Tracey and the Giant Tuna

# 583

With apologies to Thomas Benjamin Kennington’s ‘The Toy Shop’ (1891)

In 1973, when James Mollison bought Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles (1952) for Australia’s national collection, the local press greeted the purchase with howls of outrage. The famous Daily Mirror headline read: “DRUNKS DID IT!”, suggesting that Pollock and his mates knocked up the picture during a drunken party in the studio. Such stories fed into widely-held suspicions that Mollison had been conned by the tricky yanks into paying a record price of $1.3 million (US$1.9 million) for an abstract squiggle. To readers who knew nothing about Pollock, Abstract Expressionism, or art in general, that figure seemed impossible to justify.

Blue Poles became a symbol of the extravagances of the Whitlam government, feeding into the media narrative that would undermine Labor’s hold on power. Its successor, the Fraser government, would impose strict limitations on Mollison’s spending, ensuring there would be no art-generated scandals on its watch.

One feels almost nostalgic for those days of dark philistinism, when considering the way the NGA spends its money – or rather, your money – nowadays. We have seen an inconceivable $14 million thrown at a shiny metal sculpture by Lindy Lee, finished in an amazingly shoddy manner; and a further $6.67 million invested in a giant-sized animatronic doodad by American artist, Jordan Wolfson that will probably never re-emerge from storage. And that’s only the money the NGA admits to spending. The Wolfson ran up a further bill in paying for the techies who had to be constantly on hand in case the thing broke down, as it did during a VIP preview.

Aside from these two biggies, there has been a regular, casual outlay of funds on contemporary works by the most fashionable Australian and international artists, who show at the most fashionable galleries. Another standout is Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhalepapa, a hot air balloon that cost $822,000, raising questions about storage and durability.

Under Nick Mitzevich’s inspired leadership there have been few major purchases that demonstrate much initiative or originality. Dr. Nick seems to treat artists as if they were labels, feeling that he simply has to have a work by A or B, no matter what the price. Happily, the NGA has an acquisition budget that enables him to realise his contemporary art fantasies, just as it allowed his predecessor, Ron Radford, to acquire truckloads of Indian temple art, even though a sizeable amount had to be returned.

One of Dr. Nick’s keynote purchases is a “magnificent” bronze sculpture by Tracey Emin, called When I Sleep (2018), reputedly acquired for $1.1 million from uber dealer, White Cube. Now installed in the NGA Sculpture Garden, it looks as if the artist has squeezed a crude reclining figure out of a piece of clay or plasticine and handed it over to the foundry. Try as I might, I can’t see anything special about this boneless lump.

Now we find that one Tracey masterpiece was insufficient for Dr. Nick and his gang. Last month, the NGA unveiled a painting called I watched myself die and come alive, purchased for £1,120,000 (AUD $2.261 million) from Belgian uber dealer, Xavier Hufkens. On a mostly bare canvas of 2 X 2.8 m the artist has used a dry brush to draw an outline figure of herself in red, lying on a bed. The furniture in the room and a shadowy blob one assumes to be the Grim Reaper, are drawn in black. It looks as if Emin thought about drawing a detailed pattern on the carpet to offset the overall blankness, but got bored and managed only one corner.

I know it’s not exactly scientific, but speaking as a non-artist, when I admire a painting it’s usually because it lies far beyond the scope of my own skill and imagination. I watched myself die’ made me feel as if I could pick up a brush and knock off something comparable, if not better, in about ten minutes. Did no-one from the NGA have that same sneaking feeing?

If we are to believe curator, David Greenhalgh, the unfinished rug is a metaphor that implies the artist’s life is “only part-way through”, as she battles “aggressive bladder cancer”. The painting is a “brave and highly personal” exploration of suffering. We’re also told the work “subverts traditonal representations of the female nude, expressing fear, vulnerability and desire through gestural, fluid linework.”

It's almost quaint to find a curator still telling us how a work “subverts traditional representations”. This is such a cliché of contemporary art appreciation it should come with a trigger warning.

The bit that’s undeniably real and terrible is Emin’s struggle with bladder cancer, which one would wish on no human being. She was diagnosed with the illness in 2020, and underwent major surgery. Late last year she was given the all-clear, and made a Dame in the King’s Birthday Honours List.

There can be few Dames who tell stories about how their urostomy bag exploded in a Chanel boutique, and “went all over the floor and my clothes.” For Emin it is part of the overarching ‘victim’ narrative that has fuelled her entire career. She’s a poor working-class girl from Margate, she’s been abused and raped, she’s had abortions, failed relationships and periods of depression… bladder cancer was the apogee of this litany of woe.

On the other hand, she’s one of today’s most internationally successful artists. A monarchist and proud Tory voter worth many millions, Emin lives the lifestyle appropriate to a celebrity. She’s been given umpteen museum shows, including double bills with Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele, and has now been honoured by the Crown. But somehow, she’s still a victim.

At what point do we stop seeing Emin as a victim and admit she is a massively successful, highly privileged individual? For the dealers and the museums, far too much is invested in this persona for it to be easily abandoned. Emin’s career is an object lesson in how to turn a messy life – and now a medical emergency – into a marketing triumph, a perpetually extended tale of suffering that has helped sell her work to public and private collectors around the world.

The millions of dollars the NGA has expended on Emin, shows how potent this story remains to those who are willing to guzzle the Kool-Aid. I’ve never been a fan, largely because I’ve never seen a painting, drawing or sculpture by Emin that had the slightest emotional or intellectual impact on me. The victim narrative should only become relevant if one is moved by the work itself, not vice-versa..

Emin’s success is due to the willingness of her admirers to get everything in reverse, seeing her art as a poignant symptom of the harsh life she has led. Looked at from another angle, one might see a slapdash body of work, devoid of structure, composition, form or colour sense, but big on childish “self-expression”, as if the traumas of life short-circuited the necessity of grappling with all the other things that keep artists working day and night in their studios. There are artists who will revise and destroy work relentlessly to satisfy some inner standard of perfection. Emin appears to accept everything she does as being right first time. When you believe implicitly in your own genius, how can you ever make a dud? When you are surrounded by sycophants, no-one’s going to say, “Hey Tracey, that’s rubbish!”.

The rise and rise of Tracey Emin is a function of our increasing obsession with victimhood, and the idea that we have to be incredibly sensitive to everyone else’s traumas and upsets. To criticise the work of an artist such as Emin is tantamount to criticising her very humanity, and therefore unacceptable. It wasn’t like that in the 60s at St. Martin’s, and other London colleges where the student crit sessions were gladiatorial affairs. Nowadays at art schools, lecturers don’t dare criticise students’ work in case they hurt someone’s feelings and get reported to head office.

When critical judgement is abandoned in favour of sentimental ideas about the artist’s life and personality, museums buy high-priced trash such as I watched myself die and come alive. There are many, many things that could be acquired for $2.2 million before one might ever look twice at such a shapeless, scrappy, lazy, self-indulgent picture. I’d be delighted if anyone from the NGA could explain the particular merits of this work, beyond its supposed ‘subversiveness’.

Thinking of another painting dealing with the experience of cancer, I remember Robert Hannaford’s Tubes, shown in the 2007 Archibald Prize - a deadpan self-portrait in which we see the artist standing naked, with a chemo tube dangling from his abdomen. It’s understated, beautifully painted, and could probably be picked up for less than $2.2 million. But it’s certainly not trendy.

If I dwell on the price tag of the Emin picture it’s because Sally Pryor, in The Canberra Times, made this the central feature of her story about the acquisition. In fact, Sally seemed a bit too obsessed with the folding stuff. She carried on about the price Charles Saatchi paid for an earlier Emin work, and about the price the NGA paid for Blue Poles and the Lindy Lee. The message seemed clear: the more expensive the work, the more we should be impressed.

How far we’ve come from the furious attacks inspired by the purchase of Blue Poles! By 1973 Pollock had been dead for 17 years and his place in art history was not in dispute. Today the press and the politicians are lining up to celebrate works of dubious artistic merit by living artists acquired at a cost of millions of dollars. No-one is questioning these choices. No-one is asking for justifications. No-one is looking hard at the comfortable relationships that seem to exist between public institutions and leading art dealers. Why do we automatically assume that those in positions of power are making infallible calls?

In a post-critical world, institutions believe – with some justification – that they can get away with anything and most probably be praised for their efforts. $14 million for a Lindy Lee sculpture? Wonderful! $2.2 million for another Tracey Emin? Fantastic!

The only danger with all this bonhomie, is that the institution may become a trifle complacent, as it celebrates its success and good fortune. This spectre appeared in a Sydney Morning Herald story last week, written by – of all people - Linda Morris, who normally seems to get all her scoops from a press release. Not this time. It was a fascinating piece about a December 8 Christmas party at the Powerhouse Museum which featured a chef carving an entire metre-long yellowfin tuna, plus the usual array of fizzy drinks and sweetmeats. Total cost: approximately $30,000.

It was, according to Powerhouse CEO, Lisa Havilah, “a special gift” for staff and stakeholders, because of the “exceptional outcomes” achieved this year. That is, in case you’ve forgotten: returning the PHM to attendance figures last seen in the 1960s, closing down all exhibition venues, dumping the collection on trucks and sending it off into storage, ignoring overwhelming public concerns, paying large salaries to “associates” for the vaguest of reasons, and many other acts of cultural vandalism. Yes, there was a lot to celebrate last year. I particularly enjoyed a comment from a reader who recalled his days working at the PHM, when they had tea and cakes at the Christmas party, and brought the cakes themselves.

Whether an institution is squandering millions on supposedly cool artworks, or bringing in the big tuna and basking in the glory of its own nefarious achievements, the common factors are a lot of tax-payers’ money and very little accountability. Those who could and should be asking questions – namely the journalists, the trustees and the politicians – don’t seem to give a damn, and the obvious result of this neglect is that everything goes from bad to worse, until some scandal or financial crisis occurs, then the search is on for excuses and scapegoats. Spent badly and consistently, even Other People’s Money will eventually run out.

This week’s art column looks at In Suburbia: Recent Detours, a survey of “suburban” images at the S.H. Ervin Gallery. It may sound humdrum, but suburbia is one of the big preoccupations in Australian art and life. By including only living artists, and avoiding some of the big names, the show takes a fresh look at the topic, reminding us that – contrary to the NGA’s view of the world – there are a lot of artists out there doing excellent work, who don’t happen to show with the same few galleries, or sell their works for huge prices.

The film being reviewed is Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here, a powerful, if predictable, real life story of life under the dictatorship in Brazil that ruled the country in the 1970s. The movie took out the Oscar for Best International Feature this year, which is one good reason for seeing it. Another is that it may be an ominous premonition of where the United States is heading. At present, in both art and politics, it’s not simply that money talks – it shrieks, it hollers, it drowns out all intelligent conversation. But it’s those of us excluded from the inner circles who are picking up the tab.