Dangerous 1• • wing
Desmond Shawe-Taylor writes to his predecessor Giles Waterfield about his first year at Dulwich
Dear Giles, A year ago when you stepped down as Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery you were kind enough to use these pages to offer me, your successor, some friendly advice. Your letter largely concerned the management of the Trustees; I would not be your most apt pupil if I didn't appreci- ate that highly seasoned pen-portraits of one's board is an indulgence for an outgo- ing rather than incoming Director. Instead, I will give you some unmetered impressions of the contrast between the academic world from which I came and that into which I have strayed.
I never realised until now quite how gloomy academics are. No doubt sages have always been churlish and scruffy, whether they be Christian hermits or pre-Socratic philosophers, but for setting a good steady down beat your modern British don takes the biscuit. This is philosophical rather than temperamental: it is a point of principle never to impute a noble motive when a base one will do as well; to suggest that the glo- ries of civilisation (especially Western civili- sation in which we Westerners take such an unaccountable and sinister interest) arose either because of some diabolical cunning or freak mutation in a fundamentally malevolent human spirit.
This mind-set does not obviously predis- pose its owner towards a sensitive appreci- ation of art-forms originally intended to produce pleasure: it's like expecting Dio- genes to become a wine writer. When I started as an art historian the obligatory negative opening was only there to offset a positive conclusion (13loggs has been dis- missed as a derivative dauber, but in fact . '), rather like pushing a float under water to make it jump into the air. Now the pattern is reversed (Bloggs has been revered as a great artist, but in fact .. .'), which is more akin to the sport of pushing shopping trolleys into canals.
The contrast between the miserable sol- vency of Nottingham University and the sunny poverty of Dulwich Picture Gallery is disorientating: it is like wandering into a particularly glutinous episode of The Wal- tons. This optimism is, of course, your lega- cy and is understandable in a small, thriving independent institution enjoying the mag- nificently loyal support of private benefac- tors. It is like a moral fable extolling the virtues of honest poverty and thrifty self- sufficiency, of learning to ask with dignity and accept with gratitude. In principle I admire it, of course, but it takes some get- ting used to in practice. I am an academic after all; I've been with the Essenes.
Suddenly I am the grouch, struggling to edit the negatives from my speech and still find something to say. If diplomacy does not come naturally there are compensa- tions to the role of Director of an unbu- reaucratic outfit. Things can be made to happen. In retrospect, the academic's pos- ture of embittered powerlessness is actually very therapeutic. It is certainly more relax- ing than dangerous living at Dulwich. I remember your bravado habit of proceed- ing with exhibitions before a penny had been raised to pay for them. This summer we have upped the ante but moving into sculpture. The garden will be filled with works by Stephen Cox, including a wave the size of a squash court measured out in granite uprights and ridden by two granite catamarans — a kind of organic Stone- henge with more precarious columns. I'm sure we will whip it up like a marquee.
My chief complaint at universities is their contempt for demand: the numbers apply- ing for a given subject is the last thing taken into consideration when it comes to funding the relevant department. Universi- ty committees have an instinctive antipathy to popular subjects like art history, which they suspect of being enjoyable. It is by making it as disagreeable as any other that art historians are presently ensuring their subject's long-term survival.
I preached popularism and now I must stand by the public's verdict; the trouble is they are so difficult to predict and so easy to count.
Not that this has been a problem during this last year when we have broken atten- dance records. What astonishes me is that almost everybody comes for exhibitions or special educational events. What is wrong with the permanent collection? As you know better than anyone, the attendances for museums when they first opened in the 19th century were prodigious. What makes us now so blasé about masterpieces? Every time I walk round the gallery I am remind- ed of the miracle of public museums. To take an example at random, our Rem- brandt 'Girl at the Window' is one of the 40 or so paintings which get into every sur- vey of his work. It can be seen face to face, without glass, in ideal light for as short or long a time as a visitor wishes in a quiet and uncrowded (damn it) room. There is no damage or repaint: this is what Rem- brandt wanted us to see. The directness, the authenticity, the sheer luxury of access, is unbeatable — impossible — in any other art form. It's like hearing Romeo and Juliet in the original Globe with David Garrick and Peggy Ashcroft in the title roles.
If one set up a fountain in Dulwich Vil- lage flowing with Montrachet, offering beaker-hire at a modest £3 (f1.50 conces- sion and free on Fridays) one would not expect the venture to require aggressive marketing. Why does Rembrandt (and Rubens, Gainsborough, Poussin and Wat- teau)? Do the public prefer hearing about paintings to looking at them? Is this the Puritan preference for thoughts over things? The assumption in England is that an idea, however bad, is intrinsically and self-evidently superior to a lunch, however good. So paintings must be de-materialised and sold as historical documents, as if all art aspired to the quality of an archive. In America now they refer to pre-Impression- ist paintings as 'historic', meaning not that they are epoch-making but that their exhibits are too old to be objects of beauty in their own right.
They say the art of conducting depends upon realising that you aren't actually doing A Girl at the Window' by Rembrandt anything. Gallery directors should realise that whatever exhibitions, lectures, guides and labels they produce the Rembrandts will still be there, quietly waiting for anyone with the time and sense to enjoy them.
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