End of 2011

Crow, balsa wood, 2011

I can't help thinking that Tracey Emin being appointed R.A. Professor of Drawing and 'the philanthropist' Paul Ruddock appearing on the New Year Honours List are characteristic events to conclude 2011.

I have just read "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" in which Tressell describes an extraordinary determination on the part of a majority of his Edwardian workers to support a system which offered them only impoverishment: it seems particularly relevant to contemporary times. More to my point, we seem to believe in the intrinsic virtue of the art world, as did Tressell's workers in the propriety of their 'charitable benefactors' who doled out meagre provisions when their families were literally starving, without considering that these benefactors were the very same people who reduced them to destitution. You can't help feeling that there is a parallel in the contemporary art world.

Of course, private patronage continues quietly in the background, not making a splash but keeping the diversity of art practice alive. The great service such patrons offer is never officially acknowledged, but perhaps future generations will be grateful. Such are our Owens, we just need a Barrington! This is my last rant of 2011! Hooray!

Facing Hard Times

Alienation in the City, 2011

This watercolour is another of a series responding to the economic situation. The first image was included in the Out of the Box curated exhibition 'Facing Hard Times' in Kings Lynn earlier this year (see September blog). I wrote the following for the exhibition: "The banking crisis was sparked off by irresponsible financial operators, yet the sector seems more powerful than ever, profiting from the vulnerability that persists and dictating economic policy. Sometimes I wonder if the government's primary role now is to keep us acquiescent. International finance, symbolised in these works by the impersonal, inpenetrable facade of a city landscape, has no allegiance to place or population. The 'people' are anonymous to the financier, not citizens, but only consumers - just another resource to be milked or ditched. The alienation referred to is the cultural consequence of a single guiding principle: the generation of financial profit, regardless of consequences. But we roam the streets of this anonymous city landscape, guiltily complicit thanks to our mortgages, pensions, debts, investments, our benefits, our dependence on the bank for the everyday transactions of life."
The news yesterday that David Cameron walked away from EU negotiations because he could not get an agreement to protect the UK Finance Sector just confirms my fears. The cabinet says the government is protecting UK business, as if the only valid business in the UK is that of the finance sector. Agreed it has been allowed to grow out of all proportion in relation to other industries in this country, but isn't that exactly the problem? Surely what is required is unity amongst national governments in building up defences against the power that a rogue finance sector has accrued since deregulation?
I don't pretend to have any in-depth understanding of these matters, just the gut instincts of a non-comprehending outsider, to whom it looks like the Cabinet might be in the pocket of the City. And scanning up and down the street, it looks as if the elite of the art world might be quite comfortably at home here too.