London's new Chambers of Horror and three success stories
PAUL JOHNSON
That iniquitous tax on the poor to finance the pleasures of the rich, the National Lottery, has produced unprecedented expenditure in the world of public galleries. As one might expect, given the calibre of the people who run these institutions, and who sit on their boards of trustees, the results have been in varying degrees deplorable, though there are some comforting exceptions. The worst monstrosity, the proposed extension to the Victoria & Albert Museum — a chaotic pandemonium — has not yet been built and, from what I hear, it never will be. But most of the crop of the fatidical year 2000 is bitter if not actually poisonous fruit.
The National Portrait Gallery, once one of my London favourites, where a student of history could feel thoroughly at home, has decided to transform itself into a station on the London Underground and an enormous escalator is now its central feature. To celebrate this incongruous venture, it has been holding an exhibition of 20th-century works, supposedly portraits, which was mostly the same mixture of second-rate commercial art and modernist rubbish one now expects, and gets, at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Particularly objectionable was a vicious, and egregiously badly painted attack on Margaret Thatcher, by an American-German, with nasty jibes at the Saatchi Brothers thrown in for good measure. At the function I attended, an inept plea was made for cash donations to finance further follies. I looked around the gathering. All the seriously rich people there — not many, actually — were admirers of Lady Thatcher.
The huge and monumentally expensive changes at the British Museum were even worse than I had feared. Words fail me to say what I think about the new BM. Or rather they do not fail me. When I looked at the internal court of whatever it is, with its weird uprights — some of which are signposts, others genuine works of art — its garish double staircase, and its crissy-crossy glass ceiling, I thought at first of the kind of sub-palatial houses I have sometimes stayed in before giving a lecture in New Mexico or Arizona, where the hostess says after dinner, 'We'll take coffee, Professor Johnson, in the atrium.' Then I thought of Hitler's architect, Speer, though the comparison does him little justice. Finally, I realised what it was that the thing reminded me of: a late-1930s Hollywood musical in the studio set of the period, with Busby Berkeley's beautiful ladies longlegging it down the staircases and realising to their horror that they are in a B-movie. I could just imagine, coming round the corner in Roman Empire skirt, big-bosomed Victor Mature, closely attended by a mangy Colosseum lion.
It is not fair to criticise the Tate Modern building because it was, after all, built as a power station and still looks it in a shamefaced way. It has been converted in a manner I found confusing, but then I reflected that going to Hell probably is confusing at first, before the horrors become painfully familiar. Here, too, I felt I detected echoes of the Third Reich, in the uniforms of the attendants, unisex Blackshirts, and in the general atmosphere of Thirties totalitarian modernism. When I attempted to go into the empty restaurant, to look at the view from it, I was sharply told that it was 'fully booked'. Here was a touch of New Labour, of which Tate Modern is a perfect product, for in the unforgettable words of Lord Dome the nation is now divided into 'VIPs and the ordinary public'. I am delighted to hear that Tate Modern is attracting record mobs, even though they can't goose-step there over the still shut wonky bridge. For this black building is like an enormous, voluntary concentration camp, and it cannot be a bad idea to concentrate there all the halfeducated, mannerless, pushy, arrogant pseudo-intellectuals in the country, in one conformist herd, thereby thinning out attendance at other museums, which actually contain beautiful works of art, and where civilised people can enjoy themselves without being elbowed out of the way.
There are plenty of such places, and now we come to the credit side of the balance. The changes at the Wallace Collection are a welcome improvement and testify to the wisdom, taste and, not least, robust common sense of the ravishing lady who runs this superb collection. The new tea-room is a delight, in striking contrast to the new plastic topped Naafi affair in the British Museum. There are excellent modern bogs and a room where schoolchildren can learn about the arts from specimens collected by Wallace at a time when French painters and craftsmen still knew what they were about. Another notable success is the face-lift and extension at Dulwich, which has upgraded the old-fashioned but charming Picture Gallery with a magnificent collection of European paintings into a state-of-the-art caravanserai for fastidious and hungry connoisseurs. In both these cases the changes are extensive and were absolutely necessary, but they have been made in such a tactful way that it is hard to spot the joins. I was not surprised to learn that the architect was the same in both cases.
More important, if only because it is an addition to our pleasure, is the gradual introduction of Somerset House into the London cultural scene. This masterpiece of Chambers, perhaps the finest building in London — it certainly possesses the city's best courtyard — has languished in the hands of the heathen for many decades. The weed-bed of cars belonging to income-tax officials has now been turfed out of this blessed plot and replaced by a 12-minute cycle of coloured fountains, playing from dusk onwards and alternating in winter with a skating-rink, as in the much-loved Rockefeller Center in New York. There is a café on the terrace, and the whole of the river face above is given over to the world's largest collection of silver and gold, amassed by that amazing old boy, Sir Arthur Gilbert, who still plays tennis at 86 — do you hear that, Taki? — and who has presented his hoard to the nation. It is displayed with tremendous aplomb and cunning, and anyone who has not yet seen the massive gold and silver gates of Kiev, or Frederick the Great's fantastic snuffboxes, should hurry there. This has now been joined by exhibition galleries to accommodate a changing series of loans from the Hermitage in St Petersburg, which has three million more items than it can ever show at once. And more is to come, the motto being festina lente. The delicate negotiations behind this huge cultural enterprise have been conducted by Jacob Rothschild, who combines a good working knowledge of almost every aspect of art with excellent taste and, not least, tact. So all is not amiss in the sad world of public culture, though I am told that Labour is planning such things, as yet I know not exactly of, as 'twill be the terror of the chattering classes.
Previous page
