VISUAL ARTS

CHRISTINE LINDEY

THE NATIONAL GALLERY symbolises the pernicious corporate influence on public culture begun by Thatcher’s privatisation crusades. In 1985 Lord Sainsbury and his brothers financed a major extension, so departing from the gallery’s history as a state-funded institution since its foundation in 1831. 

Named after its benefactors, the new wing has their family name carved for posterity across its wall in tall stone letters, just like a Roman temple.

The ringing of tills from the large ground-floor shop next to the entrance greets the public, as in the grocery family’s supermarkets. A pricey restaurant occupies the building’s other prime position on the naturally lit top floor. Purpose-built galleries for temporary paying exhibitions are banished to the dungeons of the lower ground floor in a cramped, windowless space whose only exit is through another shop. 

The following three decades of neoliberal governments afflicted public arts institutions with a similar increasing influence of marketing and managerial values over the cultural and scholarship values of their curators.

Four years of the harshest cuts to arts and local government funding by a philistine Con-Dem government have exacerbated this situation, so forcing arts institutions into ever greater dependence on corporate sponsorship.

Curators’ desire to introduce their publics to challenging, little known aspects of art are likely to conflict with their sponsors’ and marketing managers’ calls for safe crowd-pleasers to guarantee high attendance figures. 

Arts sponsorship — especially of non-controversial art — mitigates the often insalubrious or unpopular nature of a company’s business by cultivating its respectable, philanthropic image. 

Not surprisingly, banks, financial services, insurance and oil companies currently feature large. 

BP supports the British Museum, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery. Credit Suisse is the National Gallery’s “partner” while Shell is sponsoring its Late Rembrandt exhibition. The Amsterdam Trade Bank sponsored Tate Modern’s Malevich exhibition, while BNP Paribas —the “bank for a changing world” is supporting the ongoing Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Royal Academy. The latter’s entire 2009-2016 season is supported by JTI, whose jaunty branding and logo masks its international tobacco business. 

So 2014 witnessed the staging of many non-controversial blockbusters at ever higher entry prices. 

Of these, Tate Modern’s Matisse: The Cut-outs was nevertheless one of the year’s highlights, with the most comprehensive collection of the artist’s cut-outs we are ever likely to see. 

Stunning and genuinely popular, the exhibition was expertly designed to enable large numbers of visitors to engage with the works without an uncomfortable crush.

The Royal Academy’s Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined widened our perceptions of the characteristics of architecture in a wonderfully pleasurable way with its interactive, multi-sensory installations by six international architects.

Miraculously, smaller public galleries still managed to organise free exhibitions. 

One of the year’s best was Welcome to Iraq at the South London Gallery, which restaged part of that nation’s contributions to the 2013 Venice Biennale. 

Working in a variety of media, the artists shared an involvement with the political and social realities of everyday life which many Western artists sadly evade. In particular, Abdul Raheem Yassir’s satirical cartoons and Yaseen Wami and Hashim Taeeh’s collaborative installation displayed a memorable poetic wit and lightness of touch. 

The discovery of the year was David Koloane’s remarkable evocations of African experience of township life in Johannesburg. His sincere, expressive works shone out unexpectedly among the mostly slick works in the Pangaea exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. 

Another curatorial trend in 2014 was for museums to save on astronomical insurance and carriage costs with lower budget exhibitions drawn largely from their own institution’s collections or those of other British ones. 

Tate Britain’s Late Turner and the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Constable: The Making of a Master did this while also choosing safe topics. 

Yet a few courageous curators took advantage of this option to organise exhibitions with progressive subjects. 

Relying heavily on the V&A’s own collection, its temporary display Posters of Protest and Revolution introduced a stimulating and infrequently seen topic with a well informed, intelligent commentary. It deserved to be far more widely publicised.

Pallant House Gallery’s Conscience and Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War brought a hitherto little-known area of art to a wider public and did so without denigrating politically committed socialist art. 

Also based on a limited budget and backed up by pioneering and imaginative research British Folk Art at Tate Britain and Compton Verney opened up a genuinely new, very worthwhile area of art. Its co-curators’ passionate commitment to promoting the creativity of unsung craftspersons made it the most exciting and innovative exhibition of the year.

FILM

MARIA DUARTE

THERE was a wide range of mainstream films this year with political undertones and which explored topical issues. These ranged from immigration and media intrusion to Big Brother watching and monitoring our every cyber move.

One which made an impact was the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers’ Club, based on the true story of the racist and homophobic Texan hustler Ron Woodroof who in the 1980s fought the authorities for life-saving medication after he was diagnosed HIV-positive and given 30 days to live. It’s an extraordinary film which earned Matthew McConaughey (pictured)  a much deserved Academy award for his astounding portrayal of Woodroof.

Jake Gyllenhaal gave his creepiest and most electrifying performance to date in Nightcrawler as an unscrupulous and driven cameraman who crosses the line to get the most sensational and gory news footage. 

Set in the cut-throat world of TV news, this dark and powerfully intense thriller shows how for some winning the ratings war justifies the means.

Laura Poitras’s chilling documentary Citizenfour captures history in the making as she films a series of gripping meetings with whistleblower Edward Snowden in Hong Kong in which he reveals the intricate and widespread surveillance of ordinary people by the US and British intelligence services.

Pride proved a crowd-pleasing hit with the masses, as with tremendous humour and heart-warming passion — plus a stellar British cast — it portrays the incredible story of how a group of gay and lesbian activists in 1984 gave financial support to striking miners in south Wales in an unprecedented and historic move.

It was “vive la revolution” in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I as Katniss Everdeen transforms into the leader and poster girl of the rebellion in this surprisingly smart, thought-provoking and politically driven film aimed at tweens.

Christopher Nolan’s epic space odyssey Interstellar, his most spectacular and ambitious film to date, also impressed. En route to a head-spinning, stunning finale, worm holes, quantum gravity and the relationship between fathers and daughters are explored. 

Locke was one of the most enthralling dramas of the year in which Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke, alone in his car during a 90-minute drive to London. 

As he drives, a series of phone calls make us aware that his life is slowly starting to fall apart. It is completely riveting and you’re guaranteed to hang on to his every word.

In The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson was on sublime form with a beautifully quirky and exquisite-looking surreal comedy drama about the adventures of the establishment’s legendary concierge and his protege, the lobby boy.

Iron Man director Jon Favreau served up a veritable cinematic feast in Chef as he returned to his indie roots in this mouth-watering culinary road-trip movie in which he reconnects with his young son.

Finally, darkest Peru’s most famous export Paddington faced much prejudice and a frosty and unwelcome reception on his arrival in London, in a delightful and captivating live-action feature.

SCOTLAND

CHRIS BARTTER  

The 2014 referendum debate inevitably had an impact on this year’s productions. However the domination of pro-Yes sympathies in Scotland’s artistic community didn’t lead to as much important work as anticipated. 

Successful shows used the debate as a stepping-off point to examine the nature of Scotland, like Rona Munro’s James plays for the National Theatre of Scotland (NToS) at the Edinburgh Festival. 

A production in that festival that addressed a different political issue gets my vote as outstanding. Front, a Flemish production from a German company about the first world war in Flemish, German, French and English was outstanding. Using both Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire as source material, this was a shocking, emotional and political view from both sides of the line. 

For those who said that the referendum was too close to allow that perspective, NToS also produced the Yes, No, Don’t Know Show, a series of short pieces curated by David Greig and the late and much-missed Dave MacLennan, which was vibrant and humorous. 

Celtic Connections was referendum-lite. Rebel Musics saw Dick Gaughan and Dave Swarbrick  explore the connections between reggae and Scottish music, the Roaming Roots Review’s look at West Coast US music sparkled and the powerful Imelda May rocked out.

Glasgow’s MayDay Cabaret delivered a sell-out concert for the second year in the city’s Oran Mor, with stand-out performances from Bruce Morton and Rab Noakes.

Pro-Yes productions dominated the Edinburgh Festival fringe. Much was poor but David Hayman (pictured) in a A Pitiless Storm rose above the herd. 

Bravely, Phil Differ’s MacBraveheart had a pop at all sides and crackled with language gags, while Mark Thomas’s history of betrayal, Cuckooed, delivered a thoughtful story. 

We lost both 7:84/Wildcat/Play, Pie & Pint founder Dave MacLennan and politician Tony Benn this year. With typical Glasgow resolve, both became the subjects of excellent celebratory concerts, with a galaxy of stars marking the passing of two major talents. 

Film of the year for me must go to Pride, the story of the LGBT community and their support for the striking miners in 1984-5. Although flawed by the failure to recognise the politics of a main character — Mark Ashton became general secretary of the Young Communist League — it still highlighted the strong links built between different communities under attack. 

Also heartening was the increasing use of cultural events by campaigns. A series of workers’ films is planned by a local GMB branch and  a range of talks and films was staged by Hope Not Hate in Glasgow around the anti-racist St Andrews Day rally. 

And of course the Morning Star’s own Our Class, Our Culture series continued its success.