Exhibitions 2
The British Art Show 1990 (McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, till 11 March)
Glasgow's own goal
Giles Auty
here are times in a critic's life when the provision by a public gallery of a darkened room where one might count quietly to a thousand or so could prove something of a blessing. This was one of the thoughts which traversed my mind last Week while visiting the refurbished McLel- lan Galleries in Glasgow. The spaces there- in are majestic and have been most beauti- fully restored at a cost of £8.5 million. What a shame, then, that they should have been used to house the sadly misguided British Art Show 1990 as an inaugural exhibition. To score an own goal is unfor- tunate at any time; to do so, as it were, from the kick-off is a quite spectacular blunder. Who was responsible for this extraordinary setback? The catalogue for the exhibition speaks in stirring terms of the start of a new decade. Why therefore has the ball been hacked backwards with such ferocity from the kick-off, beyond the reach of the home team's startled goalkeeper, Glasgow's director of museums and galleries, Julian Spalding? It is an open secret that the latter did not Share the organisers' enthusiasm for their Show. Nor did quite a number of the rest of us, judging from the reactions of other critics present at the opening. It is Mr Spalding's reasonable view that the pur- Pose of these British art shows — of which this is the third — is to display important trends, which can be observed otherwise only in London's commercial galleries, to the people of the provinces. Mr Spalding intends to repair this area of omission with a show he has got together himself at short notice. This show of important art, rather cheekily entitled The Great British Art Exhibition, follows on directly from the present one at the same venue, running from 27 March to 9 May.
What, then, of the current exhibition? With a handy budget of £250,000 at their disposal, the three selectors, exhibition organisers Caroline Collier from the South Bank and Andrew Nairne from Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, plus sometime perform- ance artist David Ward, saw or considered one thousand or more artists under the age of 35 to arrive at the fortunate 40 who were chosen finally. God alone knows what some of the non-selected must have been like if they were any less talented than the late David Robilliard whose art on view takes triteness to depths which might have remained unexplored otherwise. In a show composed largely of similarly empty artis- tic conceits I would prefer not to single out the names of too many of the living contributors. Yet clearly some people, somewhere — if only the exhibition's selectors — believe they have set before the rest of us a veritable feast of significant art with which to herald the Nineties. What is it these good folk find so fascinating about, say, a simulated coal-bunker, a few burnt dustbin lids, a row of standard filing cabinets opened to display off-cuts of carpeting, an installation of what look to be industrial display units, or a few crude monochromes of animals' heads? One distinguishing feature of The British Art Show 1990 is that most of its artefacts are supposedly 'about ideas'. Whether what is actually on view is capable of expressing ideas of any kind adequately is an aspect with which few seem to bother any longer. And what of many of these 'ideas' in the first place? Are they of a nature liable to engage or interest us in the slightest? It seems to me that those young artists who have had but three or four ideas of any kind so far in their waking lives tend to treasure each one of these disprop- ortionately. There is no earthly reason, however, why any of the rest of us should do the same. Far from being about the concerns of the Nineties, much of the present show is a direct throwback to the early Seventies: to 'concept' art and mini- malism, in fact. Why do we have to endure another rash of this anew when it has been so clearly demonstrated for years that younger artists are returning in droves to more traditional concerns in painting and sculpture? Why has this most central and significant aspect of the art of our time been ignored completely?
Readers of this column will be familiar with my regular warnings about the dan- gers of that weird and paradoxical phe- nomenon of our age: liberal totalitarian- ism. Nowhere is this phenomenon more active or virulent than in the world of the visual arts. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that liberal intolerance in its most self-righteous form has become a necessary
'Heariwood, 198Y, oil on canvas, by Jeffrey Dennis precondition to employment and advance- ment in publicly funded arts administration in Britain and elsewhere in the West. It is an infestation which manifests itself most clearly in exhibitions such as The British Art Show 1990. No matter how dreary and visually unexciting the show, no matter how unfavourable the reactions of critics or of the general public, the organisers will continue to believe that they alone are right, that they alone are fit arbiters of contemporary taste or significant culture.
These are notions with which I and, since I began writing about art 15 years ago, increasing numbers of others self- evidently disagree. Odious though they may find the comparison, the position of many arts administrators from the public sector strikes me as oddly analogous at present to that of Romania's secret police in recent times; both have been fighting rearguard actions against manifestations of genuine radicalism with all the arrogance and desperation of those long accustomed to unquestioned power. This British art show reveals just how urgently public sector arts administration and the attitude it engenders are overdue for a serious springclean. As one passes yet more rows of monochrome canvases, lightweight ab- stract essays, portentously captioned photographs, cryptic installations and other utterly mundane objects one realises that the greater danger of The British Art Show 1990 is that some might even see it as
exemplary: the blind leading those who have yet to be blinded. The artists' state- ments which form a large part of the exhibition catalogue's text make tragic reading: 'I don't have a strong belief in anything . . . It's even useful to do the worst thing you can think of. . I suppose I try to feel I can do what I want.'
How very cruelly the guides and promo- ters of these young artists have failed them.
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