Editorial
by:
Elspeth Moncrieff
As the new year began, and just weeks before the scheduled opening of a major art show of Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings from Russian museums at the Royal Academy in London, a saga of recriminations and subsequent tense negotiations served to remind, yet again, that art has been harnessed to the service of politics. The exhibition, which was reinstated at the eleventh hour thanks to emergency legislation in the British parliament, generated much added media coverage that has ironically ensured the success of the show.
The relationship between art and politics is features large in two articles in this edition and is a not so subtle theme of the Museo del Prados forthcoming exhibition on Goya. Referencing shifts in attitude rather than a power play between countries art and its practitioners can serve as litmus tests for enlightenment and conversely, repression. Contemporarily, the freeing up of censorship by the Chinese government controlling Tibet has revolutionised art practices in that country. There has been an explosion of creativity as Tibetan culture comes to terms with modernisation.
The promotion of art by the Chinese President Hu Jintao who spoke recently of how the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will be accompanied by the thriving of Chinese culture, has had an even more dramatic effect in that country. In the last two years there has been a significant rise in the international appeal of, and prices paid for contemporary Chinese art. It is now one of the most booming and sought-after areas of the contemporary art scene.
History is replete with examples of the effect of politics on art. The expulsion of the Protestant Huguenots from France in the eighteenth century spelled disaster for that community but resulted in the explosion of the weaving and goldsmith trades in London. While the French king was melting the royal collections to finance his wars, on the other side of the Channel, politics were in play as the Protestant British monarchs William III and Mary II, welcomed the Huguenot refugees. Among the highly trained and skilled craftsmen to settle in London, were the parents of the eighteenth-centurys greatest silversmith, Paul de Lamerie, who arrived in London as a three-year-old.
There is an inexorable link between politics and art, and as we move further along into this century some patterns remain as art is harnessed to strengthen ties between regions and cultures. The shift is in the methodology. Through a dialogue of exhibitions, symposia and exchanges, there is the process of breaking down taboos, achieving recognition for indigenous cultures, minorities and other fringe groups. Reviewing the current situation, it appears that genuine good will in the international art and museum community is prevailing and for the moment at least, art has transcended politics. |
