SUBSTACK EPISODE 16

“ARTS AND MINDS – Journals of an Arts Addict 2007-13

Episode 16 March to April 2010

John Tusa

“The Arts world between Labour Instrumentalism and Conservative Austerity”

Mark Rylance is brilliant in “Jerusalem” and rotten to the core. Janet Baker and Alice Coote - two ways of singing Elgar’s “Sea Pictures”. The music wins. Tracey Emin and Paula Rego interpret the pathos of the Foundling Museum. Late Peter Brook – what is forgiveness, what is reconciliation? The Kingdom of Ife at the British Museum. A riot of colour, costumes and larger than life figures. Including five living gods. Fear and Loathing when BBC ex bosses gather. The bitterness of living in Cuba. Mojitos and motor cars aren’t enough.

Tuesday, February 9. To the hugely acclaimed Jezz Butterworth play, “Jerusalem” starring Mark Rylance. We end up divided. The acting, especially Rylance, is superb, as is the setting, the characters, the idea of a mythic, English, rural idyll, menaced by the banalities of modern developments. Butterworth can write, a meaty three act play, with development of character and action, tension, psychology, exchange, comedy, energy. Why any reservations? Because, Rylance’s “Byron”, Butterworth’s “Byron”, the raucous Lord of Misrule is not just forgivably uncontrollable, he is rotten to the core. Drunken, drug-ridden, manipulative of the young, he is a diverting fantasist but the fantasy offers nothing that anyone could follow except for some very minor characters. How can this be the deep-down desirable satyr, Pan-figure, Falstaff figure, that we really wish expresses our deepest mythic instincts? Is this the flaw at the heart of the play’s own myth making? So, ultimately unsatisfactory but curiously memorable.

Wednesday, February 10. To the Trinity Arts and Media Group held in Paul Judge’s fantastic 18^th floor flat on the Thames with 180 degree views of London. I give an extended version of my “BBC values, conflicts and contradictions within them” piece; for instance marketing rather than policy; compliance rather than editing, and many others. I say it myself, no notes, no hesitation, utter coherence, totally off the cuff. After Bill Keegan of “The Observer” says, “Why can’t Mark Thompson speak with a tenth of your passion?” All very well but I nearly keel over with exhaustion afterwards.

Friday, February 12. At the Wigmore, the mezzo-soprano, Alice Coote sings an extraordinary programme of English song. She and Julius Drake had ”discovered” the American composer Dominick Argento’s settings of sections of Anne Frank’s Diary. I did not know Argento had it in him. They are dramatic without being text bound. In the first part they perform the Elgar “Sea Pictures” immortalised by Dame Janet Baker with full orchestra. At the interval Robin Vousden of Gagosian, a tremendous music lover, said: “She took on Dame Janet and won!” It was true but also a reminder of how attitudes to ”expressiveness” have been transformed in three decades. Dame Janet was impassioned but in a very polite kind of way; Alice is more extreme, more daring, definitely not polite, but in no way expressive beyond the call of the music. She engages while Dame Janet expected to be observed and nothing unseemly would be seen.

Saturday February 13. The LSO under Gergiev play Ravel, “La Valse”, Ligeti, “Atmospheres,” and Dutilleux, followed by ”Petrushka”. Paul Silverthorne, the principal viola, loves Gergiev’s newer way of playing “Petrushka” as a ballet score rather than as pure orchestral showpiece. “It’s more dramatic, more coherent and you can play the notes at that speed!” We asked Christine Pendrill, the cor anglais, how they followed Gergiev’s famous “wobbly beat?” She laughs: “Oh, optimism! It’s not the beat so much as the movement and the instinct that comes from his whole body!”

Sunday February 14. The Foundling Museum in Coram Fields, Bloomsbury mounts a daring show with three leading artists, no less than Tracey Emin, Matt Collishaw, Paula Rego. It is one of the most affecting collections in London, Hogarth’s paintings, the overwhelming pathos and tragedy of the Museum itself, the neglect of babies abandoned by their destitute mothers. Every visit wrings the guts. This one really piles on the agony through pathos.

The downstairs gallery has one wall each reflecting on the mal-treatment/murder of children/babies from each artist. Tracey Emin’s delicate mother and baby line prints, thin, agonised; Matt Collishaw’s photographs of exploited third world children set against classical backgrounds; and Paula, a terrifying sequence of hags and harridans disposing of babies down wells. At the top of the stairs, a large eight foot altar plus sidescreens, except that Paula has painted the screens with similar images, and instead of a nativity installation in the middle, it is of children and their ghastly fates. Down a side corridor, Tracy has a small pile of baby clothes and a poem about her dead baby. Gut-wrenching and terrifying in its cruelty. And its impact grows for being set in the C18 calm of the Foundling portraits. Parents are taking children round the Museum with work sheets! I ask at the desk why there is no warning sign about the unsuitability of the material for the young? “Oh, we think it is up to parents to decide!”

Monday, February 15. Rory Stewart lectures at the BM at a packed London Review of Books event. He explores the role that ideology and political fantasy have in making nations go to war. First, they construct a world view of why the war is necessary; they wrap it in a series of perceived philosophical/political challenges; then they argue that the war will solve all the wrapped up problems. Of course, the war will, can, does do none of these things. So why do nations go to war? Because it seems easier than to settle for the slow, hard grind of peace. In war, you have an enemy; that is always attractive. In negotiations, you have a partner, a far more complex proposition.

Tuesday February 16. For our generation, great theatre was defined by two Peter Brook productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s - the “Marat Sade” at the heart of the modish “Theatre of Cruelty” and the playful delights and fantasies of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream!”

The latest Peter Brook play at the “Barbican”, late Brook, gentle, philosophical, reconciled, wise, even sentimental. What happens when believers – Islamic in this case – turn slight differences of practice, such as saying a prayer eleven rather than twelve times into a major doctrinal dispute? What is the nature of holiness and reconciliation? The themes, beautifully expressed, interweave in rather broad ways, that is to say, discursively. Is there no room for such theatre? Of course, and we should have space for it in our hearts and minds.

Sunday February 21.Three days in Salzburg at Schloss Leopoldskron on “The Arts in Lean Times – Opportunities for Reinvention”. What sticks out?

. Michael Lynch of the South Bank Centre on the first evening: “If you want to succeed, read Andre Malraux: ‘ Art is what remains when the rest has vanished!’” Thereafter the questions poured out: ”Are you mission driven or means driven”, meaning are you obsessed with maintaining your building or your organisation? Strategically, one participant warned: “We are dealing with a disruptive period; you can’t fold the disruption into an existing business model”. Technology can solve some though not all of it. Does the sheer scale of this “disruptive period” lead us to ignore the actual problems and real opportunities.

Dick Penny from Bristol’s ”Watershed” is a terrific original, maverick, and visionary. His attitude to the venue for which he was responsible: “We were custodians, not managers, of a shared cultural space held in shared ownership; we began to trust that space, we were not in control”. The results of taking such an approach: “New participation and innovative boundary crossing”. He offered three “horizons” with which one needed to work: “ First, the horizon of stewardship, the very close up view; second, the horizon of innovation, rather further out; third, the horizon of envisioning, seeking the way ahead”.

We discuss the “creation of value” in the arts; but whose value, what value? One statement: “Value is not determined by producers; it is determined by consumers; it is a participatory process”. Another version: “Value is not determined by the price of the ticket; value is expressed by its place in the community”. Does government place value on the arts because of their “transformative” properties? Often these are clumsily expressed in merely “instrumental” terms. The arts struggle with ways of explaining how they interpret value.

I ask an Indian classical dancer, the Zambian, and Delicia from South Africa, how they respond to outside pressures to “westernise” their work? They all say, separately, that such pressure encourages them to “modify” their work to make it more “understandable, acceptable” to international audiences. They all resent it. Their culture is theirs with its own integrity which they are determined to keep. And on the theme of the conference, “The Arts in Lean Times”, they cackle with amusement: “We have only ever had the lean times!!”

Wednesday March 3 To the British Museum for the opening of the ”Kingdom of Ife” exhibition from Nigeria, wonderful bronzes (not Benin-like), pottery etc a very old kingdom of culture . It looks as if the entire modern kingdom of Ife has arrived, everyone in traditional dress, the men even more glamorous than the women with huge swags of cloth hanging in Roman senator type folds, comfortable, enveloping, grand, decorative. And the textiles, rich colours, textures, contrasts, dazzling, exuberant, spectacular and never garish. As for the women? It was their head-dresses that stood out – literally – for you could not get within three feet of them without losing an eye.

But then came the action! “John, please move out of the way, I need to get the King through!” from the BM’s Development Head, Sukie Hemming, and indeed she did have the King of Ife in tow. He was small but every inch spoke of his standing. Young women were constantly throwing themselves into the deepest curtsies or genuflections to honour him. When he spoke, a courtier greeted each paragraph with loud approval. This was fortunate as one, at least, of his pronouncements was controversial, namely that Ife’s civilisation – which we all love – goes back to the origins of the world in 8,000BC. Well, at least that is twice the Biblical fundamentalists belief in Bishop Ussher’s 4,004 BC. But he was not the only ruler there. “Do you see that man with the tight, knitted cap and the decorated walking stick?” “Yes”. “That is a local traditional ruler, or Oba!” I murmured approval and wonder. “What’s more he is a god!” I counted at least five of them in the room. I spoke to one, a singularly jolly man which made me think differently of what God might be like, his jolliness rather a relief. And the exhibition? Another time; the event was too diverting.

Monday March 8. The Royal Philharmonic Society annual lecture at the Wigmore Hall. The star turn is the “New Yorker’s” music writer, Alex Ross, who is supposed to know EVERYTHING about modern concert going including how you can get more people, especially the young, to attend. His book has been lauded; the “Guardian” has totally bought into him. He KNOWS! He is American! The musical world packs the Wigmore. And he is very boring. His thesis? “Some people like applauding between movements; others do not. Some conductors like it; others do not. Some composers liked it; others did not. So, like, maybe you should think about doing something, like changing but only, like, if you want to!” Such was the totality of a poorly delivered speech. Afterwards, his defenders all said, ‘But you should read the book, that is fine’! But we listened to a thin lecture delivered with that characteristic American excess of self–belief before which the English go weak at the knees.

Wednesday March 11. The BBC Director General, Mark Thompson invites what are billed as “alumni” for a briefing lunch at Broadcasting House; former Chairmen, Controllers, Managing Directors, observers. As I get into the lift at Broadcasting House, the faces of Mark Thompson himself, Ron Neil, a former ”Newsnight” editor, and Christopher Bland, a former Chairman, greet me, Bland with a characteristic sarky remark about me. By the time John Birt appears in the room, “my cup runneth over”. Who else is there? Michael Grade, Paul Fox, Jean Seaton, Deborah Bull, Nick Kenyon, Caroline Thomson. What emerged? Everyone thinks the management salary issue is a big one and still unresolved; everyone thinks the “Lonely Planet” purchase was a disaster; everyone understands the need to shrink websites and magazines – Birt conceded he had never mustered the arguments to cut the magazines; most feared a big cut in the licence fee.

There was a minor eruption when I said that openness about artistes’ fees was essential. Fox, Grade, Neil all shouted, “A total disaster - the agents would never stand for it!” Bland then said he “agreed with John Tusa about this, the first time in 50 years!” I assured him it would never happen again. I then realised that he does hate me. Dislike, of course; contempt, I suspect; but hate? He has that awful curled lip look to him. I was quite ready to exchange a politesse with Birt but he studiedly avoided any eye contact. It was an uncomfortable occasion, with old divisions still deep, wounds still unhealed. I finally realised what an uncomfortable member of the BBC Board I was – for them. Now they don’t need to hide it.

Friday, March 12. On the subject of the BBC, I run into the tv documentary film maker, Tony Palmer, at the Coliseum for the English National Opera production of the Philip Glass opera about Mahatma Gandhi, “Satyagraha”. Dire, repetitive, without drama, tension, narrative, or character. I left after Act Two, my ear drums pummelled into subjection, my mind into numbness, my spirit into inertia. The evening was not wasted because of a long chat with Tony. Mark Thompson, BBC DG, had recently asked him to lunch. Tony :“I don’t really know him. He said it was time for the BBC and me to ‘bury the hatchet’. To show willing, the BBC would have a Palmer festival showing all of my films. He asked if the films had anything in common? ‘Well, I said, their common theme is that everyone of them was turned down by the BBC!’” The tale does not end there. A senior producer was told to work with Tony to realise the project. After an initial phone call, there was silence. When Mark Thompson and Tony next met, Mark was very miffed that hear that nothing was happening. The producer then rang Tony to complain of “bullying.”

One final element in the story. Mark Thompson said: “Tony, this must not go outside this room, please promise?” Palmer: “OK. What do you mean?” Thompson: “ Some time ago you wrote a letter to the press saying you would never allow one of your films to be presented on BBC tv by that ‘Armani suited dalek’ .“ (ie Alan Yentob). “Please promise you won’t say that again in public!”

Monday, March 15. Havana, Cuba. For years, friends and acquaintances had enthused about Cuba. “It is such fun. The music in the clubs! The fabulous architecture! The vintage cars! The mojitos!” The centre of Havana is prettified for tourists in full Disneyland manner. A hundred yards beyond, fresh water is delivered to houses in water bowsers Raul, our travel agency guide, just 30 years old I’d say, perfect English, intelligent, trained as an architect and now this! What do Cuban people want? To be able to set up their own businesses which they cannot do. Travel of course, but they can’t afford it even if they could get a passport. Does anyone join the Communist Party? “Only the ambitious and the not very clever!” How do Cubans feel about the Miami exiles? “Everyone has one member of their family there, so you just get on with them!” suggesting a deep well of resentment towards them, remittances or not. Then there is Spain. Some years ago, the Spanish government decreed that any Cuban with a Spanish father or grandfather was a Spanish citizen. Just go to the Spanish embassy in Havana. “We have a saying, the Spanish Embassy here ‘makes Spanish!’ You go in a Cuban and come out Spanish. “ So what can he do? Raul: “ I only have a Spanish great grandfather!” Another door slams in his face.

Thursday March 18. Impossible to overlook the item of worst artistic taste in Havana! But it is on the tourist route. The “Diana Garden!” an aspect of British “cultural diplomacy” perhaps? Sponsored by the British Embassy it is indeed a pretty garden filled with flowers and bougainvilleas. At its heart stands a column, two side by side pillars unevenly truncated at the top – “A life cut short!” The sides of the circular pillars are covered from near top to bottom with representations of liquorice allsorts – yes, yes, you can’t make it up – “to evoke the variety and diversity of the life Diana lived!” Did Diana ever visit Cuba? No. Did she have any notional connection? No. But Mother Teresa did visit Havana and she said Diana was a good person. Vulgarity and sentimentality in pretty equal measures.

Monday March 29. The Wigmore Hall was warned that the Jefusalem Quartet’s recent Edinburgh concert was disrupted by five protesters from a Scottish pro-Palestinian group . The Hall had police outside, extra security inside but the protest group had bought individual seats and took it in turns to stand up and protest. The concert was live, so the protests were heard before RadioThree went over to a recording.

What was the protest about? That the JQ are “Quartet in Residence” to the Israeli army? Not true. That they are all Israeli citizens? Only one is. The protesters ignore that two members of the quartet play in the West-East Diwan Orchestra, committed to Israeli-Palestinian understanding. We put out strong “pro-artistic freedom” statements so do the Quartet and the support for the Hall is strong. Someone wants us to take out an injunction against the lobby group. It could cost £30k. In any case, the legal case in Scotland, after their Festival demonstration against the JQ, failed because the charge of “anti-semitism” was rightly thrown out.

Tuesday April 6. Two theatre visits: National Theatre for Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The White Guard”, a slick production by Howard Davies, well cast, excellently set but something is wrong. The translation – it is modern, racy, slangy. Of course you want the audience to relate to the characters, you do not want the barrier of archaism to limit the experience. But, and it is a big but, these are people of their time, with a different sensibility from ours and if you give them the same vocabulary as we have, you flatten and ultimately distort the whole nature of the play. Do I make too much of the point? I think not.

Thursday, April 8. “Kursk” at the Young Vic. an immersive, promenade production of events in a British nuclear submarine The life and terms of a nuclear sub crew are scrupulously reproduced, a place of command, of discipline, of hierarchy, where matters of national life and death could be determined. So the British sub does not divert to help the possible survivors of the stricken Soviet submarine “Kursk”; that would compromise its mission. News of the death of a seaman’s child is withheld until the key part of the mission is over – why? Because that too might compromise discipline and operational effectiveness. Brilliantly organised, wholly unsentimental, in a “promenade” production as if in the submarine command area.

4 February 2025