It sounded very homely. The Prime Minister confirmed during his press conference last week that the cultural sector had had to wait a long time for reopening. “The Netherlands missed you.” Very jovial. We have a pleasant country, with a pleasant government and a pleasant Prime Minister. The conversations are different abroad.
In Turkey, President Erdogan sees it as his duty to rip out the tongues of pop singers. He got involved in the religious commotion surrounding a pop song by the singer Sezen Aksu. In it Adam and Eve are called “ignorant,” and this is especially offensive to Adam. “It is our duty to pluck out the tongues of those who slander him.”
Singer Aksu responded with a new song. “You can’t hurt me/ I’m already beaten/ Pain wherever I look/ Sorrow whatever I see/ I’m your prey, hunter/ Shoot me.” The artist as prey. So much for Turkey.
In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Johnson clashed with visual artist Tracey Emin. After uproar over parties at 10 Downing Street, demanded Emin that her artwork ‘More Passion’ was removed from the Prime Minister’s house. “I think the last thing this government needs is more passion,” she said.
British ceramist Grayson Perry became by the Daily Mail asked for a comment. He grumbled at Emin’s political antennae, saying that he himself had been displeased when Conservative politician George Osborne bought his ‘Print For A Politician’. “You have to be careful who you are associated with, because you don’t want to become a toxic brand.” The artist as a brand. So much for the English.
In France, the French presidential candidate Zemmour won the wrath on Bernard Serf’s neck, cousin of the singer Barbara, who died in 1997. The far right Zemmour had shown the photo of Barbara in a campaign film: according to the cousin, this was a form of occupation. Anschluss. Did Zemmour really think Barbara would have wanted anything to do with a politician previously convicted of inciting racial discrimination? The artist as a committed citizen. So much for the French.
The Netherlands missed you. You can indeed see art as a bowl with a goldfish that you take from the shelter after a long vacation to put back on the buffet for decoration, but that does not exactly hit the proportions correctly. Art is a battlefield. In art, man struggles with lostness, love, existential doubt, happiness and failure.
Artists are the inner voice of the country, says the mayor of Istanbul. That doesn’t mean they are always right. Or that they always make a valuable contribution to the conversation. But it does mean that the board must relate to that inner voice. Art and culture touch what is least controllable in us, says artist Anish Kapoor in The Art Newspaper. That’s why governments struggle with it. Hence, presidents and presidential candidates want to annex the vote.
That is why a country is constantly in conflict with regard to art. This struggle is about censorship, ideals, money, legitimization of state power, cult of personality, mores, ownership, dreams, interests. Neil Young removes his music from Spotify in protest against disinformation and Spotify is immediately worth 2 billion less. The Chinese Censor changes the ending from the movie Fight Club, causing the state to suddenly win. In Hong Kong, statues of the ‘Goddess of Democracy’ are taken off their pedestals. In Tennessee, Mausthe graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about the extermination of the Jews, banned by a school board.
Closing art institutions is not a futility. Any more than opening art institutions is a guarantee of peace and harmony. Sometimes an artist is a brand and sometimes an art institution is a shop. For example, the major European museums – the Uffizi, the Center Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum – like to do business with China. That’s why they have no such need to respond to a report from the Uyghur Tribunal on torture, persecution, rape of Uyghurs by the Chinese state.
After all, by collaborating with that state, the museums contribute to ‘greater understanding’ between cultures and to ‘tolerance and curiosity’, they say. And it is precisely this melancholy and unctuous language that denies the importance of art and culture as areas in which societies are at loggerheads with themselves and each other.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 1, 2022