PeterFyfe.com - Letters to the Herald

Like so many others I love to voice my opinions on the Arts. Are letters to the Sydney Morning Herald an art in themself?

With neither side of politics showing any demonstrable signs of creativity or imagination, perhaps their not having an arts policy is a blessing.

I keep waiting to see the photos of a prime ministerial candidate in a theatre, gallery, music venue or grown-up's library, and wonder why cultural policy and inspiring imagination aren't seen as vital to national leadership and our future as a creative nation.

There was I thinking Australia was a nation of world-beating creative thinkers, researchers, writers and artists building a culturally prosperous future in the imagination-based weightless economy.

It turns out, though, according to the budget, that we're a mob of unhealthy illiterate miners and sportsmen who hate accountants.

A minor bunfight between David Williamson, the STC, and Barrie Kosky demanded a bard-assisted riposte…

The evil that directors do to a nice night’s entertainment lives long after we return home, so it was with Kosky.

The noble Williamson hath told us Kosky is Theatre with a Capital T. If it were so, it is a grievous fault, for Williamson is an honourable man.

Kosky was magnificent, awesome, inspiring, just to me, but Williamson says not, and Williamson is an honourable man, who hath bought many captives to the theatre, and whose ransoms did many company coffers fill.

Did Kosky do this? He stirred imaginations instead, believing we were made of sterner stuff, but we have fled to brutish beasts with easy laughs and happy endings. And men have lost their reason!

My heart is in the theatre with Kosky, and I must pause till he come back to me.

This letter was described by Terry of Gordon as "insufferably pretentious" (Letters, May 18, 2009). Moi?

Contemporary classical music reflects the unconscious life of both its listeners and society. If the big names are sounding anachronistic, infantile or eclectic, it may be telling us something about how we treat our souls in this age of economics and so-called reason. If it hurts our ears, it may be pointing to a failure of imagination, broken so it can no longer hear new harmonies in seeming dissonance.

It seems churlish to blame the mirror for reflecting our current ugliness, and plain ridiculous to stop listening: how else will we evolve to hear our future?

What's the point of preserving the architectural integrity of the Opera House if what goes on inside remains a museum for dead European culture?

If we are going to spend $700 million tarting up our icon, we should also find a way to ensure that more than once a year we get a chance to ascend the steps to see something contemporary, or even dare I say it, something of our own.

Unfairly heckled, I was permitted a reply, quite unusual for the Herald Letters page

The un-dead European delights listed by Meg Packham (Letters, March 31) are precisely the shows I'm prejudiced towards seeing "more than once a year" at the Opera House. Alas, while the bar is crushed with the pop hits of Bizet, Rossini and Sullivan, there is only a meagre taste of such delights, and a patently ignorant absence of contemporary classics such as those of John Adams and Philip Glass.

April 1, 2008

David Hockney is missing the point: the real problem with iPods is they reinforce the fallacious view that the true experience of music is something you can have by listening to downloaded commodities on your own, rather than in the presence of musicians and participating in the community-building activity that is live performance. iPods cannot "play" music, they can only reproduce it for anaesthetising consumption, which is not good for awareness in any medium

One has to question the validity of a high culture so fragile its elite patrons cannot walk past a crowded bar without it spoiling their night out (Letters, April 14).

Does anyone else miss the fringe, that weird and wonderful periphery that creates a festival by providing both the edge and heart for an otherwise random assortment of shows linked only by a brochure?

The award for best [un]intentional joke in the Sydney Biennale goes to the Art Gallery of New South Wales which, under a large work made of sheets of Braille, hung a sign saying "Please do not touch", thus inspiring the riposte: "Am I allowed to look at it?"

Until the Opera House can protect us from suicide performers dying for art in interpretations hijacked by political ideology causing us to flee at half time from the bombs onstage, then we'll never be truly safe from terrorism under its sails.

While we sleep through the anniversary of baby rock (Letters, July 8), don't care about childish jazz, and ignore the sullen operatic teenager, let us pause to forget the august veteran of the performing arts: theatre, proudly numbing audience posteriors for at least 2542 years.

Why doesn't someone resign from the ABC board for a really good reason, like the organisation's failure to fulfil its charter obligation "to encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia"?

If the role of the artist is to show us ourselves, then perhaps Tony Johansen is our of our greats. By suing the Archibald trustees over the definitions of painting ("Artist brushed off as Archibald winner", Herald, May 13), he's showing us how culturally deprived and disenfranchised we've become, how our artists are more interested in form and style than content and revelation, and how we've lost the desire to examine and explore ourselves, preferring instead to argue over money and semantics.

Johansen's "work" is a scathing indictment of a society in decline and is thus really good art.

In typically antipodean fashion, we've got this culture and free trade thing upside-down. Why isn't the onus on the Government to make a case to even consider putting out culture on the table at the negotiations for this perverse agreement with the world's greatest exponents of cultural imperialism?

Why isn't the Government obliged to stand up and convince us that there is something substantive to be gained by putting our culture at risk and then explain, in real terms, how we would hedge that risk so that our children continue to grow up in a world where the people on the stage and screen say "g'day" as they begin to tell our dreaming?

Looking down the theatre directory today I noticed something I believe is noteworthy: all our major theatre spaces are currently running Australian plays. Sydney Theatre Company (two shows), Griffin (an outside hire), [Belvoir], Ensemble, Marion Street and Glen Street, as well as at least six other venues (some amateur) are all presenting plays by Australian playwrights. And, as far as I know, all those playwrights are alive. In my 10 years in Sydney, I've never seen this happen. What a contrast to this time last year (during the Olympics) when there was no Oz theatre to be seen.

September 27, 2001

Published in the "Spotlight" column not on the Letters page

Boo, Australia Council, boo! ("Art in a cask is Everyman's tipple", Herald, 22 June).

The arts are not a passive, consumer-oriented, comfortable product. They are an opportunity for vibrant, active participation, and as such cannot be made "more accessible" to the lazy, idle, or wilfully stupid.

To participate in sport, as distinct from just watching it, requires sweat. To participate in art requires metaphorical sweat by the intellect and by the heart; there is no place in it for the passive spectator. If holding such a view makes me elitist, so be it.

The Nugent report would be laudable if you accept its basic premise that the arts are a commodity, a sort of uplifting entertainment put on by highly professional providers for the discerning arts consumer.

What would happen if we viewed the arts as an ongoing journey of self-discovery, with our artists revealing the divine and therefore the human in each of us, and in society as a whole, as they have done in more enlightened times?

The Nugent report dangerously reinforces the bean-counter's view of the arts and subverts them from their true potential.

Dare we ever value the arts in terms of the 'inner gold" they produce instead of the base metal they cost?

How appropriate that the Really Useful Company's casino theatre contract was announced in the same week as significant arts funding cuts. Not only are we assured of foreign content, we make it even harder for local artists to survive the early years of their careers. Both result in a form of bankruptcy.

The Tax Office seems to think that unless artists make a profit, they are not really artists (Herald, July 12).

The great galleries, concert halls, stages, and libraries are filled to overflowing with the "unprofitable" works of artists of vision and talent. Many of these artists lived in poverty, but the world is richer for their efforts. In a world filled with violence and destruction, it seems paradoxical we should persecute those who attempt to create a wealth you cannot put in a spreadsheet. Is money now the only thing of value?