Too cosy about the arts?

ROBERT Hughes, the New York based Australian critic, remarked in an interview in The Irish Times a few years back: "In America, there's this astonishing lock between therapeutic sanctimony and the profit motive. Art is their church. It was sold to the raw republic as improving experience, in terms of spiritual edification. Nothing whatever to do with sensuous enjoyment or sharpening the old eye. Passionate moralising about the arts began very early on. So if you question this or, worse, say that something is rubbish, it's not an aesthetic disagreement but a moral one."

The state of Irish art has become similarly influenced by a confessional morality, which is, too, the very kitbag that we hear and read about daily in the media. Journalism and art consequently draw ever closer, to such an extent that it can be difficult to tell them apart. Novels, poems and plays once given critical legitimacy in this way can often seem, on cooler reflection, deeply flawed and derivative.

In the 1980s, the documentary imperative became dominant as Ireland turned this way and that, obsessively trying to find a new vision of, and for, itself. The symbolic moment came (and had to come, as many justly believed) with the election as President of Mary Robinson. In that isolated event an imagined alternative took root which overcame the familiar realities of Irish political and cultural lite. The possibility presented itself, and still does, that coherently structured, imaginative campaigns can change people's lives or, more modestly, influence how we perceive ourselves which almost amounts to the same thing. Yet such genuine cause for celebration should not eclipse the real economic, moral and political problems which the country faces.

IN THESE circumstances, there is a danger that "the Arts" be used as a kind of smokescreen for the lack of political will in addressing these issues. "The Arts" are set up as a high profile, yet impotent, moral "opposition". Writing and writers run the risk of being conned into a game of pass the buck, bearing or beating the humanistic heart as powers that be look on. But this show will not change much, and change is what is at issue now. It is at the core of all the current agendas - change for the better, based upon a more honest understanding of past failures.

Since the 1980s, the republic of letters became a commercial enterprise, an adjunct to the tourist business. Writing was looked upon in a materially different way than in previous years. It was a change not of accent or emphasis but of direction, ideologically linked to the altered perceptions which conservation centres and heritage theme parks enact regarding our relationship with nature, landscape and history. This substantial cultural change was facilitated with little or no questioning and is almost now complete.

For it was much easier to get a poem published in Ireland in the 1980s than it was to find a job. Indeed, there may be some kind of curious link between an economic recession and the number of people who started to write poems or short stories. For those who may well have been quite happy living their lives thinking of "some day" becoming writers, many have actually made that commitment, possibly on the basis that there was little else to do. Ireland is a literary culture, so why not, what is there to lose?

Consequently, poetry is everywhere. Books are published by the new time - first collections are launched, sold on the night, occasionally reviewed, stockpiled and sometimes poets are interviewed, given prizes: but more than likely books are forgotten within the year. This speed of turnover has become truly mind boggling for a country the size of Ireland.

There is, of course, nothing new about all this flourishing. People wrote poems by the tea chestful in previous generations and we have Patrick Kavanagh to thank for his comment on the standing army of Irish poets. As a partial consequence, artistic ambition is usually seen in Ireland as pretentious; the common touch a sign of real genius. We are to take our poetry neat, like our politics, undiluted by criticism.

Looked at in the clear light of unexasperated and impartial day, writing poetry is an activity that has consoled and given enjoyment to many hundreds of thousands of people and long may do so. There is the risk, though, that much of this writing is promoted as "self expression", similar to the American obsession with poetry as therapy, public and private. Yet letting it all hang out can lead to poetic sag.

The problem begins (and ends) when the reception which writing receives sidesteps any reasonably detailed literary evaluation in favour of a media coverage which is uninterested in (and often actively hostile to) poetry as an art form. Maybe there is a constitutional antipathy between both forms of communication? Who knows? The Nobel prize winning Italian poet and critic, Eugenio Montale, predicted in 1952 that art was developing in two directions: "a utilitarian art not unlike sport for the masses opposed to "true art as such, not so different from the art of the past and not easily reducible to cliche".

However one is to view the situation, writing became an alternative lifestyle in the Ireland of the 1980s. As Robert Hughes remarked of the New York art world: "Never had there been so many artists, so much vying for attention, so many collectors, so many inflated claims and so little sense of measure". (Nothing If Not Critical, 1991).

NAMES are in print, photographs taken, discuss ion (of a sort) follows and out of the anonymity of a personal life, something "greater" beckons. What that something is, is an illusory sense of freedom of being a writer. But why should this be so? Why should writing in Ireland carry this extraordinary responsibility to offer up opportunities that are not available in the wider society?

In a society with limited access to opportunities, the tendency to view writing as a privileged alternative is very strong. Small wonder that "the Arts are seen more and more as a viable career possibility and, within that, poetry as a form of expression and consolation, sustained and promoted in a kind of public relations exercise.

The problem is that poetry is not only these things, which is precisely where Robert Hughes's "some sense of measure" comes in. Yet this issue of judgement and discrimination sits very uncomfortably on our shoulders. To criticise goes against the grain and is perceived, colloquially, as a negative, niggardly thing. Or else critical interventions are based increasingly around polemical agendas and cultural stereotypes which bear little relation to artistic achievement.

Caught up with the imaginary sense of the power that writing has in Irish society, it may be no bad thing to recall what the Australian poet and critic, Les Murray remarked of "the old problem": "We must break the grace and favour approach to patronage, just as surely as we must break the link, discerned by the public with ruinous effect, between art and privilege. We have reneged on the old problem of reconciling equality with excellence, and we must take it up again".

Sounds like a good idea to me.