Læste en dejligt småsur anmeldelse i The Guardian: “Tate Britain rehang review – this is now the museum where art goes to sleep”. Blev helt misundelig over at jeg ikke selv kan skrive så perlende perfidt:
All that excitement about Young British Art back in the 90s is scornfully shrunk into a sin bin called End of a Century, with one work each by the likes of Gillian Wearing, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. Not only are these living artists reduced to dry little eyebites, they’re relegated to the past, along with Lucian Freud. It’s a miserable room – but the one that follows is worse. Here, a painting whose sloppy futility could have been slapped together as easily 40 years ago; there, a photograph of the sea by Wolfgang Tillmans; here, a chunk of heavy machinery; there, a few more so-so paintings botched together to show the current condition of art and the country. The pompous room title, The State We’re In, promises deep sociopolitical diagnosis. Instead, it’s just a scrappy selection of disconnected stuff. Or perhaps they’re saying that, as a nation, we’re as vacuous, timid and fundamentally dull as this display.
Der er dog også en mere tankevækkende strømning i anmeldelsen, nemlig refleksioner over det uhensigtsmæssige i at spænde kunst (eller måske snarere: kunstformidlingen) for en moralsk vogn:
But today’s Tate Britain is where art goes to sleep. That’s largely because it is committed to a worthy view of art. It isn’t the ideals I object to but rather the stultifying fact that when you insist on art’s moral value, you make it predictable and dull.
The novelty of this rehang is to impose a veneer of current concerns with slavery, empire, sexual identity and gender on to displays that are otherwise quite familiar. The results are glib, patronising, belittling.
What, for instance, has Tate Britain got against William Hogarth’s pungent 18th-century satires that it has to “correct” them with a contemporary piece by Pablo Bronstein celebrating Georgian London’s Molly houses?
I’ve been fascinated by these subversive social spaces ever since reading Alan Bray’s pioneering 1982 book Homosexuality in Renaissance England, but I don’t see how Bronstein’s cutely stylish work helps us look at Hogarth. It feels as if the scabrous painter is being called out for his failure to set his scenes of sexual dalliance and social corruption in Molly houses rather than brothels and asylums. But if you look carefully at Hogarth’s A Scene from the Beggar’s Opera you might spot a lesbian encounter. Give 18th-century satire a chance.
Ja, giv da lige det 18. århundredes satire en chance! Og, måske mere indsigtsfuldt, her om hvad museer skal kunne i dag:
Another room chastises baroque painters: how dare William Dobson portray the toff Endymion Porter when he should have been painting the Levellers who tried to overturn the social order during the English civil war? Ranter pamphlets and other radical prints fill a mural by contemporary artist Nils Norman, to put the likes of Dobson, a young British genius who died in his 30s, in their place. A sculpture of two suitcases by Mona Hatoum connects migration today with continental European painters who worked in Tudor Britain. But what exactly is the connection? And how should it change the way I see Marcus Gheeraerts II’s 1594 portrait of Captain Thomas Lee flaunting his fine bare legs
The problem with these “interventions” is not just that they are historically naive, but that they fundamentally misunderstand the way we use museums. What does Tate Britain think – that we’ll read every text, follow every argument, see every painting and even British history itself through the curators’ eyes? When you explore a gallery, you make your own connections, think your own thoughts. One work will draw you, another won’t. And it probably won’t be for the reasons the curators have hung it.
Jeg har ikke et problem med at kunst fra forskellige historiske perioder og stilarter bliver kurateret, tematiseret og sat til at ‘tale sammen’ om relevante samfundsemner. Det er heller ikke et problem per se, hvis tematiseringen sker med en klar politisk vinkling. Jeg er en stor dreng, kan godt tænke selv og kan sagtens sige til og fra overfor den slags. Og det kan bestemt give mening at lave den slags øvelser.
Men jeg er omvendt grundlæggende fortaler for, at værket skal vurderes som værk – og på dets egne præmisser og forudsætninger. Nu har jeg ikke set den aktuelle Carl Bloch udstilling på Statens Museum for Kunst, men jeg kan forstå, at kuratorerne foretager samme (eller endnu mere vidtgående) formidlingsgreb, som de gør på Tate Britain.
Igen – jeg skal have set udstillingen på SMK før jeg kan udtale mig – men det virker som en urimelig behandling af Blochs værker. Og hvis man bør ‘intervenere’ overfor alle fortidens kunstnere, forfattere, musikere, dramatikere, filmskabere, hvor efterlader det os så? Hvad gør man med de sammensatte, komplekse og heterodokse kunstnere, der skabte fantastisk kunst – samtidig med at de behandlede deres nærmeste elendigt, eller blot havde datidens mainstream holdninger til kønsroller eller slaveri?
Jeg ved ikke om jeg har den forkromede løsning. Min insisteren på en ‘værket i sig selv!’-tilgang kræver også kræver en formidling og den kan heller ikke blive værdineutral. Men måske min tvivl og manglende lyst til stillingtagen til værkets (politiske) kontekst er drevet af, at kunst for mig først og fremmest handler om følelser og indtryk. Det er ikke Edward Hoppers politik, der er grunden til at hans malerier taler direkte til mig og det sorte hul indeni mig. Men måske det er en priviligeret position at indtage. Jeg ved det ikke.