in praise of the National Gallery

Established early in the Victorian age, the National Gallery has matured over the 171 years of its existence to become a well-loved symbol of art for all. Its imposing position overlooking Trafalgar Square, was specially chosen between the east and west sides of London so that it would be accessible to all social classes in London.

During World War II, when its treasures were buried deep in Welsh mines, the gallery became “a defiant outpost of culture right in the middle of a bombed and shattered metropolis", as critic Herbert Read put it, by holding exhibitions and musical recitals in the midst of the Blitz.

Yesterday the gallery announced a further step to make its collection available to the public. Not only is the entire collection online, but there is now a full-screen zoom facility. Visitors to the current landscape show, “Corot to Monet”, which opened earlier this month, have already been savouring this technological feat. Interactive computers allow you to touch the screen and move around a painting to explore parts and the whole in tandem.

The landscape exhibition which is drawn from the permanent collection is free of charge and has been attracting large visitor numbers. It is an unusual move in the summer, when blockbuster shows with admission charges of up to £12 a throw are a tried and tested way of generating income.

In addition to its upgraded site, where 12,000 images, plus audio and video can be accessed, the gallery also provides a Love Art service where images of 250 paintings from its collection can be viewed in detail on mobile phones. So far over 100,000 people have download images and audio to their mobiles. Last year the gallery also pioneered the posting up of large-scale reproductions of its favourite paintings around the streets of London.

The National Gallery, as one of its former keepers has noted, has reflected the declining fortunes of Britain on the global arena, as it could not afford to buy major art works sold off by the country’s own aristocrats. Over recent decades, public galleries and museums have introduced steep ticket prices for special exhibitions which often include many publicly-owned works, even from their own collections.

Many institutions have used blockbuster shows to increase revenues, by focussing on popular artists guaranteed to pull in big crowds, rather than bringing to light neglected artists or movements. The gallery’s director Nicholas Penny, has sought to buck this trend along with a number of other directors.

But even the National Gallery, for all its great achievements and refreshing anti-commercialism, is in a difficult position and is itself planning a Canaletto blockbuster for the autumn. At a time when financial insecurity on the global markets has pitched Old Master prices at all-time high rates, the National Galleries of Britain and Scotland had to appeal to the public to raise the £84 million needed to pay the Duke of Sutherland for two great paintings by Titian he was selling.

In addition to its expanded website facilities, the National Gallery allows users to reproduce its images on a not-for-profit, educational basis. At a time when images are increasingly owned and monopolised by corporations such as Getty, Corbis and Jupiter, making art available to all online is a shining example of the potential held by technology freed from the profit motive.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Painting by numbers

Is there a connection between the purchase by the National Galleries of Scotland and England of a masterpiece by the 16th century Venetian painter Titian for a mere £50 million, and the man who claims to be in charge of the country, Gordon Brown? I only ask this because of the prime minister’s strange reference to the painter which left already bewildered political and economic elites even more bemused. 

Brown, who only the other month claimed to have saved the world economy singlehandedly by a series of masterstrokes (i.e. bank bail-outs), has finally bowed to events (the continuing collapse of banks and the deep recession) and acknowledged that, after all, global capitalism is still in dire straits. And what’s more, it’s Titian we should turn to for advice. 

Now, there’s nothing wrong in learning from one of the greatest artists of all times. But what did Titian have to say about the international economy? Perhaps as the Venetian Republic was the centre of global trading at the time, Titian new a thing or two about commodities and currencies, not to mention the odd rampage down the Adriatic to open up new markets? 

Unfortunately not. This did not stop Brown, however. As the World Economic Forum stumbled to a close in Davos at the weekend, Brown took to the stage and bizarrely compared himself to the celebrated Renaissance artist. “This is the first financial crisis of the global age,” he said, “and there is no clear map that has been set out from past experience to deal with it. 'I'm reminded of the story of Titian, who's the great painter who reached the age of 90, finished the last of his nearly 100 brilliant paintings, and he said at the end of it, ‘I'm finally beginning to learn how to paint,’ and that is where we are.” 

So presumably we will have to wait until Brown reaches 90 to find solutions to the crisis! No wonder the Tories made easy fun of him, treasury spokesman Greg Hands saying that the prime minister's political leadership was “more suited to painting by numbers”. But seriously, Titian did not spend his time staggering from one approach to another and was recognised by his contemporaries as "the sun amidst small stars". His application and use of colour influenced not only painters of the Italian Renaissance, but shaped the future direction of Western art. 

As for Brown, all he has shaped is the forthcoming demise of New Labour, which tied its fortunes to the fantasy world of corporate-driven globalisation, with the promise of permanent growth, stable markets, easy credit and personal enrichment. Brown is as confused as the rest of the elites as to why this has all come to an abrupt end, thus his wacky reference to Titian. 

Back to the purchase of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon. There is clearly something amiss when public funds are used to buy a painting from the Duke of Sutherland, whose ancestors led the brutal Highland Clearances. His paintings, along with the Queen’s massive collection which remains mostly hidden from public view, rightly belong to the nation - for free. Expropriating them and putting them on public display will have to wait, however, but hopefully not for too long. 

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

High art - high prices

The National Gallery's struggle to raise the cash to buy a Titian masterpiece says a lot about the art market and access to cultural works. Yesterday, the gallery announced that it has been granted a £10m lifeline by the National Heritage Memorial Fund “of last resort” to acquire the painting, currently on special loan and on view in London. This leaves it 41 days to raise a total of £50 million to secure the Titian.

Diana and Actaeon belongs to the Duke of Sutherland. Last August he announced that he wanted to sell it but would make a “bargain offer” to the National Galleries in Scotland and London of £100m to purchase it, plus its pendant, Diana and Callisto. The first £50m would have to be raised by December 31. The amount is billed as a bargain, since the painting would fetch much more than double that at auction.

Last month the National Art Fund helped out with £1m, the largest grant it has ever made in its 105-year history. Well-known artists including Lucian Freud, Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley, Alison Watt and Gerhard Richter have lent their support. Tracey Emin presented a letter signed by 39 artists to Downing Street, saying that they believed that “in challenging times, the heritage of the past and the heritage of the present are more important than ever”.

Sir John Tusa, chair of the University of the Arts in London and the university’s new rector Nigel Carrington, have seized the Titian issue as an chance to draw attention to a lack of funds for art colleges. Right as it is that they should highlight the need to support young and living artists and not over-emphasise the past, they are also missing the point.

In recent times, the international art market has seen unprecedented prices due to buyers like Roman Abramovich and other Russian oligarchs. It is this which gives aristocrats such as the Duke of Sutherland a powerful leverage. The reason that the Duke is selling his paintings in the first place is because he is making “an elaborate piece of inheritance tax planning”, as Lucy Warwick-Ching puts it in the Financial Times. According to the Musems and Libraries Archives Council, £15.2m was written off last year in relations to donations of art.

If arts institutions become rivals scrambling around an ever-decreasing pot of public money, they will let the government off the hook and miss the wood for the trees. As long as corporate interests, especially the global auction houses rule the roost, high art and great masterpieces will be the playthings of the super rich. Art and art training will become less and less accessible to ordinary people as students accumulate vast debts and museums are obliged to charge high prices for temporary exhibitions and sell reproduction rights to global corporates.

Great public institutions like the National Gallery were formed when capitalism was in its ascendancy. In a pioneering move, Parliament provided for the creation of a gallery for all in 1824. As its site says: “With a commitment to free admission, a central and accessible site, and extended opening hours the Gallery has ensured that its collection can be enjoyed by the widest public possible, and not become the exclusive preserve of the privileged.”

These great aims are clearly endangered by successive governments like New Labour who have sought to “liberate the market” and now are totally at sea. At a recent meeting with members of the Critics Circle, the new culture minister, Andy Burnham, refused to be drawn on a commitment to help secure the Titians, saying the government would “take a middle seat and broker the situation”. How mealy-mouthed can you get?

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win Secretary