| The Art of Bucketing |
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Well, there you go. I had faithfully, nay, solemnly promised myself that I wouldn't be writing (or even thinking) about the various goings-on in the art fair soap opera that has been running since 1977. Funnily enough* I'm not even participating, but that somehow makes me something of an independent outsider, although I won't be picketing outside the front door as I did in 1982, together with Torch Gallery's Adriaan van der Have, on Dam Square, on the front steps of the New Church. The fact that lobbies have a penchant for locking horns is a familiar phenomenon all over the world. Equally familiar is the notion that the press elsewhere doesn't mind being taken in by flattery. Not in this country, though, where it is free collection of news, freedom of speech and freedom of the press that set the tone. And yet I somehow get this feeling of being presented with incomplete and biased information - an understatement if ever there was one - when reading the art editors' reports in the "Parool" newspaper over the past few months. Isn't there an experienced editor anywhere who can explain to all those scribes that although nobody will insist that they stick to the facts, it is the general idea that they should at least make it look as if it what they're writing is true? For even the somewhat more sensible readers, those who appreciate that they're also paying for news they don't want to know about, are adopting an increasingly pragmatic stance by simply skipping the items that are not to their liking. I should do the same, but that wouldn't get us to the crux of the matter. And so I read on (in the "Parool" edition of 22 April) about a consignment of Chinese meat which had been incinerated due to the fact that it had been found to fail standards imposed by the European Union (although it was fine by standards adhered to elsewhere). This had ticked off the Chinese, which in turn had baffled the Dutch, as they had merely been following EU orders, in what one could refer to as a sort of latter-day "Befehl ist Befehl" scenario. And then the ultimate consequence hit me and petrified, I thumbed back to page eight. If the power of the press is a reflection of the rights on which it relies, how long would it be until the paintings in my gallery would be ordered by decree to be burned in public? Believe me, attending both art fairs has not yet been branded a criminal offence, but better take a fire bucket with you, just to be on the safe side. *) The art fair where I would definitely not be on the "A" list, the participants in which earlier this year broke away, for reasons of superiority, from the "KunstRAI" art fair which has been flourishing since 1991, is called MAF, which it is claimed is short for Major Art Fair. Rather than having anything to do with men in white suits and dead cattle, the word "maf" in Dutch means loopy. Life being stranger than fiction, my old pal Adriaan is now one of the Loopy Lot. |