The big picture

Attendance figures for art exhibitions are not necessarily holy writ, since most curators know very well how to boost them with all sorts of groups - pensioners, schoolchildren, random visitors, voluntary organisations of all kinds - who, very often, have little individual interest in art. Such people have, of course, every right to be there, though they rarely represent the dedicated (and informed) exhibition-goer. Similarly, of the thousands who go to the theatre for an evening's entertainment, only a certain percentage consists of genuine, informed playgoers. These alone, however, are not enough to keep the theatres in business. Figures do talk, though what they say is not always clear, and public taste is never predictable even in these days of intensive PR and media publicity. There are certain artists who seem automatically assured of a large public: Picasso, Van Gogh, Warhol, Dali among 20th-century figures, while Leonardo da Vinci can usually draw crowds because he is one of the few artist-intellectuals of whom almost everybody has heard. The Impressionists, too, are familiar to just about everyone from countless reproductions, and a recent unofficial estimate was that "anything to do with Impressionism" made for good box-office business. Some weeks ago, that excellent publication The Art Newspaper (which is published in London) ran a table of the most successful exhibitions of 1997 in terms of attendance. The top of the table was "Renoir's Portraits" at the Art Institute of Chicago, which drew 489,432 people at an average daily rate of 6,042. The second was "Picasso and the Portrait" at the Grand Palais in Paris (433,890, or 4,500 a day); the third was "Picasso: the Early Years" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington (530,911, or 4,424 a day). The first two ran from October to January (always reckoned a good time) and the second from March to July. Other exhibitions which ranked high were Georges de la Tour at the Grand Palais in Paris, "Art in the 20th Century" at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, "Monet and the Mediterranean" at various American venues, "Van Gogh Drawings" at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and "The Glory of Byzantium" at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The Venice Biennale drew 170,000 visitors during its run from June to November, though this presumably refers only to the "official" exhibition and not to its various offshoots scattered about the city. The Biennale's average attendance was 3,150 a day, though obviously its prestige value to the city far outweighs its commercial or touristic one.

The big exhibition of German Expressionism at the Palazzo Grassi, part of whose run coincided with that of the Biennale, drew a round 100,000, or 2,564 a day. More than double that overall figure went to see Egon Schiele at MOMA in New York, and Jasper Johns earlier at the same venue, while Georgia O'Keeffe at the New York Met drew 164,404.

In general, the figures for English art institutions are more modest, which is not surprising since the English have never been considered primarily a visual people. The Giacometti show at the Royal Academy, which ran from October 1996 to New Year's Day 1997, had an attendance of 141,791 with a daily average of 1,841. "Braque: the Late Works" at the Royal Academy attracted 160,131, giving an average per day of 1,255. Braque is only inching back into fashion, and a Picasso show would probably have drawn double these figures.

The rather disappointing Mondrian exhibition at the Tate Gallery attracted 114,399 visitors, or 847 a day, and Howard Hodgkin at the Hayward Gallery drew 111,525 or 1,328 a day - although it was teamed with another event called "Beyond Reason", which I remember as being rather boring. "Symbolism in Britain" at the Tate drew a rather disappointing 90,990 or 1,167 a day. Some outstanding exhibitions (in my estimation anyway) fell well short of the "gate" they deserved; for instance the senior American painter, Ellsworth Kelly, at the Tate, with a run of almost three months, attracted only 34,589 visitors at a daily rate of 397. The German Post-Impressionist Lovis Corinth, at the same gallery, drew only 29,878 at 403 a day (figures affected, I should guess, by hostile and rather stupid reviews). The sculptor Tony Cragg did better at the Whitechapel Gallery, attracting 45,000 with a daily average of 775, while the exhibition called "A Quality of Light" at the Tate in St Ives drew 113,114 or 660 a day - a remarkable figure for an outlying institution, and a tribute to Cornwall's own recent past, since the exhibition celebrated the achievements of the St Ives School. In spite of his fading image, David Hockney fared quite creditably at the City Art Galleries in Manchester (a very lively centre, incidentally) by drawing 45,280 people at a daily average of 335. By comparison, Sean Scully did rather poorly in the same gallery, pulling in an overall attendance of 5,949 over seven weeks, with a daily average of 157. A long-running exhibition, at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, of the late Anne Redpath brought in 13,389 at 179 a day - less than brilliant for a much-loved Scottish painter.

Assuming that Dublin cannot compete in terms of population, wealth and tourist appeal (not to mention publicity power) with an international metropolis such as London, our Museum of Modern Art in Dublin comes out of it very well indeed. After all, it is still a new institution, while the Tate and the Royal Academy figure on virtually every tourist's brochures. The Warhol exhibition there attracted 50,284 visitors at 1,524, while Kiki Smith drew no less than 74,984 - though the daily average was less, at 1,315. The Joseph Kosuth exhibition (and Kosuth is an artist who for me is intellectually interesting, but rather flat visually) drew 78,209 viewers, though again the daily figure was smaller at 1,101. Neither Smith nor Kosuth are Plain Man's Artists, so these attendances for two relatively "difficult" contemporary figures are quite remarkable in a city where the art public is often assumed to be relatively small. The survey does not seem to list "The Pursuit of Painting", curated imaginatively by Stephen McKenna, - an exhibition which deserved international or at least cross-Channel coverage, though it got very little of either.

According to IMMA, however, it drew an attendance of 135,000 between June 26th and November 2nd, which adds up to 114 days. Work out the long division for yourself, but it comes to over 1,100 a day. Plainly the days are past when Ireland can be considered a promotional backwater in terms of contemporary art.