The politics of art

(or, my title, Who Decides What Art Is?)

May 14, 2004

Artists, curators and critics argue that all art is political. But should public money be used to support artists with a political message, especially one that offends parts of the community? Gabriella Coslovich reports.

Artists have a habit of offending people, of tackling explosive political issues, of defying authority and challenging the mainstream. From Picasso's Guernica, one of history's great anti-war protests, to Ivan Durrant's dumping of a freshly slaughtered cow on the forecourt of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1975 - his ghastly response to senseless killing and the Vietnam War - to John Heartfield's scathing photomontages of Hitler, art has shocked, provoked and riled governments across the political spectrum.

Artists, curators and critics argue that all art is political - the status quo is either reinforced, rejected or rendered invisible. But should public money be used to support artists with a manifestly political message, especially one that offends and alienates a large sector of the community? The question has been fiercely debated this week in the wake of the controversy surrounding an art installation in a Flinders Street shopfront-artspace, funded by the Melbourne City Council.

Until last week, Azlan McLennan was a relatively unknown, 28-year-old, final-year art student at the Victorian College of the Arts. But his work, Fifty Six, guaranteed him the sort of notoriety and publicity money can't buy. The controversy ignited by his work was being covered in newspapers as far afield as Christchurch, London and Jerusalem.

McLennan's installation - featuring the Israeli flag and a debatable list of statistics about the plight of Palestinians since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 - was removed before it was completed. The furore that erupted around the work left the director of the art space, Mark Hilton, no choice but to end the exhibition.

Many in Melbourne's Jewish community were outraged by McLennan's work and believed it to be anti-Semitic - a charge the artist denies.

In the ensuing media storm, Melbourne city councillor Kimberley Kitching declared the work wasn't art, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said he wasn't sure whether it was art, and Arts Minister Mary Delahunty ironically declined to comment. This is despite her record of championing freedom of speech and knocking Opposition arts spokesman Andrew Olexander's frequent outbursts against art he deems unsavoury.

The resulting ruckus was a windfall for Kitching, who seized the opportunity to push her public art agenda. Kitching, the chair of the council's public art committee, argued that Melbourne's ratepayers did not want to fund "political art", nor art that leant towards the obscure and avant-garde. "We should fund art that the majority of the rate base don't have a problem with," says Kitching, who is a member of the Labor Party. "We should direct funding towards art that enhances the city's reputation."

Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of the artistic merit of McLennan's work, it is not the first time that "art" has triggered such heated discussion. Last year's Melbourne Festival bete noire was the Belgian theatre production I Am Blood, which Olexander puffed mightily against. This year, it was indigenous artist Gordon Hookey and his savage lampooning of the chummy relationship between Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bush that had Olexandar fuming. Hookey's three-panel work is on view at the National Gallery of Victoria, at Federation Square.

So how does the NGV deal with works that are potentially controversial? Case by case, says director Gerard Vaughan.

"In no way will we condone censorship, but we do need to draw the line occasionally."

Despite Olexander's calls for Hookey's painting to be removed, Vaughan stood firm. The painting, titled Sacred nation, scared nation, indoctrination, is still on display and is now flanked by a video featuring an interview with the artist.

"Our position is straightforward," says Vaughan. "As a publicly funded art gallery, we must be apolitical, but we defend our right to display work by individual artists that does have a political message."

So where does the NGV draw the line? While Hookey's flagrant politics have not been censored, early this year the antifashion statements of '70s British punk doyenne Vivienne Westwood were, to put it generously, toned down. One of Westwood's garments, Destroy Bondage Shirt, from 1976, had been turned around so that a large swastika on the design was not visible. Vaughan this week confirmed that the gallery had decided to conceal the swastika from public view, following a complaint from the grand-daughter of an elderly visitor who had suffered under the Nazis and found, even in the context of 1970s punk, the appearance of the swastika upsetting.

"This became an issue for us because, on the one hand, as historians of the taste and visual culture of the punk movement, this was an aspect that needed to be recorded," Vaughan says. "On the other hand, it had caused great offence to a visitor, and we were deeply sympathetic.

"We can't go out of our way to offend people in the community, because we are a public institution. We need to be courageous and we should not shrink from displaying work that is provocative . . . But they are very, very treacherous waters for any gallery director to navigate," Vaughan says.

Just how treacherous the director of a much smaller, much less significant artspace discovered last week. Mark Hilton, who has directed 24seven in Flinders Street for three years, walked into a media storm last Tuesday as he arrived back in Melbourne from Japan.

Driving home with his father from Tullamarine airport, he made a detour past the Flinders Street site and was astonished to see Opposition Leader Robert Doyle giving a press conference out front. The statistics quoted by McLennan's work were widely disputed and the artist admits to one mistake - his reference to the "200,000 settlements" that had been created since 1948 should have read 200,000 "settlers".

"This error we acknowledge and take full responsibility for, but in no way apologise for the creation or the intention of the art work," McLennan wrote, in an email to The Age. His intention was to present "an alternative to the perceived pro-Israeli bias taken by the Liberal Government".

To make matters worse, the person who was directing the space in Hilton's absence had forgotten to notify the Melbourne City Council that McLennan's art work was potentially controversial - as 24seven's contract requires it to do.

Kitching told The Age that the breach was so serious that 24seven should have its $8000 annual funding rescinded. So far, that has not happened, although Hilton does not like his chances of getting a grant next year.

He maintains it was his decision to close the offending show: "If the statistics were right, then we would have left the show as is."

Inaccuracy in such a charged political work was indefensible, says the NGV's contemporary art curator, Jason Smith. "Factual errors are insupportable if an artist wants to make such a strident statement about the horrors of war and conflict."

However, Smith is equally critical of politicians decreeing what is and isn't art. "On the one hand, people in the public realm will say, �this is not art', and when they are asked �what is art?', they will say, �that's not for me to decide', but they have already made a judgement."

If anything, Smith is surprised that more Australian artists aren't engaging in political commentary, particularly given the current climate of global conservatism and the horrors of the Iraq war: "Good political art is very important art, especially in an atmosphere of conservatism."

While many in Melbourne's Jewish community were insulted by McLennan's work, the visual arts community was outraged by the Melbourne City Council's knee-jerk response to the controversy and the threat of changes to funding for public art. As news of the Melbourne controversy spread, the head of the Sydney-based National Association for the Visual Arts, Tamara Winikoff, sent an urgent letter to Mayor John So asking to speak to him about proposed changes to art funding guidelines.

"Art is not valium. One of the legitimate roles of art is to stimulate public reflection and debate about the key issues of our time," Winikoff says in a media release.

The backlash from the arts community had the council toning down its message. At an informal meeting on Tuesday, the views of councillors with a more measured response to the 24seven incident prevailed.

This week, the council sent out its 2005 arts grants program with an addendum noting two main changes: council decisions on the allocation of arts grants will now be made in open sessions, and a community representative will be appointed to the council's cultural arts advisory board. But the arts program otherwise remains intact.

Meanwhile, other art offerings by McLennan will be on show at the Next Wave Festival, which opens next week and is funded by the council and the State Government.

Su Baker, the head of art at the VCA, where McLennan studies, says she would be "very sorry if people were personally offended by Azlan's work".

"There is a lot of very robust opinion in the world - particularly in the art world - and somehow in a democracy we have to negotiate these opposing points of view. If we censor opinion to such an extent that artists can't speak, then things go underground and we could end up with a very oppressive situation."

But what of McLennan's Flinders Street installation? How does one assess its artistic merits? Chris McAuliffe, artistic director of the University of Melbourne's Ian Potter Museum, sees it as strategically weak.

"It's art because that's the claim it made for itself, but it probably didn't have the sophistication needed to negotiate the politics effectively.

"I think the people who are attacking the work are acting very simplistically as well, but they have been invited to react simplistically."

Emma Kranz, co-director of Span Galleries in Flinders Lane, questioned the work's artistic credentials.

"You can't really define art in a single sentence . . . but I think in the end you have to look at the intention of the piece, and was that to create art or to put a political view and call it art?

"If somebody brought me work into the gallery that racially vilified the Aboriginals or any other group, I would not show it." Leading Melbourne gallery director Anna Schwartz was also unimpressed: "It's certainly not Guernica, is it? I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe in intellectual rigour. It's not enough that it just takes its location and proclaims itself as art."

In the end, who decides what is art? Politicians? Can they really be expected to offer an objective view on art, especially since artists typically critique those in power?

Even those in the art world who disagree on the merits of McLennan's work, agree that the Australian governments' traditionally hands-off approach to funding, with artistic peers rather than politicians assessing the value of work, must be preserved.

If anything, the advice of contemporary art experts should be sought more vigorously by local governments, says Schwartz: "Then we would not be having this discussion in particular, nor, hopefully, the endless discussion about the very dubious quality of most of our urban art works."

Marcus Westbury, artistic director of the Next Wave Festival, fears for a society where funding of the arts is linked to the politics of the day: "We would all be in a much sadder situation... it would lead to bland and boring art and it would be worse for the community."

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/13/1084289821310.html