Comments on: Keating, a rusted-on luvvie, leaves a legacy

By: Jack Robertson

Jack Robertson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:22:31 +0000

Sweet piece, Stephen, and thank you for the generous cameo. So lovely when the grown-ups come out to play on such a fundemental matter, arts subsidy and how best to manage it. One of the difficulties in getting it right in this joint has always been the 'conspiracy of genteel prudence' among our artists: incredible how few willing to speak about this stuff bluntly. As I said on the Rundle thread, I’ve been interested in the book PIR debate for some time - I oppose them on cutural grounds - and, as here, the question of arts subsidy more generally is what really lies at its core. Both, I think, concern the relationship between cultural producers and cultural consumers - artists and their audiences - and whether the self-ghettoizing cultural seperatism often embraced by the former - especially those attracted to a simplistic version of Keating's 'genius' perspective - is good for either (not to mention the, um, work!). If you're at all interested in reading a longish essay of mine, nominally in support of the removal of PIR’s but more broadly advocating an end to contrived exceptionalism everywhere, I’ve posted it here . Thanks again for the brief walk-on. Appreciated. (As was your wry scepticism 15-odd years ago).

By: Stephen Feneley

Stephen Feneley — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:29:20 +0000

Tom Gutteridge took exception to my reference to “up-to-te-minute fashion creeps”. Sorry, I should have been more explicit - I was not referring to artists here but, instead, the art-world hangers on: some but by no means all curators, critics, jobbing arts journos, and a particularly odious kind of moneyed art collector who is all too easily led by the aforementioned creeps of the curatorium and arty 4th estate.

By: Stephen Feneley

Stephen Feneley — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:41:39 +0000

Di Gribble: You’re right – “degreeless” was carefully chosen. I’m all too aware of Horne’s time at Sydney Uni, just as I’m also aware of how chuffed the good professor was to have risen so high in the academy without any letters (other than the four honorary doctorates) to his name.
Reading about the lives of Horne and all the others who cut their teeth at Honi Soit was a major preoccupation of mine as a baby reporter toiling away, in the late ‘70s, on the Sydney Daily Tele (but one of Horne’s old stomping grounds). Having gone into journalism almost straight from school - after a brief but misguided stint at the Ensemble Theatre acting school under Hayes Gordon - delving into the lives of famous Sydney Uni alumni, particularly those who had anything to do with Honi Soit or the uni review served as both an inspiration and a reminder to interrupt the journalism career to get, at the very least, a BA to my name.
Regrettably, career opportunities and the need to eat kept getting in the way, although I did write and teach a post-grad broadcast stream at University of Technology in ’95 as well as deliver occasional guest lectures at various institutions over the years.
While I’m sure Horne did learn some things at uni, as he attests in the Education of Young Donald, his prodigious appetite for ideas could never have been satisfied by the prescriptive morsels to be found on an undergrad reading list.

By: james mcdonald

james mcdonald — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:22:09 +0000

Tom: “Wasn’t the point of Guy’s column that the kind of rewards that Keating put into place assumed that Great Art is created by Promethean figures in attics?”

No, that was Jack Robertson’s point in his comments. (And I would love it if Jack could write some feature pieces for Crikey.) Guy’s main point was that great works of art shouldn’t just stand alone like a single monumentally beautiful tree in a parkland, they’re of limited use unless a garden can be nourished into growing up around them.

By: james mcdonald

james mcdonald — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:03:46 +0000

Stephen: “Just because someone believes, as Keating obviously does, that an appreciation of art is worth fostering in the broader community, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have an unerring faith in art’s ability to improve all people, or that an appreciation of art is in and of itself a means of making the world a more civil or less brutal place.”

Exactly. That’s the answer to Guy’s repeated mush that death camp towns had fine orchestras and “No lyric poetry after Auschwitz”. That’s what you should have said in the article, and it’s what I meant by “Ethics and aesthetics do not depend on each other; one can utilize the other without compromising it. One of the few differences between the Bolsheviks and the Nazis was that the Nazis had better taste.”

Good art helps make life worth living. Like good food, it does this indiscriminately for monsters, angels, and everyone in between.

By: Tom Gutteridge

Tom Gutteridge — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:27:08 +0000

Wasn’t the point of Guy’s column that the kind of rewards that Keating put into place assumed that Great Art is created by Promethean figures in attics? It’s a view shared by a depressingly large proportion of the supposedly culturally educated - particularly in the media. I have found that in interviews about genuinely collaborative work that the notion of multiple ‘authors’ just does not compute. There is always an attempt to dig out a principal artist or a leader. Yet it’s actually quite hard (at least in the performing arts) to find young artists who don’t think that working alone is a bit sad. And these aren’t Stephen’s ‘up-to-the-minute fashion creeps’ but everyone from the rarified My Darling Patricia physical theatre group to the creators of the Saw movie ‘franchise’. Guy’s argument - in my interpretation of its Baroque involutions - was that the power of Keating’s personal taste has left a kind of residue that has prevented cultural policy from catching up with reality.

By: Diana Gribble

Diana Gribble — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:26:22 +0000

I am going on with this only because it would have amused D R Horne to find a discussion of the education of young Donald in Crikey. In fact he was a notorious Sydney University student and editor of Honi Soit, but he never graduated. Hence Stephen Feneley’s carefully chosen “degreeless”.

By: Stephen Feneley

Stephen Feneley — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:59:46 +0000

Caffeineadditct, like Guy Rundle, feels it necessary to give me a dose of Philosophy 101 to dissuade me from a view I’ve never held. And I’m not sure its fair to say that Keating has an unqualified commitment to a “certain naive humanist idea of cultural progress”.
Knowing Keating, it’s probably a lot simpler than that - he simply likes music by various great (and mostly dead) composers and wants the rest of the community to share his passion. If he had a naive faith in cultural progress, his taste in music would be more up to date and he’d be a big fan of installation art and so on but, instead, he’s an unabashed old-fashioned guy and not one of those up-to-the-minute fashion creeps who infest the contemporary art world.
What is this tendency in cultural debate in Australia to create straw men and to resort to off-the-shelf theory to make a point?
Just because someone believes, as Keating obviously does, that an appreciation of art is worth fostering in the broader community, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have an unerring faith in art’s ability to improve all people, or that an appreciation of art is in and of itself a means of making the world a more civil or less brutal place.
There are many other reasons for putting art on the public policy agenda - pure pleasure, intellectual sitmulation, provocation, economic spin-off (although that’s the least of my priorities and, regrettably, too high up in the priorities of the state).
You don’t need reminders of the death camps to know that abominable people can be into art; just go to the Melbourne art fair.
If I allowed my interest in art to be tainted by my opinion of people who share my interest, I would have run screaming for the exits long ago.

By: baal

baal — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:13:48 +0000

Sorry for the tedious typos: should have been

In the great mission etc etc

By: baal

baal — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:13:08 +0000

In tghe reat mission to write as much as possible before the deadline hits (giving the ‘editor’ no time to, well, edit) Rundle often garbles his own logic. Eg here’s what he says about why Tozer shouldn’t have been given a grant

‘The truth is that Tozer may have had a happier and more fulfilled life as a repetiteur or pro pianist than as a genius, better off in the pit than on the pedestal.’

An interesting assumption about how imperfection should be rewarded. Then he has another go:

‘There’s a deeper irony here as well — Tozer couldn’t function in the sort of world that Keating had done so much to create, a world of marketised outcomes and benchmarks, indicators and bottom lines.’

Precisely we he was given a grant instead of being dropped in the pit.

Oh yes, and never bring the Nazis into anything

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:04:18 +0000

DIANA GRIBBLE: And my exact words were “And thanks for the useless information that Donald Horne did not have a ‘university’ education. You may be the publisher of Crikey Ms Gribble, but I wouldn’t want you as a proof-reader.

BTW: Guy Rundle is one of my favourite writers. If you do not believe me go to my tweet bio. It was written a few months ago.

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:54:42 +0000

Caffeine Addict: Pre WWII Germany-especially Berlin-was also one of the most degenerate societies in the world. As soon as the Nazis and Adolf Hitler got into power the depravity altered shape a little bit but it continued to exist.

Finally it resulted in what the world was to know as the Holocaust. Why should cultural sophistication become degenerate barbarity? But it did. Strange.

By: Diana Gribble

Diana Gribble — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:35:37 +0000

Venise, for goodness sake. The writer is Stephen Feneley - some glitch has vanished his name. If you had read Guy’s essay you would see that the point about Donald Horne is pertinent. Anyway, Stephen does not say Donald didn’t have an education, he said he was “degreeless”. I could go on…

By: CaffeineAddict

CaffeineAddict — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:28:21 +0000

“Just because the Nazis were a bunch of sickoes who used fine music as a form of torture, why should we stop enjoying the works of great composers?

Where would that leave all those Jewish fans of Wagner (Holocaust survivors and descendants among them) who travel the world to witness performances of the avowed anti-Semite’s Ring cycle?”

I rather think you’ve missed the point here. Of course we can still enjoy the work of great composers. One can even still enjoy the music of Wagner, while recognising his anti-semitism.

What we can no longer hold to is a certain naive humanist idea of cultural progress. Pre World War II Germany was probably the most culturally sophisticated nation in Europe. This sophistication did nothing to prevent Germany from engaging in acts of the most appalling barbarity.

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:12:07 +0000

May we know the name of the author of the above bilge? And thanks for the useless information that Donald Horne did not have a university education.

Surely the whole point of Paul Keating was that he did know the difference between a Molière and a Michaelangelo. That he knows the difference between Herbert von Karajan and the kid with musical aspirations at the local high school.

The Labor Party, once it gets into power, tends to produce top notch PMs. The names Curtin, Whitlam, Keating and possibly Rudd are to be proud of.

The only Liberal PM to do any good was Harold Holt. He saved the Australian Ballet Company from going down the gurgler. In Menzies we had a banal man who was constantly on his knees worshipping the foreign royals, in John Grey Gorton we had a PM who was paralytic with drink, on one memorable occasion he even vomited over the passengers in the first class section of an aeroplane. Then we had the awesomely ordinary, halitosis-ridden, socks and sandals wearing, John Howard. A man who left the Liberals high and dry after screwing the electorate for eleven years.

Paul Keating may have had his faults but it leaves him crossing the finishing-line when all his detractors are still in the starting stalls.