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Works of art often rely on support, financial or otherwise, to reach the public. Sir Christopher Frayling, an ex-chairman of Arts Council England, and author of “Horace Walpole’s Cat” (Thames & Hudson), continues our Intelligent Life mini-series on classics that might not get a green light today.

THE ARTS COUNCIL

If the Arts Council were starting from scratch in Britain today, no government would agree to subsidise it. Maynard Keynes’s wonderful idea—that in addition to the five giants of physical poverty, the state’s responsibilities should extend to poverty of aspiration as well—would fall foul of four things: the current obsession with quantities rather than qualities, the declining political interest in the public realm,  the shortage of money in the public purse, and charges of elitism and egg-headery.

Keynes’s Arts Council, which grew out of the demand for the arts during the second world war—surprising everyone—was a classic example of what Adam Smith called the “moral sentiments” that should underpin economic conversations. And there aren’t too many of those around today. ~ CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING
 

Works of art often rely on support, financial or otherwise, to reach the public. Eddie Morgan, head of the BBC College of Production and former editor of BBC2’s “Culture Show”, and Jonathan Meades, a writer and broadcaster, continue our Intelligent Life mini-series on classics that might not get a green light today.

WAYS OF SEEING, THE BIG POLITICAL INTERVIEW,  NOGGIN THE NOG

The only constant in television is change. Changes in technology, economics, demographics, public policy, regulation, public taste, sheer fashion—all combine to drive ceaseless change in what is made and watched.

There’s a host of terrible programmes of the past that would not even be contemplated today: “The Black and White Minstrel Show” (pictured)—rubbish plus racism, which attracted audiences of 15m+ in the 1960s. Or “That’s Life”, “The Good Old Days”, and the wrestling that used to fill long Saturday afternoons. There is no longer a big family audience for such weird, confected blandness. The other side of this coin is a coyness about sensitive issues. Catching the occasional snippet of Johnny Speight’s “Till Death Us Do Part”, I’m staggered at Alf Garnett’s reactionary racism. It’s funny, shocking, sad and kind of true, not drivel like the Minstrels. But I suspect that a Speight of today would be quickly shown the door.  read more »

Works of art often rely on support, financial or otherwise, to reach the public. Paul Taylor, the theatre critic of the Independent, continues our Intelligent Life mini-series on classics that might not get a green light today.

PYGMALION

George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” has had a long and happy life, first as a play (1913), then as a stage musical (1956) and finally as a classic film (1964). But if it had come along today, Shaw’s entire concept would be found wanting. In our era of job-swap, wife-swap and life-swap programmes, it would not be Professor Higgins conducting a social experiment to prove the arbitrariness of class distinctions by training a cockney flower girl to disguise her origins by talking posh. Our appetite for the inauthentic and provisional would demand that the professor and Eliza Doolittle switch roles for a week, with Eliza faking it as a phonetician and Higgins turning all gorblimey while flogging blooms in Covent Garden. ~ PAUL TAYLOR

Picture credit: "Pygmalion and Galatea" by Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Works of art often rely on support, financial or otherwise, to reach the public. Tony Fretton, a partner in Tony Fretton Architects and best known for designing arts buildings such as the Lisson Gallery, and Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge and author of “It’s a Don’s Life” (Profile), continue our Intelligent Life mini-series on classics that might not get a green light today.

ALVARO SIZA’S  SWIMMING  POOL

The public swimming pool on the beach at Leça da Palmeira in Portugal, designed by Alvaro Siza in the 1960s, is a great work that perhaps could not be made now. It is a public pool for the working people of Oporto, set in an industrial landscape, and redolent of a time when people were in contact with the world through physical work on land and sea, and less pre-occupied by ideas of public safety.

There’s an understanding of how different groups of people—children, adolescents, adults and older people—can co-exist. It is fantastically enjoyable, with places to sunbathe between the rocks, a children’s paddling pool on the beach and a swimming pool between boulders in the sea. Like all great architecture, it combines pragmatism with blatant poetry. The sea here is wonderful with crashing waves, but is a shipping lane and very polluted. The pools let you enjoy the sea from without, and at a deeper level their relations to the natural and industrialised surroundings are holistic and non-judgmental. ~ TONY FRETTON

THE COLOSSEUM  read more »

Works of art often rely on support, financial or otherwise, to reach the public. Tom Shone, a former film critic of the Sunday Times and the author of “Blockbuster”(Simon & Schuster), David Thomson, author of “The Biographical Dictionary of Film” (Little, Brown), and Sir Christopher Frayling, an ex-chairman of Arts Council England and author of “Horace Walpole’s Cat” (Thames & Hudson), continue our Intelligent Life mini-series on classics that might not get a green light today.

JAWS  read more »

Works of art often rely on support, financial or otherwise, to reach the public. Robert Rowland Smith, a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and author of “Breakfast with Socrates” (Profile), and David Thomson, author of “The Biographical Dictionary of Film” (Little, Brown) continue our Intelligent Life mini-series on classics that might not get a green light today.

THE  WASTE LAND

Published in 1922, “The Waste Land” soon became a landmark of Western literature. In its 434 lines, T.S. Eliot assembled Arthurian legend, Jacobean tragedy, Buddhist scripture, Roman lyric and street slang into a puzzle to be worked out by pale and interesting types the world over. Some interpreted it as the private jottings of a depressive polymath; others as the vision of a civilisation which God had forsaken. The poem asks the reader to work at it, refusing easy answers, and even Eliot’s own explanatory notes raised further questions. And that is precisely why it wouldn’t be published now. In becoming “consumers” of culture, we’re losing the ability to engage with it. ~ ROBERT ROWLAND SMITH

 LOLITA  read more »

Works of art often rely on support, financial or otherwise, to reach the public. Michael Berkeley, a composer and presenter of “Private Passions” on BBC Radio 3, begins a new Intelligent Life mini-series in which we ask critics and practitioners to suggest some classics that might not get a green light today.

Many of the most glorious works of art from the past were created thanks to the patronage of the court or the church. It is almost inconceivable today that a leading composer might be appointed choirmaster of a cathedral, and even more improbable that he could use that position to create masses and cantatas for liturgical and secular use. Yet it was precisely this post at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig that provided Johann Sebastian Bach with the platform, money and forces to create a series of masterpieces, including the “St Matthew Passion” and the “Mass in B Minor”—works that have led many musicians to regard Bach as God in much the same way as actors see Shakespeare. Mozart and Beethoven, the other members of the Holy Trinity, drew from Bach a contrapuntal heritage and technique that still forms, or should form, the basis of composition today. Of course towering genius is a rarity in itself, but in the church it had the fertile soil it needed to flower. This freedom to fail, to try things out, also meant that opera composers such as Donizetti and Verdi were able to get it wrong before they produced works like “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “La Traviata”. Nowadays you get one chance and if you blow it that tends to be that. 

~ MICHAEL BERKELEY

Picture credit: jimmiehomeschoolmom (via Flickr)