The Vision Thing

I have been thinking a lot recently about the interaction between art and politics. A number of events have led me to ponder this. Camberwell is quite an active area in terms of the arts with an annual arts festival. One local gallery has always appealed to me and often shows quite striking paintings and prints in its windows along the high street. I wandered in there last weekend looking for a print for a friend who was recovering from an operation. I was surprised by the quality of much of the work on display, some of it from young artists recently graduated from art school. One of these is Chris Page, of whom I am sure we will hear a lot in future. I noticed that all of his paintings had been sold and I was not surprised. The gallery owner was convinced that he was going to be recognised in the art world. His work is figurative, with strong black backgrounds and rather reminded me of Dutch paintings of the 17th century. They seem to have an underlying political message and include a portrait of a black man wearing a turban with various mystical images, including a swastika on it. There is also an image of a pig, with the a flag of St George draped over its head in the form of a Klu Klux Klan hood with the words ‘Engerland’ emblazoned on it. An obvious reference to both racism and football supporters. Page wrote of his work: “My style of painting has evolved through a meandering route. In art school I tried painting in many different styles (at the same time) as a way of avoiding bracketing due to a scepticism about market forces and the pressure to brand oneself. Through a series of conceptual realisations, particularly the influence of such anti-heroes as Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, I decided that shiny paintings with “controversial” subject matter was funnier and more timely than austere market-dodging.” The paintings do indeed seem to be unpretentious and yet controversial . The fact that they have all been sold suggests that not only is he an accomplished craftsman but also that his work has something to say to the public.

The gallery owner who was under the impression that I was a definite patron of the arts, gave me a long and detailed description of various other works there and regaled me with tales of having had lunch once with Francis Bacon and seen various famous artists having chats in Notting Hill cafes when the area was still bohemian. He had been a hippy there in the early 70s. In his view artists had been closer to people then and not yet celebrities built up by the media and cut off from contact with the common herd. We talked about the nature of artistic eccentricity and he told me about one artist whom buyers could never converse with as he was always drunk by 10.30am. His advice to them was to call before that hour. The last great era of political art was probably the 30s in the Weimar Republic but for anyone who wants to see the reality of war, I would strongly recommend the little known but excellent art collection at the Imperial War Museum on the two world wars, which mirrors the better known war poetry of the First World War in particular.

Earlier this week I visited another exhibition where a colleague from the Green Party Trade Union Group was exhibiting some prints. I purchased one entitled ‘Climate Change’. The worlds of politics and art sometimes overlap, although it is more often in the literary or musical fields – politics being more the art of the oral and aural rather than the visual. Satirical cartoons on the world of politics still cover our newspapers and magazines but somehow painting seems to have taken a different route, something to do with the commercialisation of the art world and postmodernism no doubt. It is important for those involved in the dry art of politics to quench their thirst at the well of art from time to time, and to take inspiration. The “vision thing” as someone once called it, is after all the wellspring of politics.