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‘My dog could do that’: Australia’s war on contemporary art · The Front

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of the Front.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. Art rage heard of it? It means
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: art outrage and Australians turn out to be world champs.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: In fact, even though fewer than a third of us
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: are regular gallery goers, we all reserve the right to
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: throw a massive tantrum if some artwork annoyse or offends us.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Some galleries play into it, some can't cope. Sometimes they
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: panic and apologize. But isn't art supposed to be provocative? Today?
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Chief Culture correspondent Tim Douglas joins us to explore why
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: we're so quick to take offense and to recall the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: exhibition that shocked him. Tim, you've written the cover story
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: for this weekend's culture section in the Weekend Australia. Can
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: you read me the first couple of paragraphs? Please?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Sure. Controversy swells like a boil on the backside of
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the visual arts in Australia. Every so often the sector
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: is forced to drop its strides and have the protrusion
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: inspected in the surgery of public opinion. It's there the boilers,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: either considered benign and left to its devices, or lanced
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: in the name of good taste or political expediency. The boil, however,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: will be back. Artists snout, audiences feel it. Cultural institutions
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: live or die by the prognosis.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Tim You've been covering the arts for many, many years,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: and you and I have both been in journalism for
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: longer than we might like to admit. We're old enough
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to remember some of the big controversies where something that's
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: bubbling away in the art world spills over into the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: pages of the mass heads that we work out. One
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: that I remember in particular is something called Piss Christ.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: What was that?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: The full name of the work is immersion in parentheses
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: piss Christ. And it's a work by Andres Serrano, a
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: photographer who has created this image of a crucifix showered
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: in urine.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Here's this art or blasphemy. So you see guys like
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: this guy defending the gallery, will you ask him if
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: you believed in Jesus Christ?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: And he told me to go after myself. So clearly,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: very controversial work that had been shown internationally before. It
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: was programmed by then National Gallery of Victoria director Timothy
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Potts to show at an exhibition about confronting religious artworks
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: broadly at a large show at the MGV in nineteen
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: ninety seven.
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  Speaker 1: It prompted the kind of media outrage that comes around
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  Speaker 1: every few years. If somebody killed the guy who put
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the cross in the jar, and who was killed by
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: let's say, a Christian bride on himself. You know, if
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: he exhibited the little narcissism, I'm.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Not going to it.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: How do you exercise restraint? It wouldn't be dead. And
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: one of the central questions that people were arguing about
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: was whether or not this was art. That's often what
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: art controversies come down to, isn't it. It's like, well,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I could have done that, My four year old could
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: have done that. It's not really art, but I don't
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  Speaker 1: like it.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: That's right. I mean it's the classic trope. My four
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: year old could have done this. Fingerpainters that could do
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: that better. My grandmother's blind, she could have done this
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: in sleep, etc. We're used to hearing those comments. But
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting that Australians do art rage,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I think better than any country on Earth. Only twenty
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: seven percent of Australians, according to the most recent Australian
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Bureau of Statistics figures, visit art galleries annually, and yet
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: everyone seems to have an opinion, especially when it comes
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: to works of controversy, or works as with piss Christ
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: that are deemed blasphemous or are taken, in that case
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: all the way to the Supreme Court.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Only the most recent one that I can think of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: was about a sculpture outside the National Gallery of Australia
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: in Canberra. What was that sculpture of and why was
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it such a big deal?
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  Speaker 2: That is Ora Boris and that's a work by very
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: well renowned sculptor Lindy Lee. The work was deemed controversial
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: because it was the second most expensive commission made by
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: the National Gallery in its history. The work itself is
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: in no way controversial to look at it to Chinese
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: infinity symbol. It's quite beautiful to look at in fact,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: but it was criticized for being a luxury. Our art
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  Speaker 2: critic at the time, Chris Rallen, suggested that perhaps the
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: money would have been better spent bolstering the National collection
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: that sculpture.
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  Speaker 1: I went and saw it at the Gallery not long
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  Speaker 1: ago and it seemed utterly inoffensive to me. Was this
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: about the money and does expense and the perception of
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: taxpayer expense and fuel these controversies.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: It was about the money. And we answer your question,
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  Speaker 2: it does because the NNGAA has a you know, infamous
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: history with spending taxpayers money to bols through its collection.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, the most famous of that is the nineteen
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: seventy three purchase by then Director James Mollinson and then
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Prime Minister GoF Whitlam of Jackson Pollock's nineteen fifty three
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: work Blue Poles.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: At the Art Gallery of New South Wales. A one
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  Speaker 1: point three million dollar controversy goes on display to the
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Australian public for the first time. It's the Jackson Pollock painting.
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  Speaker 2: It was brought in nineteen seventy three for one point
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  Speaker 2: three million, which adjusted for inflation now is thirteen million,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: but the painting is valued now at five hundred million dollars.
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  Speaker 1: We need a vision in this country.
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  Speaker 2: And I do hope the Australian people will not feel
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: that we have played a hoax on them. Mean a
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: dog could do that, but I mean the controversy still
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: swells around that work starts in twenty seventeen, Victorian Senator
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: James Patterson suggested we should sell that artwork to pay
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: down the national debt, which I think is kind of
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: an outrageous proposition given what it adds to the cultural
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: fabric of this nation.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to look back on arts controversies that were
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: once very hot. The Impressionists were regarded as kind of
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: cultural vandals. The Cubists were the same. The Surrealists, of course,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: were the same. But I often think back to a
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: controversy that raged in May two thousand and eight when
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: police raided a gallery in Sydney where photographer Bill Henson
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: was exhibiting pictures of young people without any clothes on.
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  Speaker 1: Do you remember that controversy and how do you look
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  Speaker 1: back on it now?
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  Speaker 2: I do remember it. It was front page news for
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: weeks because then Prime Minister Kevin RD interjected and called
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  Speaker 2: the works.
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  Speaker 1: I find them absolutely revolving, very strong.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Word to describe art. Bill Henson has continued to have
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a very successful career, but I haven't spoken to him
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: about that time in his life, but imagine would be
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: a very difficult thing to get past. It was a
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: huge storm at the time and a really interesting time
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: as an arts journalist to come to terms with that
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  Speaker 2: complicated tension between what is art and what is not art? Ultimately,
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: his name is continued to drag through the mud for
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: a couple of years, and so I think it's kind
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: of remarkable actually that he's managed to go on and
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: have a flourishing career despite those very interesting times.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: It must have been absolutely harrowing for him. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: the children who were featured in those photographs had been
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: photographed with the permission of their parents. The families came
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: out at the time and said Bill has not done
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: anything wrong. This work is not sexual. But I mean
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  Speaker 1: the reason that it was so controversial is this sort
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: of shadow of pedophilia and child sexual abuse which Australian
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  Speaker 1: society was only just kind of getting to grip with
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: at the time. Bill Henson is of course not in
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: any way a predator or an abuser. But it was like,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: even though he hadn't sought a controversy, it came to him.
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  Speaker 1: You know. It wasn't like Peace Christ was it where
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  Speaker 1: he did deliberately, you know, sought to provoke.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: I think you're right. I think it was a turning
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  Speaker 2: point in the shadow of the Royal Commission to which
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: you alluded, And I think it was a real turning
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  Speaker 2: point in terms of social media at that point was
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: beginning to change the way we communicated, the way we
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  Speaker 2: sourced our news, and that dare I say mob mentality
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  Speaker 2: at that point began to shift. It's like the pitchforks
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  Speaker 2: were out before we knew what was what was happening.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that thread has continued and it has
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: only gotten stronger, as as that mass communication tool has
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  Speaker 2: changed the way we live our lives.
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  Speaker 1: It's a real class thing, isn't it. It's a kind
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  Speaker 1: of accusation from people purporting to represent you know, the
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  Speaker 1: working class, or the great math, or the ordinary Australian
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: or sensible people, that the kind of cosmopolitan, degenerate elite
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: are out of touch and are corrupting society. That's a
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  Speaker 1: very old idea. It's a dangerous idea, isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: It's a dangerous idea. But I think it speaks too
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: to this historic view of artists in Australia. I don't
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: feel as though the art sector has ever really been
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: truly valued in this country. You know, the arts are
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: funded to the tune of two hundred and thirty million
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: dollars annually and yet contribute sixty seven billion dollars to
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: the GDP and sport to take an example. And the
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: last thing I want to do is create some sort
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: of dichotomy between sport and art, because as Gideon Hay
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: once said to me, art is sport is cricket is dance,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: his life, his ballet is everything. But I mean to
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: put that in context. Sport gets one point three billion
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: dollars in funding and adds fourteen billion dollars to the GEDDP.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: The arts are funded four times less and contribute five
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: times more. And so I think it's a really interesting
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: statistic because there are these great figures. Ninety eight percent
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: of Australians engage in some way with the arts, from
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: television to dance to the visual arts, and yet we
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: still don't value it as deeply as we could.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: You're, of course part of the cosmopolitan elite. But are
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: there artworks that you've had to report on that have
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: shocked you or made you feel a little bit uneasy?
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I must have been. The Bill Henson photographs made me
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: feel a little bit uneasy. I wasn't down there with
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: my pitchfork, but I did think I'm not sure about that.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, one that springs to mind is Herman Niche's
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: one p fifty action. This is an Austrian artist who
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: passed away a couple of years ago, but it was
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: a very controversial work that was programmed for the Dark
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Mofo Festival in Tasmania in twenty seventeen. It featured five
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: hundred liters of bovine blood, a freshly slain bull carcass
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: onto which twelve white clad disciples were sacrificially crucified as
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: a full orchestra, canducted by the artists himself in a
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: wheelchair at the time played on. The work was almost
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: canceled a couple of times. It was kind of it
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: was national news. There were protesters everywhere. Protesters tried to
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: buy out the tickets for the event so that they
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: could cancel it. It was a pretty remarkable and pretty
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: confronting show. I still have the blood on my vans
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: to prove I was there. I keep them in a
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: special special glass.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: The GDP contribute a bit, so.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: I think the broader idea of that piece was about
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: life and death. It's a pretty intense way to represent it,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: for sure, you know, but I think it was really
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: important work for Tasmania to show, and it also backed
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: the philosophy of the museum of old and new art,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: which was to show art at all costs, to confront
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: people with something perhaps that might challenge them or might
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: challenge the prevailing political orthodoxies of the day.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Coming up? Is there a double standard in anything goes
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: world of contemporary art? At any time in society, Going
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: back to the Bible, there are shibaliths that can't be challenged.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: In the past, those might have been things that we
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: would today consider uncontroversial, like the idea that women should
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: have jobs or that children have rights. Now the shiboliths
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: are probably related to the conflict in the Middle East,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: maybe to the status of trans people, maybe indigenous people.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: In your piece in The Australian Today, you write about
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: a moment when even David Walsh, the kind of you know,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: controversialist in chief at Mona in Tasmania, kind of had
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: to back down and apologize. Was that disappointing to you
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: and can you tell us a bit about what happened there?
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: So in twenty nineteen, Santiago Sierra, a Spanish artist, proposed
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: the work that was going to be the headline work
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: at Dark Mofo, the midwinter festival. That work was called
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Union Flag and the idea behind The work was that
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Indigenous Tasmanians might donate their blood, which would be pulled
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: into a bucket into which the Union flag, a symbol
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: of colonialism, would be submerged. There was an immediate outrage
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: from Indigenous people, who broadly had not been canvassed about
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: this work.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Aboriginal people have spilt way too much blood over the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: past two hundred years. We don't feel like we need
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: to bleed in.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: There were calls for the work to be canceled within
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: days of our story coming out in the paper. David
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Walsh and then Dark Mofo director Lee Carmichael refused to
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: blink because Mona, as part of its philosophy, is kind
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: of give zero f's organization. I mean, that's what it does.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: It's the Sex and Death Museum that shows the artworks
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: that are too edgy for anyone else in the major
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: state funded galleries or national funded galleries to show. So
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: it was a real moment for them, a philosophical fork
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: in the road.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, where they weren't just challenging the sort of pedestrian
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: shibaliths of the mob, but the things that be degenerate,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: elite hold sacred right.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: That's true, but Eventually they were forced to concede they
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: had made a mistake and that they hadn't consulted enough
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: with Indigenous Australia, and the work itself was almost canceled,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: the festival to almost suffered that fate. However, in waiving
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: that white flag, rightly or wrongly, Mona really shifted to
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: that place. It has always rebelled against the middle, the
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: place where the state funded and national funded galleries live.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: And so I think it's been a real moment for Mona,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: and I think for art in Australia, where we realize
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: there is a line and you cross it at your peril.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I find it a little bit disappointing and then sort
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: of a little bit hypocritical, probably that you know, it's
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: okay to go poking finite suburban life for heterosexual marriage,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: or Christians would say at Christianity, but you can't make
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: fun of things that are in the present moment untouchable.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Those touchstones have moved, those sacred cows have shifted, you know.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: In our piece on the Weekend, we have Chris Fallen
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: and the other great critic, John McDonald basically saying, if
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: you say anything disparaging about the artwork of say women
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: or trans people or Indigenous people, you're canceled. And so
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: it seems like we've crossed another rubicon in terms of
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: criticism or how we perceive works, or how people are
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: allowed to interact with work or to have opinions on them.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: And so I think it's a really time for criticism
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: in Australia too, in terms of what we can say.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Jim Douglas is The Australian's chief culture correspondent. You can
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: read his feature on the state of contemporary art in
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the newly launched Culture section of The Australian, in print
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: in today's weekend edition of the paper, or online at
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au slash culture. This episode
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: of The Front was hosted by me Claire Harvey and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: produced by Jasper League. Thanks for joining us on the
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Front this week. Our team also includes Kristin amiot Leat,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Sam mcgluw, Tiffany Dimack, Josh Burton and Stephanie Coombs.