they seem supportive, modish critics and curators are often the undoing of such artists by persuading them to base a whole lifetime's activity on the flimsiest and most transient of foundations. Many artists I see bemoan how little the unjust world of capi- talism is doing for them, style themselves as Marxists and delude themselves meanwhile that their art deals in startling realities.
At Rogaska, a senior, well-qualified and extremely charming Hungarian journalist I played against told me he earned the equivalent of just £300 a month. He was five when the last world war ended and he explained with sadness but no self-pity how the best years of his life had been taken away from him by living under the dead hand of communism. To meet such a per- son is a privilege, but it is September now and I must return to the anarchy and unre- ality of the world of living art in the West.
Previous page
