Celebrating the disasters averted

This week’s column falls on Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night if you prefer; that annual commemoration of 5 November 1605, when the luckless Guy Fawkes was arrested while guarding explosives placed beneath the House of Lords by members of the Gunpowder Plot. The intention of the plotters, who were Catholic, was to assassinate Protestant King James I and his parliament.

Four centuries later, and the idea that religious sectarianism might lead to a plot to blow up a democratically elected chamber doesn’t seem that far-fetched, and it could be argued that the current anger and resentment against politicians could not get much worse. What I think is different between now and then is how the avoiding of these potentially murderous acts is celebrated, or not. Then, there was nothing particularly odd in the decree that the public could celebrate the king's survival with the lighting of bonfires, so long as did not cause any danger or disorder.

I find it hard to imagine that nowadays a terrorist or any other attack thwarted by the authorities would merit an annual celebration that would last through the ages and become part of the national mythology. Instead, we dwell on the disasters, the catastrophes, and commemorate those as if they are what tells us most about who we are today. Think of the 911 attacks, the London bombings of 2005, and of course the Holocaust. Even Remembrance Day, which marks the end of World War I, is not about celebrating, but honouring, and by implication mourning, members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty.

I am not questioning the worthiness of those events as something to grieve over, or trying to minimise the impact of them on the victims and their family and friends, and their need to have their suffering acknowledged. What I am saying is perhaps we need to recalibrate a touch. Rather than dwelling exclusively on moments of profound sadness, we should go back to looking for calamities averted and disasters prevented, and instead of lamenting the worst of human nature, look to what we can achieve when we work together to overcome it.

Or at least be grateful when someone stumbles across the explosives before the fuse is lit.

I also want to return to a topic that I have not covered in a while: art, or rather two exhibitions at the Royal Academy, one of which ended a few days ago.

Kiefer / Van Gogh placed the rather monumental works of the German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer side by side with those by Vincent van Gogh. The reason for this comparison, as notes the Royal Academy website, is that, seventy years after the death of the Dutch master, Kiefer received a travel grant to follow in the footsteps of Van Gogh, starting in the Netherlands, through to Belgium, Paris and Arles in the south of France, on which voyage he took the first steps on his own artistic journey.

That Kiefer, like many later artists, was inspired by van Gogh is abundantly clear without having to see his works in the same room as his idol, but I had not previously appreciated just how directly the German artist took inspiration from him.

“I don’t want to copy Van Gogh’s style,” Kiefer wrote in a diary that he kept of his voyage in 1963. “That would be too primitive. I’d rather try to find my own language. But that’s very hard to do.” Indeed it must be difficult to visit the places in which another artist found inspiration and not reproduce their work, to a greater or lesser extent.

I suppose what separates two artists is that Kiefer took van Gogh’s visceral and tactile use of layered paint and expanded it to include the kind of matter that one might find at the scene, including straw, ash and clay. But at times that seems to be all that divides them (although the ability of van Gogh to contain an entire universe of otherwise inexpressible meaning in a few brushstrokes remains his alone).

I hesitate to use the word ‘brave’ when it comes to the artistic world, as that immediately invites mockery, but there is a confidence bordering on arrogance, or at least an insouciance, in an artist allowing themself to be compared directly with not only an acknowledged master but one who is held up as one of the greatest of all time (whatever that means). Whether he is diminished by the comparison is an open question.

The other exhibition I saw at the RA was Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, which runs until 18 January. I have to confess that I had not previously come across Hamilton, who the RA describes as “one of the most important painters working right now”. A big claim, but one more than backed up by the works on display.

Once you become tuned in to the riotous use of vivid colours and the minor shock of the depth of colour of his protagonists’ skin, the scenes can seem rather everyday, almost mundane, at first glance. Until you look more closely, that is, and see the layer upon layer of meaning, and the countless references to art history, civil rights, comics, science fiction and much more, that lend the works a profundity and allow them to linger long in the mind.

A person’s skin colour shouldn’t matter but sadly it does, and Hamilton’s powerful paintings place Black Americans firmly in the centre of his art, and of the tradition of Western history paintings, by focusing on the people who were so evidently missing from the art of previous generations. As well as an act of correction, claiming art so boldly as a place for Black people to find expression and their lives mirrored on a gallery wall has a political dimension, of course; one that flies in the face of centuries of exploitation, marginalisation and hate. Yet to see all of that challenged so colourfully, so brightly and so, in a way, optimistically is cheering, and inspiring.

The piece that left the greatest impression on me, however, was not a painting, but rather an installation, Wake (see at the top with the painting Gulf Stream behind it). The accompanying card says that it “centres on a black ship on a pedestal that stands for a black sea,” adding: “While recalling the journey made by enslaved Africans, the work also suggests the growing power of Black cultural expression.”

I couldn’t agree more.