notes

Will the row over the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles ever cease?  

The short answer is no. For those who believe that in this modern age repatriation is entirely appropriate, it might be worth remembering that, upon their acquisition by Lord Elgin, there was no ‘patria’ in existence, as Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire and I would venture to say, not exactly the empire’s keystone. Res judicata? Certainly the British government thinks so and has done since Parliament said so in 1816. Although opinions differ as to its strength, no one disputes that Lord Elgin, and consequently the British Museum has more than a slightly tinged colour of a legal claim to them.  

So, the translocation and eventual placement of what are no longer identified as the Elgin marbles have been safely cared for and displayed proudly in the British Museum. No one has ever tried to mask their origin or done anything that would denigrate, in fact just the opposite, has served to appropriately lionize the miraculous culture that gave them form.  

But the culture that wrought the Parthenon marbles, that exist as an externalized memorial to an enduring ethos that we experience every day in the way we think about ourselves, the way we govern ourselves, and the very way we consider our place in the universe, is now world culture, and hardly specific, nor has it been for centuries, to Greece. In this regard, the Parthenon marbles are not what they once were, nor are they really what the Greek government considers them, objects solely emblematic of the modern Greek nation state.  

Reading the political to-ing and fro-ing about the Parthenon marbles, however, makes me think it is largely that. They are an easy talking point for Greek politicians to divert attention at least briefly from Greece’s ongoing fiscal problems and simmering unrest because of inward immigration. I don’t say the Greek government doesn’t really want the return of the Parthenon marbles, but that they haven’t got them yet provides something in the way of a continuing step upon the moral high ground. Where formerly Greece was able to use the return of the Parthenon marbles as some kind of at the ready, one size fits all bargaining chip when dealing with the EU, now post Brexit, Greece has fewer allies as there are no governments that have any manner of ability to directly influence Great Britain.  

The issue of repatriation is a knotty one and complicated, paradoxically, by the fact that it is an issue generally reduced to simplistic terms. If an object was acquired from its country of origin under terms and conditions that were by the way we measure things now less than salubrious, then, upon demand they should be returned. The Benin bronzes are perhaps the most cited and arguably the most legitimate example, stolen as booty concomitant with the British military incursion in Nigeria in 1897. No one questions the imperative that drives their repatriation as they are integral to the heritage of the geography from which they came. 

Were the Parthenon marbles stolen? At the best, that’s arguable. The fact of the matter is, items of varying degrees of cultural importance change hands each and every day. If that didn’t occur, Christie’s and Sotheby’s couldn’t stay in business. Are we now more mindful of the provenance of the object that might be on offer, and the consequent morality of its sale? Yes, of course we are, witness the frequent discovery and consequent return of artwork looted during the last war. But at some point, a line needs to be drawn.  

Very many of the artworks in the National Gallery are extraordinary Italian Renaissance paintings acquired in Italy through dint of the extraordinary efforts of its first director, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake. But I have misspoken- there was no ‘Italy’ in the 1840’s and 1850’s when so much that formed the corpus of the gallery was being acquired- nor would there be until the finality of the risorgimento in 1871. Indeed, much of the Italian peninsula was in political and economic chaos that then allowed Eastlake an unparalleled opportunity to acquire exquisite Italian art. Does this start to sound a cognate with the acquisition of the Parthenon marbles? It should. While it currently appears unlikely the UK government will acquiesce in the return of the marbles, if they were to in a weak moment it begs question where this might lead. If one then goes into that bastion of world heritage that is the National Gallery and finds it bereft of very many of its Italian pictures, you’ll have your answer.  

What’s been revealed about Dr Peter Higgs, longtime curator of Greek antiquities at the British Museum, while eye-poppingly brazen, shouldn’t, for those in the museum world, come as anything of a surprise.  

For those few of my gentle readers, and I know there are very few of you, who are unaware of this, most accredited museums of even the humblest stripe invariably have more objects given to their care than are ever at any one point out on display. Witness those items allegedly stolen by Peter Higgs, valuable though they might have been, they were, none of them, ever displayed and kept by the museum for study purposes, presumably handled by a very few scholars for purposes of academic research.

Or maybe not.

For most museums, their so-called back room contains a welter of objects, as my farmer father would have said, not good enough to keep but too good to throw away. When items are accepted into a museum’s permanent collection, it is very often at the whim of one or two people who may, or may not, accord with a museum’s accession policy. This further assumes such a policy exists, and often it does not. Further, a less than desirable gift might accompany something highly desirable and it is a rare donor that allows the museum to cherry pick- one must take either all or none, and the taking of the none might prove opprobrious to a donor otherwise highly esteemed by the museum.  

So the institution is between a rock and a hard spot, and in consequence, is in possession of very many more items that are of mediocre quality and do not therefore articulate with those a curator might deem worthy of public presentation. Mind, everything taken into the permanent collection of an accredited museum requires the preparation of a curatorial dossier, an accession file that documents at a minimum a description of the object, notes on its condition, details of how it was acquired, and, importantly, good photographic images. And, of course, an inventory number is assigned.  

Simple enough, yes? The problem is, certainly in the case of the British Museum, very many objects were acquired literally centuries ago, and some rudimentary curatorial dossier might have been prepared, but, no surprise, itself not looked at by anyone in decades. As in the case of the light-fingered Dr Higgs, save the sharp eye of a nameless researcher who saw one of the objects offered on eBay, no one might ever have known the object had been filched.  

One has to note that very many of the most prestigious museums are in locations where the cost of living is, by most measures, prohibitive. I think of one long tenured senior curator of my acquaintance in London, who, until recently, lived in a small basement flat in Hackney. But even that, with Hackney up and coming, proved too expensive but the death of a near relative resulted in a legacy, and, with much of the salt removed from his tears of mourning,  allowed him to stay put. I am hardly an apologist for the sticky fingers of museum personnel, but the financial exigencies of living in London, or Paris, or New York make the prospect of relieving their museum employer of a few unappreciated items more than a bit tempting.  

In the 2017 documentary ‘The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin’, Maupin defines himself as a writer who’s gay, and not a gay writer. Ostensibly an important distinction and an odd one to make, given how he’s lived his adult life as an out gay man, and his initial claim to fame, Tales of the City which ran to several volumes, was nearly iconoclastic in its depiction of gay characters, and serialized in The San Francisco Chronicle.

However, at the time, I understood what Maupin meant, that he sought not to be pigeonholed as a writer whose works of fiction could only extend to portrayals of gay characters. He sought, in what I think he considered somewhat polemical, to resist being marginalized by his sexuality.  

Well, okay, but it has been six years since I heard him make that statement, and for longer than that, I’ve been niggled by what a statement of that sort connotes, that in fact, queerness is solely an aspect of one’s makeup, not the totality of what makes one whole. But what’s implied, however, is that one’s being queer can be compartmentalized, which sounds awfully like some kind of cop out, a communication to the larger world that queerness is safe and not to be feared as queers can contain their queerness within them. 

Well, screw that. Indeed, my own sexuality is not the whole of who I am, but it is pervasive, and as concomitant in my being as my blue eyes. I suppose when I write it is not always about gay men, but it is always from the point of view of a gay man. How can it not be? And moreover, why should it not be?  

And that’s I suppose what troubles me about Maupin’s statement, that he shouldn’t be pigeonholed but in effect, his statement says he’s acquiesced in a broader societal effort to marginalize him.  

And as pervasive as my own sexuality is, is the effort to deflect it. Subtle though it might have been formerly, now into my eighth decade it is sadly surprising how often I encounter homophobia. The most frequent, when, in meetings, I find someone explaining something to me in excruciatingly simple terms, and when my response is to make my interlocutor aware that their effort is not only unnecessary but dismissive of my own intellect and experience, I will often encounter pushback that can result in an exchange that will become strident. The why of this I should long since have understood when, well over 60 years ago, a friend- indeed at the time my best friend- described the employment of an epicene man of our acquaintance as, quoting, ‘a fag job.’  

Indeed, that is how queer men are yet seen, with some manner of adle-brained, light-in- the- loafers trope still very much alive and operative, and so ingrained that, when someone such as me rails against it, it engenders either insistence, or dismissal. Homophobia? Indeed, and perhaps of the worst kind as the perpetrator, I’m sure, would be horrified to be branded a homophobe, so as a consequence would be unlikely to even consider the opprobrium of their mindset, much less to alter it. 

I can’t say that Keith McCullar and I are modern day embodiments of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, but we’re both socializing strike forces. Within the very first few minutes of conversation with a stranger, both of us make a point of making it quite clear that we’re gay. ‘Socialization’, I’ve always called it, an effort even if it is practiced on one benighted person at a time to make them aware, with me as a living exemplar, of the ubiquity of queerness. Mind, of course it is easier for Keith and me than for others. We’re men, and we’re white and I readily admit we’ve manifold fewer challenges than any woman or any person of colour. 

But we do it as it is what we can do if we don’t do anything else. I was almost going to write something about how whatever makes as much difference as one pebble on the beach, in the fulness of time, might make so-called safe spaces for the queer community redundant. Would that they didn’t have to but within the jollity of Gay Pride Month, the safe spaces- gay bars and clubs and any other manner of venue- exist not despite, but primarily because of, the yet pervasive homophobia we need to fight against . 

For those of my gentle readers of a connoiseurial bent, you’ll without prompting recognize my blog title derives from Outsider II, the last instalment of the memoir of the late critic Brian Sewell. Mind, I am not so much afflicted with inflation of ego to think myself a latter-day Sewell. Well, not so much, but if I’m honest, more than a smidgen.

A question Sewell never asks but that occurred to me, drawing a parallel between his late in life confessional- not apologia- and mine is when does an enfant terrible, one possessed of strong opinions, controversial, perhaps, but well-reasoned, turn into a curmudgeon? Of course the immediate difference is the advance of age, but the one less obvious, except to the former enfant is that the curmudgeon’s opinions, while remaining well and often better reasoned, are no longer given much if any regard. ‘An old man’s ramblings…’ as Sewell would put it, and with this I take exception. If anyone were to be considered a connoisseur, it was Sewell, and had he thought about, which I am sure he did but didn’t put it succinctly into print, connoisseurship is not the province of the young. It can’t be. The honing of one’s eye, the development of one’s intellect, and the mingling of the two in proper measure to yield a confluence wherein aesthetic appreciation is wedded to intellectual understanding takes years, and a very many of them.  

Of course, any one who has written an essay for which they received as little as a second-class mark can write a review of an art exhibit, regardless of the attendant subject upon which they’d written. And in this age of the tweet, a thoroughgoing consideration of anything gives over first place to brevity. Tweets aside, one has to attend very many galleries and see very many artworks before one can truly deliver a considered opinion. And when I say ‘considered’ I mean more than a popular response to something that passes for artwork that’s at best an objectification of contemporary zeitgeist.  

In this, Sewell in his reviews, indeed in all his writings, is pointedly free of the presentism that pervades contemporary artwork and the presentist blather criticism that seeks make some sense of it. ‘Presentism’- were Brian Sewell to read this, I’d get a proper dressing down for using this modern-day neologism. ‘Fashionable nostrums’ would be and archly synonymous- and directly quoted from the late critic.  

Over the course of this last week, I twice visited a popup gallery that’s housing work from living artists, the sale of which will benefit a not-for-profit contemporary art gallery. And based on what prices that were asked, I hope the artists will also be compensated. They should be, of course- ‘starving artist’ is a trope that works well in opera but is not very comfortable in the living when one receives a notice to quit or pay rent from the landlord. One chap, perhaps the canniest of the group, was offering a pricey NFT. I doubt he’s starving. 

While the work on show, to an artist, depicted not unsurprising themes of the despair wrought from the unfair rigours of modern life- all legitimate concerns, I’ll grant- not a single object was anything I actually felt an affinity for- a dearth, as Berenson would have it, of tactile values. The second trip I’d made in the company of my partner Keith McCullar, who queried ‘Should a person have to talk themselves into making a purchase?’ And for me the answer must be no. Mind, a few, indeed many, of the works were good examples of craft in a variety of media. For those figurative works, and again, there were many, the narrative content could be understood prima facie. Nothing occult or with abstruse iconography.  

But also nothing that my own eye, which is not entirely without practice, could conceive of ever entering the canon. I cannot help but then consider again the fellow trying to flog the NFT. As he was visiting from the major art market city where his studio is located, he was something of an outlier, but in a good way, if one considers ‘good’ as being lionized by the local community and being given an hour’s long public platform in which to discuss his work and the NFT associated with it. Glibly possessed of what one would call artspeak- you’ll excuse this term as it is a neologism Sewell actually employed- he could indeed talk a good game.  

But his art did not speak for itself. In this regard, I am not talking about an ostensible, apprehendable narrative content. What I mean is an absence of immanence, an animating principle that, in the viewing, stirs both soul and intellect. As Brian Sewell the critic and connoisseur would have it, nothing to see here.  

ArtNews is reporting today on uber gallery Hauser & Wirth’s new location in New York’s SoHo district. Of particular interest is that this was formerly, some 20 years ago, an outpost of Gagosian, who then decamped to trendier, albeit only a stone’s throw away, Chelsea. Interesting, and mystifying, at least for someone as me who can’t fathom the need for, what is it?- five locations or is it more? that Gagosian maintains in Manhattan. Hauser & Wirth, with this new outpost, maintains but a paltry three.

The dynamics of the contemporary trade perennially surprise me. Mind, it has largely taken over the traditional trade in the largest art market cities, certainly when it comes to the better- and perhaps I mean better promoted- living artists. My hats off however, to any gallerist who takes a chance on any studio work, but then, no gallerist I know has any direct financial commitment to an artist save payment when a work is sold, minus, of course, the typical commission of 40%.

That sounds a lot, but of course, overhead, most notably occupancy costs in the better venues can drain liquidity as quickly as flushing drains the tank of a toilet. And, too, clients at the highest end, the likes of Douglas Cramer and Eli Broad, are rather few and far between. Finally, one must be aware the predations of the auction houses, themselves well represented in the best art market cities, and the go-to for contemporary art. Of course, Basquiat became a name more than a Warhol Factory refugee while in Gagosian’s stable, but became, posthumously, a superstar because of Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

None of this answers my opening query, why it is the likes of Hauser & Wirth need so many locations so near one another. From time to time I feel the need for a doppio espresso macchiato and am glad to find a Caffe Nero near at hand. I’ve not felt such a necessity when it comes to purchasing any artwork. I don’t consider such a purchase an impulse buy and always wonder, in the venues they occupy, whether galleries are particularly mindful of being accessible to passing trade. Of course, traditionally venues have been important. They functioned in former ages to actually stimulate passing trade, bringing punters to the venue allowing convenience to visit one, then another, then another of the galleries huddled close together. Is that a working model in these days of the virtual shop? I shouldn’t think so, with shopping for even the most abstruse of objects now displaced by the virtual venue. Even popups like the better fairs and their ubiquitous galas and vernissages often functioning solely as a glam night out.

Perhaps it is that very many of the venues are populated with the better, and not so better, second and third (and fourth and fifth) rank independent galleries that are so necessary to those galleries of multiple locations. While a principal of the major international galleries might claim their stable of artists is collected, or should I say curated, from those whose works capture an ineluctable zeitgeist, or are possessed of an ineffable anima mundus, that’s only art speak. Scouting lesser exhibitions, the possession of the traditional red dot on the tombstone is the driver, and the more of them and the quicker the red dots populate, the more likely the artist’s next exhibition will be within the vaunted space of an uber gallery.

But where uber galleries sometimes garner uber collectors, some of that uber money leaks into capitalizing additional gallery spaces. In my former life as a banker, the two ventures one never loaned startup capital to were restaurants and, wait for it, art galleries. The sexiness of investing in an art gallery, while bankers, insufficiently libidinous so in consequence immune to such blandishments, nevertheless continues to find investor appeal. Hauser & Wirth must have sexiness in abundance, as they’ve also expanded into restaurants, including one nearby their new location SoHo location.