DIARY
BARRY HUMPHRIES Readers of a recent New Yorker are exhorted to visit Gallery 292 and admire the 'sensuousness' of some photographs by the evocatively named Fawn Potash. Ms Potash — we can, I think, be certain she is a Ms — takes pictures of old books, vari- ously arranged, and illuminated by moon and lamplight. Some of the actual books caught by the Potash Pentax are also on display at the gallery and they have titles like Insect Folk and The Ways of the Six Footed. The idea of exhibiting an artist's subject alongside his work could be amus- ingly extended: lots of Granny Smiths and Golden Delicious on rumpled napery at a Cezanne show, for example, or Princess Diana fidgeting on a chair all day long at a Brian Organ retrospective. I suppose Ms Potash's prints are fairly expensive, in line with the trend to sanctify the snap. In my youth it was only the grade A bore who showed you his photographs and most peo- ple wisely gave him a wide berth, but now photographs are an 'art form'; there are galleries and 'spaces' devoted to their dis- play and museums eager to acquire them, the pricier the better. Somewhere else in New York is an exhibition by another pho- tographer called Darrel Ellis, who the New Yorker's valiant photography columnist reminds us is 'perhaps best known as a favourite model of Robert Mapplethorpe's'. Could this be the same Robert Map- plethorpe whose snaps were recently flaunted at the horrible Hayward? Last year, in the wake of a crocodile of school kids, I glimpsed some of his imagery and, as far as I could see, his models generally favoured the camera with the least identifi- able parts of their anatomies. It would take a very observant member of New York's proctological community positively to recognise and put a name to most of Mr Mapplethorpe's models, though Darrel Ellis — in a moment of perversity perhaps — must have grudgingly consented to a mug shot. I was scribbling this diary yester- day in an Alpine tea room, rather pompously reflecting on the silliness of most photograph-as-an-art-form twaddle, when my wife spotted a woman she knew who in turn introduced us to her compan- ion, an apple-cheeked, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed nonagenarian. Before I knew it I had dropped my coffee cup, risen, and was grasping the firm, warm hand of Henri Cartier Bresson.
Inotice that in quality papers and period- icals the compulsive use of the adverb `arguably' is at last falling off. Why these words suddenly take a grip on the language like a kind of killer mistletoe and then with- er and recede is a semantic mystery. 'Basi- cally' has still got a stranglehold, and even amongst schoolchildren it is more virulent than head-lice. Of course, 'arguably' was always very useful for reviewers, because it exonerated them from any responsibility for their opinions. 'Here's my point of view,' it said, 'but if I'm dead wrong, or making a complete prick of myself, then I'm quite happy to embrace a contrary view of the matter — arguably.' Meanwhile `famously' is gaining ground amongst joumos who are famously addicted to mod- ish or slovenly coinages.
Iam in a mountainous region of Europe, walking daily, attacking my next fictional jeu d'esprit — and eating chocolates and melted cheese. Apart from the Hotel des Alpes, the most imposing building in our valley, with the most spectacular views, is a hotel for the blind. In the village and its environs, charming and hospitable Greeks, Portuguese and Belgians dine elaborately in each others, azalea-infested chalets and one rarely meets a real Swiss. The shop- keepers and ski instructors are the only conspicuous aborigines. They are dairy farmers in real life, and the effluvium of sane cows is never far away. Dung bleeds through the snow like mustard stains on a napkin. Elsewhere, on pine-girt walks, the frozen verges are incised with the graffiti of yellow urinations. The man formerly known as Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rota, but popularly called Balthus — one of the best and most expensive artists in the world paints ever more fastidiously. It is said that the great man comes down to his studio at Rossiniere every morning, after due delib- eration applies the tip of a pigmented brush to the inside thigh of a painted nymphet, and then retires to bed. Outside in their snowbound Bentleys and Mercedes Range Rovers, we imagine, lurk the big art dealers of Europe, impatiently chain-smok-
`Only one entrance, so what happens if there's a fire?'
ing and reading Whispering Cedars Falling on Horses. Ever and anon they gaze up at a window of a beautiful 18th-century chalet hoping for a thumbs-up sign from Mrs Balthus, but they may be waiting a long time. The artist is 88 and not in showroom condition. The millennium may dawn before another Balthus bonanza slides off the assembly line and into their grasp.
Ihope that the arts lobbyists who are agi- tating for squillions of lottery money to go to ethnic minorities are not just thinking of blacks — though I fear that may well be their racist 'agenda'. What about the Irish, or Britain's artistic Japanese, Cypriot and even New Zealand minorities? Don't they all need cash for river dancing, origami folding, bouzouki practice and creative nasal tattooing? What about, for that mat- ter — me! If my fellow-Australians in the United Kingdom really thought there was a quid in it, and so long as they didn't mind being called ethnic minorities, what latent artistry would spring to life? What rock operas would be crafted, what sonnets honed, what moccasins stitched, what macrames woven, what didgeridoos whit- tled from seasoned English oak!
Mr Mohamed Al Fayed, the merchant and sometimes vilely traduced philan- thropist, performs most of his good deeds anonymously. A couple of years ago I was conscripted on Christmas Eve to distribute Harrods largesse to the homeless. At mid- night we cruised the freezing London streets in an olive-green van searching for likely recipients. In a doorway in the Strand I spotted a bundle of rags and gingerly approached it with soup, chicken and blan- kets. The bundle convulsed and the beard- ed countenance of a Big Issue senior sales executive glared up at me. 'Not another f--ing mince-pie!' he rasped, and went back to sleep.
Now our Christmas cards are a gaudy mulch, I have not yet dared ask the video company how well my Les Patterson having a stand up on stage at the Whitehall The- atre fared in the shops. Something tells me there may be exiguous stocks still available. A friend surprised me by sapiently observ- ing that if the video had been slightly clean- er it might have proved offensive. It was redeemed, she said, by a bracing excessive- ness, a therapeutic, even healing scatology. Perhaps, as I've always suspected, there is such a thing as holistic filth. Surely videos are the textbooks and livres galants of our epoch. Soon they may even be tastefully arranged and lensed by Fawn Potash.
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