66. Poetry of the present

Unsent
June 24 1998

Re: A not-quite-so-midsummer’s night story — June 22. Coupling the “hint of red” in a Dégas painting with the “reddish glow” of a Hamilton steel mills sky and the summer solstice, David Macfarlane is out serenading the Courtald Collection at the AGO and the delight of being in the company of “beauty” and good friends all in the name of putting the political (i.e the aesthetic structuring of vision) aside by cherishing art “just because it’s art.”
But second-guessing the narratives of historical paintings is more the privilege of an art visitor than a thinking columnist who even from the “cheap seats” must anticipate other responses and expectations in a time of ongoing summer blockbuster publicity. It is possible to enjoy the museums’ offerings while acknowledging the cultural function of the public museum as a culturally differentiated space appropriated by ruling élites as a key symbolic site both for performances of ‘distinction’ — between those with and without specialized knowledge — and for new norms of social conduct. A modern museum does other useful things but that is (to use Macfarlane’s words) its “calculable prose,” its business, its policy objective.
Even Mr. Macfarlane’s desire to link the poetic in everyday life with a ‘poetry of the present’ does not rely — as museum blockbusters also imply — upon emotional contact with art of the past on view in flagship institutions. For the benefit of all, Mr. Macfarlane might try broadening and testing his poetic inspirations and art affections by side-trips to differently ambitious alternative art spaces — not as reachable from The Globe and Mail’s rampless autobahn — where stories beguiling or harsh, favoured or not are being told by living artists.