|
Brian McAvera: Bobbie, you’ve long campaigned for Artists’
Resale Rights (Droit de Suite), and on the 19th of June John O’Donoghue
TD welcomed the signing of the Regulations providing said right –
one that has long been opposed by the auction houses. Can you summarise
for us your views on this ‘right?
Robert Ballagh: You’re quite correct in calling it a ‘right’:
it is! And it simply brings artists into line with composers, playwrights
and so forth. Why is the trade opposed to it? I think the art trade is
one of the last of the totally unregulated trades in the world. Even the
Stock Exchange is regulated! The great auction houses have all been in
trouble with the law: leading auctioneers have been jailed for running
cartels. I think they fear a small element of transparency entering the
trade. It can’t be the money as the sums are paltry.
There used to be the argument that it would inhibit or damage trade, but
both Sotheby’s and Christie’s recent auctions of Irish art in
London disproved that, as they sold more than ever, despite the UK’s
introduction of Resale Rights.
I am however disappointed that when they finally got round to doing something
about it, the Irish Government did the minimum. We do have a promise that
it will be revisited in primary legislation and O’Donoghue is on
record as saying that the €3,000 threshold will be lowered. In general
the Arts haven’t had a huge influence on Irish politics, so if one
was cynical, one could see the current situation as demonstrating the
contempt that politicians have for the visual arts, in that they have
done the minimum required by law.
B McA: The recently deceased Charles Haughey famously introduced tax
exemption for artists. How important was that to the development of Irish
art, and how do you assess Haughey’s contribution to the arts in
the Republic of Ireland?
R B: I think that the tax exemption scheme, which was introduced in
1969, has been enormously beneficial. It set down a marker in that, for
the first time, the State had an interest in the welfare of artists; and
also it implied that their work was of some importance. I’m no historian
of legislation, but most legislation in relation to the arts, for example
the censorship of films and the censorship of books had a profoundly negative
effect. Although the financial relief given to artists was enormously
important it was the psychological impact that was hugely significant.
It created the possibility of not having to succumb to exile.
One has to accept that Haughey was a complex individual who liked the
Arts and enjoyed the company of artists. He had an insight into the difficulties
artists had in making a living and was well aware, for example, of the
poverty that Patrick Kavanagh was living in. He was later involved in
the establishment of Aosdána. Those two schemes are pretty unique
internationally. They concentrate on the individual artist rather than
on institutions and were specifically designed to help individual artists.
He wasn’t a substantial collector like Gordon Lambert, for example.
I did visit Abbeyville a few times. The collection was very eclectic:
abstract work coupled with very conservative landscapes. You couldn’t
define his tastes. I think the important thing about Haughey was what
he did when he was in power. He put pressure on the Gallaghers over the
RHA, and in relation to IMMA, he made an intervention when many other
politicians didn’t.
B McA: You were a founder member of the Artists Association of Ireland
(AAI), an organisation that, in my view, was crucial to the development
of the professionalisation of artists in Ireland post-1980. What is your
view of the AAI, and of its contribution to Irish art?
R B: I became involved with the AAI in the early 1980s, believing
that it was terribly important for artists to get involved, and speak
with one voice, not just about aesthetic matters, but about key areas
like taxation, artists rights and so on. I felt strongly that that was
the way we should campaign. Our first seminar was on the artist and the
law, and one of the topics was Resale Rights! My views haven’t changed.
Initially it was a tiny organisation with little money. The IGTWU printed
our small newsletter for nothing. Over the years it grew and played a
bigger and more important role and it has not yet been replaced. One of
the things that we felt to be most important was communication. There
was the impression that all artists were in Dublin, but of course they
were actually scattered all over the country, so the newsletter became
an important source of information. I believe that the abolition of the
AAI was scandalous, unjustified, and hugely damaging to the profession.
There is no doubt that the supposed insolvency situation was created and
manipulated by the Arts Council. I wrote to the Chair and the Director
of the Arts Council, contacted the newspapers, and did everything that
I could! It seems to me certain elements in the Arts Council at that time
thought that clients shouldn’t criticise them; and that seems to
me to be the primary reason for closing the organisation. In my time it
was clear that it was the role of staff to implement the decisions of
Council. In the AAI years however, it was the staff who were dictating
policies. I heard one employee of the Arts Council saying on radio that
the AAI was not representative of Irish artists but, with all due respect
to him, he was not supposed to have an opinion on this. It was the Arts
Council who should have had that opinion. There was a definite feeling
that the AAI were usurping their authority. It was about power. The irony
now is that the powerful are gone. As usual, the facts did not come out.
B McA: You were also instrumental in instigating a relationship for
the AAI within the International Association of Artists (IAA), a relationship
which developed substantially, and ensured a very high profile for the
organisation within Europe especially, and again one which was cut off
at a stroke by the Arts Council’s destruction of the AAI. What are
your views on the IAA, and its importance to Ireland?
R B: I felt that it was important, and I was fortunate to be able
to play a role, for six years, on the International Executive of the IAA.
I’m proud that Ireland was at the centre of an international art
organisation. There were debates and discussions and even rows, but it’s
absolutely scandalous to lose out on all of that. Many international art
organisations, knowing of our tax exemption scheme, thought of Ireland
as a haven. Here was an involvement which reflected well on Ireland, but
it was axed and now Ireland plays no role on the international art stage.
That is disappointing. It’s personally frustrating and disappointing
to see the things that you put so much effort and time into being destroyed.
B McA: You have been a very active Republican for as long as I can
remember! So what do you see as the relationship between your Republicanism
and your art?
R B: Recently, Brian O’Doherty said that mine was ‘not so
much a political art as an art made by an intensely political person;
and not so much a socialist art, as an art made by an intensely socialist
person’. I think that is fair comment. I don’t see any of my
work as political. And yes, I have always considered myself a Republican
in the broad political sense, though I’ve never been a member of
any political party, and I’ve never supported the so-called ‘armed
struggle’. This is missed by most people. I actually have, occasionally,
made art that is specifically political, such as posters for the Birmingham
Six Campaign or the Free Nelson Mandela Campaign, and other issues like
those. Recently I did a limited edition print for the campaign against
the E U Constitution. I saw all of that as running in parallel to my career
as an artist. I’ve done things that are more to do with activism
than art, such as my support for the early days of the West Belfast Festival.
For years there had been riots on the anniversary of internment. It was
Gerry Adams MP (Fig 14) who approached me, suggesting an alternative for
young people to throwing stones and the like. I went up to Belfast, about
eighteen years ago I think, for the first festival, gave a lecture, and
judged a mural competition. It’s a very positive thing for a community
that they would use the arts as an alternative to violence. This was misread
as me supporting the Provos, whereas I saw it as underscoring an alternative
to violence.
B McA: I’d like you to elaborate on the relationship, as you see
it, between the artist and society or, more narrowly, the artist and politics.
How far do you think it important for an artist to be an activist or,
more broadly speaking, to be concerned with what is happening in the society
around him or her?
R B: I was fascinated when Mary Harney said that Ireland was closer
to Boston than to Berlin, referring of course to economic development,
but to my mind there is no doubt that Anglo-American culture sees the
arts as a separate entity from society at large. When an artist steps
outside that, as Harold Pinter did, the attacks are extraordinary.
The same is true in the US. The Dixie Chicks were threatened with assassination
for daring to criticise George Bush. The notion of the artist being engaged
with society is not considered the norm, but the European tradition is
quite different. No one is surprised that Sartre had views, or that the
Czechs elected a playwright as president. Sadly, we seem to be going down
the Anglo-American model. This year is the 90th anniversary of the Easter
Rising, which involved poets, artists and social reformers. The people
who gave birth to this state were not narrow-gauge people. We’ve
lost the notion that people from the cultural sector should be concerned
about where society is going. There is no English equivalent for the French
term engagé! I think that what I do is absolutely normal. What
I do wouldn’t be seen as abnormal in Europe.
B McA: Apart from the odd work, why so little reflection, by artists
in the Republic, of the Northern Irish Troubles?
R B: It’s just timing. I began as an artist in the late 1960s,
just as the conflict started and right from the word go I was doing work
that was trying to comment on the conflict. I found that nobody in the
North or South was doing it. In the South there was a huge sense of guilt
vis-a-vis the nationalists in the North. The State had effectively abandoned
them in the 1920s and forgotten about them until the Troubles started.
It was too difficult to deal with. And it wasn’t just in the Arts.
The whole arms trial scenario was a manifestation of the attitude ‘Please
Go Away and Do Not Disturb’. Lately in the North there have been
lots of artists who came on stream, but few in the South, yet it’s
the biggest story of the last thirty years on this island. For it to be
ignored was wrong, though I’d be the last person to insist that artists
should compulsorily make work on the Troubles.
In 1975 the Miami Showband massacre happened. Having been in the showband
business myself, and played in the actual ballroom, and having driven
that road back to Dublin late at night many times, and knowing some of
the musicians, I felt impelled to make a work on the subject. A short
time afterwards I was invited to represent Europe and Africa at the Tokyo
Print Biennale. One of the things that struck me in the 1970s, travelling
internationally, was that people were always asking about the North. I
felt I should do something and came up with an idea. The showbands used
to hand out publicity photos after a dance. When the explosion happened,
the photos would have been scattered everywhere. So the idea was to take
a publicity photo of the band, and silk-screen it onto glass, which was
then mirrored, and shattered. I shot it with a point 22 rifle, but the
bullet just went straight through! So I laid out the glass on resin, so
that it would be fixed, and used a metal punch over the three victims.
The point is that, when I went to the band’s management to seek a
photo, they were suspicious, and I realised and accepted that the responsibility
in dealing with other people’s tragedies is not to exploit them emotionally,
or otherwise. So I did a limited edition of five, which would only recoup
costs, and I sent that print to Tokyo. You have to deal carefully with
other people’s personal tragedies.
B McA: You’ve always considered yourself as a socialist, and a
Republican, but I am struck by the fact that within the Republic of Ireland
(compared, say, to the Weimar Republic or revolutionary Mexico or even
post-1969 Northern Ireland) there has been so little socio-political work?
R B: You are quite correct in noting the absence of exciting socio-political
work in the Irish context. However, unlike revolutionary Mexico where
there was strong government support for the Arts, the inheritors of the
Irish revolution, the Irish Free State government, showed little interest
in the Arts, and in searching for an ‘Irish’ School of painting,
thought it had found one in the work of painters like Paul Henry and Seán
Keating. Brian Fallon, stated that ‘the cultural commissars of the
new Irish State knew very little about painting but they could recognise
a haycock or a West of Ireland cottage when they saw one’.
This self-deception in the Arts was eventually replaced by what many considered
to be the first genuine Irish School of painting, referred to by Brian
O’Doherty as ‘the atmospheric mode’ and exemplified by
the work of painters like Patrick Collins and Nano Reid. This style of
painting is characterised by an uneasy restless fix on the unimportant
and a reluctance to disclose anything about what is painted, let alone
make a positive statement about it’. I’m mystified by this.
It’s totally outside my sphere of urban experience and cultural influences,
the movies and comics that come with that. In the first ROSC in the late
1960s, I was flabbergasted by the Pop artists, like Robert Indiana. This
was a language that I understood which was about my kind of experience.
B McA: You’ve always been a ready absorber of modern influences
but, looking back to the 1960s onwards, how far do you think Irish art
was characterised by an inability to assimilate fully international influences?
R B: When I began in the late 1960s, the problem for me was very simple
and was largely of a technical nature. Never having gone to art college,
I didn’t know how to paint. I had a brief apprenticeship with Micheal
Farrell (Fig 16) who introduced me to acrylics and masking tape and blending
brushes (badger softeners), all techniques that I use to this day. As
soon as I developed any facility at all, I realised that I didn’t
simply want to copy Indiana or Lichtenstein. My first solo show was in
1969 and I used hard-edge techniques but the content was the Vietnam War
and civil rights in the North or the USA, issues that concerned me as
a political animal, so the work was an attempt to marry personal and political
concerns with the basic techniques that I had picked up from working with
Micheal Farrell and from looking at the successful Pop artists.
B McA: You once said that the artist ‘is a tradesman doing a job
like anyone else’ and you do work widely in the commercial arena,
designing stamps, book covers, theatrical sets and so forth. Do you still
hold this view?
R B: Very much so! I believe strongly in art being a sensuous engagement
with materials. It’s an indulgent phrase perhaps, but something in
human consciousness delights in the well-made: an apprenticeship is served
and skills are developed. The artist should be skilled, but what the artist
chooses to do with those skills is another matter. I tend to veer towards
work which exhibits a level of skill and ability. I once jokingly said
that if any of my stuff survives, some people might think that the stamp
designs were the best. I don’t draw compartmental lines between the
various areas that I work in.
B McA: As demonstrated, for example, in your exhibition at the Orchard
Gallery which covered the decade 1968-78, political responses to the North
were mediated by your reworkings of Goya, David or Delacroix, for example,
in a manner which was cool, controlled and analytical. It’s almost
as if the emotion is excised with the result that the contrast between
19th-century subject matter, and the then contemporary perspectives of
commercial art is perceived as being ‘cool’, ‘hip’
and self-reflexive. Do you agree?
R B: The first thing to be said is that I am of the generation that
appreciated ‘cool’ – the phrase began in the 1960s, and
I have an attraction to the ‘cool’ view. The other thing –
and I can say it now with confidence – was that it was the only way
I could paint then. I didn’t have the skills for a more expressive
way.
My vocabulary was limited then so it was unreasonable to expect me to
write the equivalent of Shakespearean sonnets. On the other hand, and
I was very young then, I didn’t try to compete with Diego Rivera
or Picasso. I knew I wasn’t in that league, but I was determined
to make a huge, strong political statement. The pictures were exhibited
in Bedford Street in Belfast and Liberty on the Barricades was put in
the window, but there was no outrage at the Republican image, only a negative
response from the DUP in relation to her naked breasts. The politics had
passed everyone by. Some years later, in My Studio 1969 (Fig 7), I spelt
it out for everyone.
It’s interesting to observe the use of art in our society now, and
the branding of it. You become famous, and you immediately lose your first
name – Picasso, Warhol, Lichtenstein. It always takes time for people
to catch up with things. At the time, in the 1970s, people didn’t
understand what I was up to, though I felt that the work was simple and
direct. You know, I could have done the People Looking at Paintings series
(Figs 3, 4&5) for the rest of my life, but I don’t think they
understood the critique: the white cube, the dealers and so on. Maybe
they just were pleased to get a Warhol and a Ballagh together for the
price of a Ballagh!
I received an early lesson on career building. Robert Hughes put it nicely;
first we had Cubism, then Surrealism, now we’ve got careerism. I
had an exhibition of People Looking at Paintings in Brussels in the early
1970s and was asked to come back and put on a similar show about eighteen
months later. I felt that I couldn’t do the same thing, so I expanded
the theme. Now the figures were more realistically painted, sometimes
in the act of turning around. There was a certain irony. For example a
couple in front of a Leger painting – who was a socialist by the
way – form a bourgeois social scene. The gallery man was horrified
when I turned up with these. I realised then, that if you buy into that
world, you have to produce the same product year after year.
B McA: Your ‘Pop’ sensibility gave way to an almost photo-realist
style, not just in your portraits, but also with the ‘Inside’
series which gave us some unusual domestic scenarios. I presume that the
switch was due to the need for accessibility, though you still found a
via media between the two styles by both playing with the shape of the
canvas (triangular, cruciform) and by inserting references to post-modern
idioms, often by quoting a ‘painting’ within an interior. What
did you want to achieve?
R B: The simple answer is that the Pop phase started to develop on
a technical level, and demanded a certain degree of modelling for showing
people in the act of turning around, so I had to develop the requisite
skills. One of the first real efforts was No 3 (Outside of Our House).
With this picture, some people turned off me, thinking it was a complete
betrayal of Modernism whereas I saw it as a development.
On a technical level I was improving. The No 3 painting was about the
artist in society. Most of the artists I knew lived in modest circumstances
so the painting seemed almost a sociological statement – that artists
now didn’t have to come from a privileged background. Also I am reading
a book called How to Make Your Art Commercial, which was a real book.
The painting looked like it did because I had developed my own skills
as an artist. Before, the political concerns were more general: this was
coming close to home.
I’ve always enjoyed ‘quotation’: the concept of a play
within a play. I love those literary things: puns, quotes, those kinds
of jokes. It’s why I was attracted to writers like Sterne, Joyce
and Flann O’Brien. Then I thought: if I’m quoting, wouldn’t
it be fun to quote from what I used to be! It’s done because I enjoy
doing it.
B McA: You quote yourself, whether literally by putting a portrait
of yourself into a painting, or by putting in a reference to a painting
by you. One could regard this as a dialogue, but painting isn’t very
good at developing either dialogue or ideas in any depth. So why do you
do it?
R B: In the past I received so much flak over my nude self-portraits.
Having got a gift of underpants with Michelangelo genitalia a la David
printed on them, I decided to paint a flabby middle-aged artist with them
on – me! Anthony Cronin said that if an artist tells the truth about
himself and his position in society, then he is making as powerful a political
statement as anyone can make. So the self-portraits are about talking
about what it is like to be an artist in Ireland at this moment in time.
They are not about ego.
I don’t enter them with great enthusiasm at the start. The notion
of exposing oneself is not very attractive to me. Upstairs No 3 (Fig 2)
was very influenced by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in relation to
proprietorial attitudes: the woman’s glance is directed at the male
viewer and so forth. So the female nude in Inside No 3 (Fig 1) was painted
turning away from the observer (although looking at my face on the television).
It was my attempt to subvert the classical depiction of the female nude
in Western art.
Having tried to say something about the depiction of the female nude,
I had to do the same with the male nude, and as I’d used my wife,
I felt an obligation to use myself for the male nude. It’s meant
to be humorous, in terms of the socks and the T-shirt. It’s difficult
to deal with these issues in contemporary art now, in terms of painting.
It’s terribly easy to slither into soft porn or whatever. The reason
that I do literary things in paint is because that’s what I do! I
paint. It’s my affliction: themes and ideas. Someone with words could
maybe do it better. The self-referential, the quoting, I recognise as
literary, but you do what you do. I like ideas. I think Liam Kelly said
that if you want sensuous expressionist work, then you don’t go to
me, but you do in terms of content. See my Self-Portrait in the Italian
Style (Fig 8).
I saw and admired Lucien Freud, seeing both his retrospectives at Venice
and at the Tate. There’s a self-portrait where he’s naked apart
from his boots and a palette. It’s as if he’s saying: I may
be an old fucker, but I’m still at it.
|