Mick Hartley

Interesting conflict between left and right over artist Jack Vettriano. Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber posted about him yesterday, and had no problem with how to describe his art: “kitsch rubbish”.

Today David Carr at Samizdata is full of praise for the man:

Vettriano’s deeply evokative work is rich in art deco erotica noir: elegant, sexy and (in this day and age) subversive. While many artists use a canvas to tell a story, Vettriano uses his to write a seductive novel full of unambigiously masculine and feminine characters.

In short, Jack Vettriano is a Capitalist Hero. He has used his gifts to make art which enchants, engages and enriches people’s lives to his (and their) benefit.

It’s easy enough to understand why Vettriano should appeal to the Samizdata libertarians:

What he refers to as the ‘art establishment’ in this country is actually a tax-funded clique of ‘gatekeepers’ whose power rests on their self-defined status as members of an aesthetic order that is way above and beyond the ‘crass populism’ of genuine creative endeavour. This avant-garde elite live by their grip on state purse-strings and if you can find significance and ‘art’ in a jarful of pickled dogturds, so much stronger is your claim to membership of this ‘Priesthood of Understanding’.

It is in their interests to perpetuate the myth that without government funding there will be no art or culture. The success of Jack Vettriano is a standing refutation of that myth. Small wonder that they despise him.

This is good stuff, especially in the wake of the “fourth plinth” decision, a classic case of state funding where aesthetic criteria have been abandoned in the face of a tedious politically correct “statement”. However as was pointed out in one of the comments, much of the worst modern British art is collected by the private money of Charles Saatchi. Indeed modern art over the course of the 20th century was largely supported by wealthy individuals like Peggy Guggenheim, with the constant complaint that state-funded galleries were unable to compete with the prices being paid by private collectors.

Vettriano isn’t kitsch rubbish (Thomas Kinkade is kitsch rubbish), but I can’t pretend any great enthusiasm for his stuff. As another comment noted, he’s not unlike Edward Hopper, though with the alienation of Hopper replaced by a one-dimensional faded thirties romanticism.

If Vettriano is the best that the private sector can come up with, and “Alison Lapper Pregnant” the best that state funding can come up with, then the art world is definitely in trouble. But then we knew that already.