Coronavirus arts measures: Politicians like talking art, just not the work involved in making it

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar aimed for a piece of rhetoric by quoting Seamus Heaney, but when politicians talk about the work involved in making art, they usually sound inarticulate. Photo: RTÉ

Quoting someone important can make you sound serious, but don’t take my word for it. 

Many people are referencing the greats since Seamus Heaney’s description of Wintering Out, his poetry collection responding to the Troubles, caught fire last month. “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere” has become a refrain for the crisis, delivered by everyone from chat show hosts to politicians.

Mainstream politics work through soundbites nowadays, but, given the urgency of the times, listeners are gathering around to hear political leaders through to the end. “We are all the more together for having had to turn and walk away,” said Taoiseach Leo Varadkar last Friday, quoting Heaney’s poem “Time Lapse.” It was an announcement extending the shutdown restrictions, while also aiming for something that can stir - a piece of rhetoric

It’s easy to see how this can look good, a leader wise enough to quote a beloved poet in an emergency. Someone who seems to have uncovered that legendary bedrock of the nation’s creativity, at a crucial moment. The Taoiseach was on such a literature buzz, he even referenced Brinsley MacNamara’s novel The Valley of the Squinting Windows while urging people to remain civil to each other. 

Quoting art is good for rhetoric, but when politicians talk about the work involved in making art, they can instantly sound inarticulate. 

Some might remember January 2014, when, during an interview on RTÉ radio, Minister for Arts Jimmy Deenihan sounded detached from internal conflicts at Limerick City of Culture. There was disagreement about the centrepiece of the programme, Royal de Luxe’s spectacle The Giant’s Journey, a production that Deenihan referred to as “some puppet show”. He was mocked for not quite capturing the achievement of the French street theatre company, how its 25-foot mannequin can bring an entire city to a standstill and transform it into a viewing gallery.

Recently, the Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan gave a press conference announcing new arts measures to cope with the shutdown. Alongside news of a meagre investment of €500,000 from the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the Minister chose the moment to introduce “Shine Your Light,” a nationwide spectacle for people to light up their windows for people affected by Covid-19. “Get a light down from the attic, paint a picture, decorate your house and garden, bake a cake with candles - even if it’s not your birthday,” she said. The whole event seemed to blur the lines between professional practice and homemade crafts. 

When talking about artists’ work, the minister compared the current situation to an artist’s retreat, where there is plenty of time and space to get the juices going. “I think there is a real opportunity for them to avail of this,” she said. In reality, artists are more likely to be looking over profit and loss spreadsheets, estimating the damage of cancelled audience engagements, and focusing more on trying to survive.

That gave the impression that the minister, like many politicians, doesn’t look on artists’ work as “real work”. An insightful article by researchers Ionnais Tsioulakis and Ali Fitzgibbon, “Performing Artists in the age of COVID-19,” observes an imbalance in responses to the crisis, that artists are expected to be productive while other industries are being “mothballed” and kept in good condition until the pandemic is over. 

It really is time for politicians to get serious about the work involved in making art. Sara Baume gives a portrayal of such labour in her excellent new non-fiction book handiwork, published by Tramp Press. A visual artist creating an exhibition, Baume describes a home that she has transformed into a workshop, where each day she moves between a mixing station, a sawing station, and a painting station. She outlines the frustrations of approaching a project, its ascensions and retreats, and how the finished artwork fails to reflect the daily toil, the discarded objects and drafts of ideas abandoned along the way. 

“This house is a house of industry,” writes Baume. That may be a new realisation worth having. Artists aren’t filling their days wandering aimlessly for ideas. They are exerting energy for long periods of time, mastering techniques, manufacturing something new from raw materials. It’s a kind of enterprise.