How to be popular in Ipswich
#569
One reads so many arts stories determined to be nothing but good news, it feels as if journalists must have signed prior agreements not to ask any awkward – or even logical – questions. When only one side of a story is covered there are appropriate terms such as “PR” or “propaganda”, but most of these pieces are presented as “news”, and written in tones of breathless wonder, as if the reporter were amazed and delighted such miracles might come to pass in our times.
One recent example was a 15 November item, presented on the Sydney Morning Herald website, titled Ipswich Art Gallery to showcase $116m Rothko painting from National Collection. It tells us how Ipswich has pulled off “an amazing coup” by securing a two-year loan of Mark Rothko’s painting, 1957/#20 from the National Gallery of Australia. This is one of only three paintings by the great American Abstract Expressionist in Australian public collections, the others being Untitled (Red) (1956), in the National Gallery of Victoria, and an early picture, Multiform (1948), in the NGA.
The crucial detail appears in the title, and in the third paragraph of the article, which is also its third sentence: “The Rothko is on loan as part of the federal government’s Sharing the National Collection program and is valued at $116 million.” If you want a big tabloid moment – and few things are more tabloid than the current SMH arts coverage – mention the millions. I hope Ipswich isn’t home to any ambitious art thieves.
It was indeed, an amazing coup. So amazing that many readers must have been alarmed at the idea of sending a $116 million painting on a two-year loan to a regional gallery, and boasting about how valuable it is. We are expected to be thrilled by this act of generosity, and suitably grateful to the NGA and the Federal Government for their Sharing the National Collection program.
The Ipswich Art Gallery presumably has all the necessary security and climate requirements, but it’s not a fortress, and the Rothko is probably the most valuable item to ever be lodged within its walls. Dollar-value aside, there is no recognition that Rothko’s paintings have extremely delicate surfaces, and should not be moved unnecessarily. The acrylic paint the artist used from 1959, has begun to seem flat and lifeless on many canvases, but there’s also a question mark over the light-sensitivity of the thinned-down oils and pigment he used in works such as the 1957 painting. It might be best to keeping such a picture in close proximity to the NGA conservation department.
In addition, by exiling the Rothko to Queensland for two years, the NGA is breaking up one of its major attractions: the seminal display of American Abstract Expressionism that was the pride & joy of founding director, James Mollison. Pollock’s Blue Poles (1952) is obviously the most important work, and probably remains the gallery’s biggest tourist attraction, but it was always a great experience to stand in the NGA’s central gallery and be surrounded by first-rate paintings by Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko, Gorky, Hofmann and others.
Canberra residents were furious when the previous NGA Director, Ron Radford, sent the Rubens and Tiepolo paintings off on long-term loan to the state galleries. They must be just as angry about this new loan program which is removing another group of favourite works from the gallery walls. While there may be an argument for sharing the “National Collection” with other Australian public museums, there’s also one for not depriving yourselves of key works that visitors might rightfully expect to see when they visit the NGA, or indeed, Canberra.
The idea of sending works from the NGA collection all over Australia was much discussed when I worked at the gallery, roughly 20 years ago. Then-director, Brian Kennedy, had promised to lend regional galleries almost anything they requested, but the program proved unsustainable. The gallery did not have the resources to undertake the conservation work, packing and freighting required to indulge these schemes. There was also concerted opposition within the gallery when it came to lending important works such as the Rothko.
Today those barriers seem to have been removed, although one dreads to think how much the NGA must be spending in terms of cash and staff hours, to fulfill this new fantasy. I suppose it seems less imposing when you’ve just blown $14 million on one shiny sculpture and another $6.62 million on an animatronic doo-dad that left everyone feeling underwhelmed. To ease the pain, the government has gifted the gallery another $11.8 million over four years to fund this exercise.
Kennedy’s loan plans were a transparent attempt to curry favour with the government of the day, and one suspects that current director, Nick Mitzevich, is singing from the same song sheet. When you’ve thrown away millions on utterly self-indulgent purchases, got involved in a scandal with the APY Artists Collective that still remains unresolved, and found one of your Council members sending out politically inflammatory texts on social media – and that’s just for starters – you need a few wins.
What could be better than spreading works from the collection all over Australia, on a long-term basis? Imagine Dr. Nick as Jean-François Millet’s The Sower, spreading seed on fertile ground. Not only does it allow you to send out press releases praising the government for supporting this visionary scheme, it removes iconic works that tend to overshadow the glories of your recent purchases and commissions. You can rely on grateful client galleries to say all the right things, and on a totally complacent media to bark on cue, roll over and play dead. Woof!
The big losers, apart from Canberra residents and NGA visitors, are the works themselves. Call me a fusspot, but there are excellent reasons why conservators are so resistant when it comes to approving major artworks for loan. Every relocation is potentially damaging to works that have grown fragile with age. Having dealt with conservation departments as a curator, I can’t believe there wasn’t staunch resistance to some of the NGA’s more spectacular loans. If so, never has such resistance been so carelessly swept aside.
The Rothko is a particularly bad choice if we are considering works that should not be ticked off in the most cavalier fashion. But if that wasn’t daring enough, one reads that the NGA has also loaned Ipswich two paintings by Agnes Martin – paintings distinguished by their extreme delicacy, pale washes of colour, tremulous pencil lines – just the thing you would pack off to the regions for a couple of years! Martin’s works have also become rare and expensive, so this is not a casual handover. Or rather, it shouldn’t have been casual.
The other truly controversial move in this NGA program was to send Monet’s Haystacks, midday (1890) to the Tweed Regional Gallery for two years, along with Morandi’s Still Life (1956). Once again, this is a long time to be depriving the gallery of iconic works that might be expected to have a permanent place on its walls. Meanwhile, Barnett Newman’s sculpture, Broken Obelisk (1963/1967/2005) – whose twin sits outside the Rothko Chapel in Houston - has been loaned to Shoalhaven Regional Gallery for five years (!) to make way for Lindy Lee’s cosmic bagel. As a final flourish, five Andy Warhol works, including Elvis (1963), have been sent to Wanneroo Regional Gallery, WA.
And that’s not counting the many important Australian works now out on long-term loan. The longer I looked at the list, the more I wondered what would be left at the NGA if this loan-fest continues. The word “curator” once implied a person who cared for the collection, but these free & easy loans are more characteristic of a self-styled entrepreneur who wants everyone to like him. Please note, a large part of a curator’s burden of care is that one is the temporary custodian of works that need to be preserved for future generations. This is the curatorial equivalent of short-selling, seeking a quick profit rather than a long-term investment.
Like many of Dr. Nick’s grand schemes, the loans are getting a positive reaction – albeit one that has been ensured by the devious strategem of sending out a positive press release. That’s basically all one has to do with a criticism-free media to guarantee widespread acclaim. Until something goes wrong.
And hey, what could possibly go wrong when one shovels off a large cross-section of rare and valuable works to regional centres across Australia for years at a time? We’ve already seen Arts Minister, Tony Burke, praising new Council member Abdul-Rahman Abdullah as the voice of “authentic leadership”, then going strangely quiet when Abdul-Rahman stepped down following his unfortunate social media outburst.
Now we find the Minister, on the NGA website, telling us that “Art is made to be seen, not kept in a dark room.” Well yeah, but many of these works were on permanent display, not in storage. Meanwhile, the $11.8 million you’ve given the NGA would have funded a lot of grass-roots programs at the regional galleries – a conspicuously neglected constituency of the Arts Ministry, while the NGA keeps splashing the cash.
There’s an air of ‘bread and circuses’ in throwing NGA masterworks at the regional galleries rather than supporting these institutions on a more workaday basis. It’s an exercise in populism rather than productivity, and like all such exercises it only requires one disastrous mishap and the whole thing takes on a very unpleasant demeanour. Is it worth the risk? It depends how desperately you want to be popular.
Rothko makes a brief appearance in this week’s art column for The Nightly, which looks at Julie Mehretu’s A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. The MCA has rolled out the red carpet for Mehretu, who is one of the big names on the contemporary art circuit, and the show reveals the reasons for her success – both positive and negative. The good bit is her extraordinary energy and commitment, the part I find hard to enjoy is the tsunami of political, transcendental explanations as to why she is all things to all people. Much of this is plain ridiculous, and only detracts from the experience of the work. It’s yet another symptom of a criticism-free world, in which mass media hacks parrot press releases and hired-gun academics provide the intellectual ornamentation.
The film being reviewed is My Favourite Cake, which is not another foodie feature, but a touching, courageous movie from Iran, about a 70-year-old woman who decides she’s had enough of feeling lonely, and goes searching for a man. The story behind the film is that the husband and wife directors are facing bans and possible imprisonment for making what might be described as a romantic comedy. It would take the a mighty effort even for the Australian media to find a heartwarming angle to this development.