A Brief Diatribe About Art

I am at my most human when it’s late at night and I begin to feel sorry for myself. Which is why I have to beg your forgiveness for my last pitiful excuse for a post. As somebody recently told me, I simply have to try harder. Even a year into this blogging exercise, my fingers still haven’t found the pulse of you, my deeply intelligent and selective audience. I’ve failed to understand what makes any of you come back. Clearly, Hughie Green is far from the top of that list.

Judy often tells me that I should abandon my light-hearted attempts at biography. In her opinion, I should join in with the greater fraternity of bloggers dealing with the important issues of the day.

Gordon Brown arrived at the G8 summit with some hard words for world leaders. Robert Mugabe remains in power in Zimbabwe and it’s clear that South African president Thabo Mbeki is not providing the kind of leadership that Africa needs at this present moment. Clearly Brown is... is...

Nope. Sorry. Can’t keep that going. It’s a ‘will to live’ thing. I keep losing it.

But that’s exactly what’s wrong with me. I can be horrendously temperamental when I’m writing and my mood was made doubly bad last night because I had spent a couple of hours browsing the web to research a book I’m trying to finish.

As you know, I’m a man of many talents. There may be books coming out from the Richard&Judy stable written by real writers, but I like to keep plodding along doing my own unprofitable thing. My autobiography is coming along well and I also have a novel which is very slowly amassing chapters. A theme of that novel is contemporary art and my recent browsing habits have been restricted to sites dedicated to promoting the arts in the UK.

It was while I was going through an Arts Council website last night, that I found footage of some nameless old colleagues of mine who happen to work in a field tangential to my own. Neither of them are particularly creative but they are both fanatical about commentating on the work of others. You might describe them as ‘critics’. Different national bodies seem to always send funds their way from for projects they initiate. They are both themselves in charge of some additional funds, or know the people who control those funds, which they can also ‘tap into’ to help promote their cockeyed schemes, meant to promote the arts but only really functioning as a rather squalid form of social work.

The footage was part of a current scheme they are running and was advertised as a celebration of the work of a well known artist. Basically, it was a five minute video of my friends enjoying themselves on a recent holiday in Spain. They looked out over the Med, made a few comments about the artist, and then shared a bottle of wine. While I’m pretty sure that the holiday would have been paid for out of their own pockets, those pockets are filled by their work promoting the arts.

I couldn’t help but feel a little piqued.

Maybe it was always so but we seem to be living at a point in our cultural development when we have some very fundamental problems with art. Government policy is generally to throw money at projects that are either sickeningly contemporary or involve the regeneration of our inner cities. Money goes into youth projects in urban settings. Graffiti is encouraged while the fine arts are diminished.

Naturally, I have a vested interest as I know friends who are comic novelists on the breadline while ‘socially aware’ poets get funds to travel around to schools and talk to children about ‘issues’. A recent visitor to a local school charged £500 for the day. I don’t begrudge any writer money, from whatever the source, but I do find it frustrating that the only people to really succeed in the current climate seem to be social workers and critics. And I suppose that’s why I was feeling so utterly dispirited last night and this morning. My two friends, the critics, sit enjoying their sangria on the beach while I’m still facing another long day at the keyboard.

I’m off to write something more uplifting to cheer us all up.

Back soon.

Sans Titre

Writing begins with writing.

It's a rather obvious observation for a Friday morning but I always find it surprising how accurate it can be. I often sit here for a while, wondering if I really want to write anything for the blog, but then the simple act of putting fingers on keys inspires me and I find a few words and I'm off...

The week has been another I've had to abandon (despite the fact that I've enhanced my reputation as the nation's sexiest male [Hattip to Graham]). I haven't seen Bill Oddie in days and the messages coming from the Fry wagon-train have dried up. The problem is that I've also become rather preoccupied by annoyances in the office in which we're editing 'Eye of the Storm 2'. As you know, I'm a man of many dislikes but few are as deep as my loathing for bad art.

My recent lack of energy, my mood swings, and my general inability to function have had one identifiable cause: the art that's used to fill the blank spaces in the nation's office blocks. I spend my days staring at a ghastly picture by Wassily Kandinsky. It's all Modernist angst, twisted shapes and distorted lines, mass produced by some firm who clearly believe that a bit of nice typography beneath the print makes 'Sans Titre' a somehow more meaningful. I'm considering making a legal challenge to the building's management about the print, except I'd find it embarrassing to explain why I dislike it so much. How do you politely tell people that a set of male genitals I can see in the upper half of the picture put me off my lunch? The fact that Chip Dale is apparently back and wriggling his way around North Wales suggests to me that I'm one of the few men with a sense of propriety left in the world. I'm telling you that you're all mad!

The paintings in the corridor are no better. Blotchy monstrosities like a yeast infection has suddenly covered the canvas. Yet they match the carpet and that is the only reason why abstract art is chosen for offices. It doesn't require any thought to hang it on a wall. I'm reminded of the scene in 'Hannah and Her Sisters' when Max Von Sydow's character complains that he doesn't produce his art simply to match the sofas (I'm paraphrasing). Unfortunately, that's how modern art is treated and it's not good for the soul.

Speaking of things that aren't good for the soul: my attention for the rest of the week will be taken with writing a sitcom for the BBC's new College of Comedy competition.* I have a month to write 10 pages of dazzling stuff. My record in these competitions is quite striking. I've never got past the first round. This, however, is the first time I'll be entering the competition under my own name. It's now just a matter of finding some interesting idea for a show. My idea is to call the show 'Twitchers' and get Oddie in to help me co-write it.

* Update: Well, that optimism didn't last long. I would have spent the next few weeks writing something for the competition had I not just noticed the small print on the Press Release. 'The scheme [...] is designed for people who have already begun their careers, and can demonstrate some achievement, such as broadcast material, a script commission, or performance of their work.'

Well, that rules me out! Again.

I really need to write about this at some length but, for now, let me simply say that this is a perfect example of what's happening to the media in this country. I've heard that it's pointless sending scripts into the BBC because they don't read them. Commissions go out to people they already know, which saves them the time and money otherwise spent wading through the slush piles. To compensate and to give the impression that they are open to new writers, they have these occasional competitions. However, even this route is sealed off. I ask you: what is the point? What is the bloody point?