Amazingly, the CEO of Transfield, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis has resigned his position as chairman of the Biennale and announced that Transfield’s sponsorship will cease after this year. That gives the SydBi a good part of two years to find a replacement. But there is the distinct possibility that it will not find sufficient funds that are politically correct enough for some the artists invited, in which case the festival shrinks to the size of government funding or folds entirely. Obviously, I will hardly bat an eye; in fact can only hope more of these miserable doctrinaire exercises in diplomacy meet the same fate. May their petty political agendas be their undoing.
But let’s look at the vexing issue of dirty money seeking respectability in arts patronage. It’s an old, old story of course. Where would Western Art be without a Medici, corrupt Pope or Cardinal (usually from one of the mafia-like ‘noble’ families in any case) feudal warlord, pirate slave trader and missionary, spurious aristocracy or church, robber baron, corporate raider or state-sponsored oligarch? Don’t look too closely at the sleazy business history of Tate & Lyle for instance, you might want to boycott The Tate, mate. But since the practice is so widespread and longstanding, is there any point making a stand in Transfield’s case? Libia Castro et al claim that ‘We see our participation in the Biennale as an active link in a chain of associations that leads to the abuse of human rights. For us, this is undeniable and indefensible’ (from their Statement of Withdrawal) but is ‘a chain of associations’ really enough to implicate them in the alleged abuse? Any number of such chains may be constructed; the degrees of separation quickly lead to all sorts of unwelcome conclusions about materials, funds, preferences and favours, for instance. While the link via Transfield to detention centres is there, it is by no means clear that it is the most obvious or relevant. Nor does the five’s withdrawal necessarily make it so, although Mr. Belgiorno-Nettis was clearly persuaded. While it publicises the issue of refugee detention centres in Australia, it firstly draws attention to the artists’ sacrifices as a moral stand, but one amongst many others in any subsidised cultural activity. Ultimately the topicality of detention centres looks a little too opportunistic, a little meretricious on their part. It will do a lot more for their reputations than it will for Australia’s detention centres.
Consider the issue more generally: does art resulting from such sponsorship necessarily refer to the social standing of the sponsor? Are the kind of links insisted upon by Castro et al actually in the work, or part of what the artwork says? Well, not in any direct or explicit sense – we don’t see The Sistine Chapel ceiling for instance, as denoting or expressing Pope Julius’s battlefield exploits and treacherous politics. There are those that struggle even to reconcile it with Roman Catholic doctrine, then or now. We don’t see Velasquez or Van Dyck merely as reflections of a doomed absolutism, the whim of decadent kings. We don’t see Emil Nolde’s mythic primitivism as necessarily endorsing Nazi ideology, although Nolde was an early member of the Nazi party. We don’t see Abstract Expressionism as merely the tool of the CIA in countering socialism, although increasingly it has become obvious that concerted promotion of the style was seen as a vital cultural initiative by Washington’s covert intelligence. The truth is what an art work says or refers to is not the same thing as its social or political linkage. There are plenty of poor or bad artworks that have just as much social significance (such as paintings by Hitler or Churchill) but are of negligible interest as art. When we look at art, we are interested in very particular ways it refers to its objects and these are intimately tied to definition of the objects themselves. In this sense art’s ‘messages’ or content are seldom clear cut or obvious – are valued as much for the challenge to interpretation as compliance with our more workaday world. In this sense art is never the efficient servant of politics, is ever dissenting, evading the party line.
On the other hand, the myth of some pristine world of ‘pure’ formal values, of traditional givens and a self-evident future are hardly to be endorsed either. There are always (and already, as they say) vested interests, market advantages to art’s nearest and dearest. Ideals get soiled with use, exchanged and amended. No one starts from scratch, although that’s not to say they don’t try or that it’s not worth trying. Artists are free to revise and free to revise what there is to revise. But this does not make their efforts any more pure or virtuous. At best it declares a market niche, an acceptable distinction. But if the artist cannot avoid some connection with reprehensible business forces and cannot find sanctuary in formal rigour, where does this leave a righteous social programme? It seems to me the artist has to choose between politics and art. If a social programme is really a priority, then this is better pursued outside of art – as politics! If the artist is convinced of artistic means then they must accept that political ends are unlikely to be served efficiently. But trying to make a point through administrative channels, such as the sponsorship of the SydBi satisfies neither, is ultimately naïve and counter-productive.
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