This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/26/saveing-art-nation-giacometti-femme
The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
Previous version
1
Next version
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| ‘Saving’ art for the nation merely disguises the poverty of our museums | ‘Saving’ art for the nation merely disguises the poverty of our museums |
| (6 months later) | |
| If there is a work of art that’s worth buying for Britain, it is surely Alberto Giacometti’s Femme (1928-29). Just a quick look at a photo of this modern masterpiece will tell you it is special. There’s a softness to it that sensually collides with its squared abstract form. This is dream art, of a radical and eerie kind. One circular scoop in the white plaster conjures an eye, a slit makes a mouth, and a bigger circular recession suggests … what? | If there is a work of art that’s worth buying for Britain, it is surely Alberto Giacometti’s Femme (1928-29). Just a quick look at a photo of this modern masterpiece will tell you it is special. There’s a softness to it that sensually collides with its squared abstract form. This is dream art, of a radical and eerie kind. One circular scoop in the white plaster conjures an eye, a slit makes a mouth, and a bigger circular recession suggests … what? |
| This is a startling, sexualised sculpture that has a lot in common with Giacometti’s similarly provocative Spoon Woman, created a year or so earlier, not to mention with Picasso’s rollicking distortions of female form done in the same era. | This is a startling, sexualised sculpture that has a lot in common with Giacometti’s similarly provocative Spoon Woman, created a year or so earlier, not to mention with Picasso’s rollicking distortions of female form done in the same era. |
| It was the time of surrealism. Giacometti, a Swiss artist with a classical training and innate gift for sculpture, was a core member of the surrealist movement and Femme is a dangerous explosive manifestation of unruly desires and fantasies. While its plaster softness is alluring, its sharp angles intimate violence and threat, in a way reminiscent of Giacometti’s horrific 1932 sculpture Woman with Her Throat Cut. | It was the time of surrealism. Giacometti, a Swiss artist with a classical training and innate gift for sculpture, was a core member of the surrealist movement and Femme is a dangerous explosive manifestation of unruly desires and fantasies. While its plaster softness is alluring, its sharp angles intimate violence and threat, in a way reminiscent of Giacometti’s horrific 1932 sculpture Woman with Her Throat Cut. |
| All of which is to say that Femme probably has no chance of being “saved for the nation”. This marvellous (in the sense of the word used by the surrealist leader André Breton, meaning subversive and irrational) work of art is on sale by a British owner for £2,083,500. | All of which is to say that Femme probably has no chance of being “saved for the nation”. This marvellous (in the sense of the word used by the surrealist leader André Breton, meaning subversive and irrational) work of art is on sale by a British owner for £2,083,500. |
| The culture minister, Ed Vaizey, has put a temporary export ban on it to give galleries a chance to raise the money. The form is that a museum or other institution has to get a campaign going, whip up support, and scrape together the cash to keep this masterpiece out of the hands of Johnny Foreigner | The culture minister, Ed Vaizey, has put a temporary export ban on it to give galleries a chance to raise the money. The form is that a museum or other institution has to get a campaign going, whip up support, and scrape together the cash to keep this masterpiece out of the hands of Johnny Foreigner |
| This way of keeping Britain’s public galleries stocked with art is a fig leaf to hide woefully inadequate funding and shabby lack of government interest in strengthening our collections. It also depends on fake, nationalistic arguments that rarely add much to anyone’s knowledge of art. To “sell” Femme to the public, for example, Vaizey has tried to put a patriotic spin on this European masterpiece. | This way of keeping Britain’s public galleries stocked with art is a fig leaf to hide woefully inadequate funding and shabby lack of government interest in strengthening our collections. It also depends on fake, nationalistic arguments that rarely add much to anyone’s knowledge of art. To “sell” Femme to the public, for example, Vaizey has tried to put a patriotic spin on this European masterpiece. |
| Femme came to Britain when it was bought by the British artist Winifred Nicholson in the 1930s. It is therefore the kind of work that homegrown Brit modernists like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth saw and emulated. “This Giacometti sculpture is not only a stunning example of his work,” Vaizey therefore says, “but also heavily influenced some our greatest artists. It is important that Femme is kept in the country so we can better understand and enjoy this pivotal period in modern British art.” | Femme came to Britain when it was bought by the British artist Winifred Nicholson in the 1930s. It is therefore the kind of work that homegrown Brit modernists like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth saw and emulated. “This Giacometti sculpture is not only a stunning example of his work,” Vaizey therefore says, “but also heavily influenced some our greatest artists. It is important that Femme is kept in the country so we can better understand and enjoy this pivotal period in modern British art.” |
| Oh God, oh no – please. To say this work of art is important we shouldn’t have to embalm it in the dead air of St Ives and mummify it in Henry Moore’s flat cap. | Oh God, oh no – please. To say this work of art is important we shouldn’t have to embalm it in the dead air of St Ives and mummify it in Henry Moore’s flat cap. |
| Giacometti is not important because a few minor British modernists imitated him. Our parochial belief that Moore and his contemporaries were in the same league as the great European modern artists is embarrassing. Femme is not somehow “British”. It is a completely continental, hardcore surrealist masterpiece whose uncanny eroticism has nothing to do with Babs Hepworth’s boring seaside and everything to do with the flea markets, brothels, bars and mental hospitals of 1920s Paris. | Giacometti is not important because a few minor British modernists imitated him. Our parochial belief that Moore and his contemporaries were in the same league as the great European modern artists is embarrassing. Femme is not somehow “British”. It is a completely continental, hardcore surrealist masterpiece whose uncanny eroticism has nothing to do with Babs Hepworth’s boring seaside and everything to do with the flea markets, brothels, bars and mental hospitals of 1920s Paris. |
| But would that make it sound like something to be saved “for the nation”? The very phrase, and the worthy campaigns that use it, imply a narrow sense of national property that has nothing to do with great art. | But would that make it sound like something to be saved “for the nation”? The very phrase, and the worthy campaigns that use it, imply a narrow sense of national property that has nothing to do with great art. |
| Almost all the works that have been bought after such campaigns in recent years are European, and not British, masterpieces, from Titian’s Diana and Actaeon to Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus – and they do not belong by some innate right to Britain. We just happened to have them and didn’t want to let them go. | Almost all the works that have been bought after such campaigns in recent years are European, and not British, masterpieces, from Titian’s Diana and Actaeon to Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus – and they do not belong by some innate right to Britain. We just happened to have them and didn’t want to let them go. |
| So should we just abandon Giacometti’s Femme to the global art market? After all, we can all see online images of it, as you are doing now. | So should we just abandon Giacometti’s Femme to the global art market? After all, we can all see online images of it, as you are doing now. |
| The question needs turning on its head. Instead of drumming up sentimental campaigns to cling on to artistic assets, why are we not buying art for the nation at auctions in New York? This whole culture of “saving” art is a way of disguising the poverty of our museums. | The question needs turning on its head. Instead of drumming up sentimental campaigns to cling on to artistic assets, why are we not buying art for the nation at auctions in New York? This whole culture of “saving” art is a way of disguising the poverty of our museums. |
| They are all sitting on collections created largely in the heyday of the British empire. In the 19th century we were the world’s Dubai, buying up art at eye-watering prices. In the 20th century the purse emptied and today’s worthy culture of poorly funded public collections grew up, with all its little hypocrisies. | They are all sitting on collections created largely in the heyday of the British empire. In the 19th century we were the world’s Dubai, buying up art at eye-watering prices. In the 20th century the purse emptied and today’s worthy culture of poorly funded public collections grew up, with all its little hypocrisies. |
| The idea that by slapping a temporary export ban on a masterpiece the culture minister is doing anything for art is surely the worst of those hypocrisies. If a work of art really needs to be in this country, there should be a public fund to buy it outright. It should not be left to the enthusiasm of museums and the public. | The idea that by slapping a temporary export ban on a masterpiece the culture minister is doing anything for art is surely the worst of those hypocrisies. If a work of art really needs to be in this country, there should be a public fund to buy it outright. It should not be left to the enthusiasm of museums and the public. |
| Giacometti’s wicked surrealist woman really does need to stay in Britain because we don’t have enough first-rate pieces of modernist art. The government should buy it for Tate Modern. And if there isn’t enough money to do that, how about selling off some of our excess Henry Moores to create a proper national purchasing fund? You can flog the Nicholsons and Bloomsbury group paintings too. Sell them for the nation. | Giacometti’s wicked surrealist woman really does need to stay in Britain because we don’t have enough first-rate pieces of modernist art. The government should buy it for Tate Modern. And if there isn’t enough money to do that, how about selling off some of our excess Henry Moores to create a proper national purchasing fund? You can flog the Nicholsons and Bloomsbury group paintings too. Sell them for the nation. |
Previous version
1
Next version