Tate Britain has become very political and I cannot claim disapproval.
I chose today to look at the earliest paintings in the collection, mostly portraits of the great and the good who had benefitted from Empire, commerce and the slave trade. Not to forget those kind gentlemen who enclosed what had previously been common land open to all, for their own sole benefit and delectation.
Nowhere is there a finer place to admire human greed and the violence and persistence which has gone into acquiring great fortunes throughout human history.
Happily the Tate now points this out at every available opportunity. That the smug bastards who spent a fortune getting themselves and their ghastly families immortalised on canvas had become Washed by doing down the Unwashed. Usually with great violence.
For me, it has got beyond the stage of feeling mildly guilty for being marginally “Washed”.
I remember my puzzlement when I learned that a former member of my venerable and expensive private school had ditched his title and become plain old Tony Benn. I now undersdtandt the man rather better and can appreciate his conerns.
The painting above is The Whig Junto, painted in 1710 by John James Baker.
About which the Tate opines:
“This portrait shows the leaders of the political Whig party. A Black servant appears behind the gathered guests. Britain was profiting from the increasing trade of enslaved people from West Africa. Most of the Black servants who worked in British households were enslaved. They were seen by the white British elite as symbols of their wealth and often depicted in paintings to reflect this. “
Well, quite.
The social and political commentary is to be found on almost every single painting and in commentaries on every gallery wall.
They do rant on a bit, but it has to be said. We humans live in a society which is and always has been rotten to the core.
All our modern politically correct tropery can be found here at the dear old Tate: “Black Identity and Art”, “Disability and Art”, “Queer Lives and Art”. Bless, well someone has to say it.
As a youth and scion of a then rather wealthy manufacturing family, my earliest obsession was with money. Once much of the wealth dissipated, I became even more anxious and became an investment banker.
Somewhere along the line I saw through it all. I think it was the truly awful Margaret Thatcher who woke me. Something seemed badly wrong with a world governed by “competition” rather than “cooperation”. A world where the “market” was going to set the world to rights. Even if the consequence was misery and poverty for anybody stupid enough not to be up to it.
Was I ever a Tory? No, I don’t think I was. Too concerned that the likes of Rees Mogg will turn into Oswald Mosely. Or worse.
Have I ever voted Labour like the illustrious Tony Benn? No, because with a posh accent I would be sent to the Gulag or Guillotine once the Cultural Revolution swept through the land in a post-Mao viral blast.
Who would I vote for then? A wise philosopher king perhaps (no, not Jug Ears), the Reverend Septimus Harding maybe.
Failing which, out of desperation, the Green Party. Who will doubtless prove as venal and awful as all the competition.
Maybe I won’t vote – after all no-one seems keen on the ultra radical overhaul our entire planet needs.
Jesus of Nazareth had it just about right but the silly fellow never did come back to sort it all out.
So in the absence of any real hope of improvement, I will bury my head in the sand. I will carry on living my mildly privileged life in my own small and modest fashion. I will draft a few more algorithms to trade crypto and recognise I am never going to save the world or amount to much.
But I will carry on visiting the Tate and see what they manage to come up with next. Non binary genders must surely be on their list somewhere? After all, the BBC says there are 11 of them. Or is it 64?
Weltanschauung 
Perhaps we punish ourselves too much for the numerous stupidities of our deeply flawed human race and the crimes committed by our ancestors? Is it the deeply ingrained christian guilt, that would not let us be free from all our shared sins?
Can we release it once and for all and be a fresh new human being…which would be a nobody at all. Just a part of what it is, as it is..not really interfering in its flow, through our sorrow and pain, for how it goes. It is not easy, it involves moving out of our own way and leaving our whole self vacant of all that we are. We remain outwardly a part of whatever it is that we witness and evaluate, but is a freedom possible from this at any level, inwardly? What interests me is, if we can ever be free, from our own burden of self (with all its history and memory)? Because that is the first step before anything else can change…is it not?
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I think you are right. We need to drop all pretence, to realise there is little difference (certainly none of value) between ourselves and any other animal or living thing. I bury my head in the sand which is as good as any way to simple let go. But I suspect however many of us bury our heads in the sands, the acquisitive, the aggressive, the greedy will still dominate our world and seek to remove the bread from the mouths of others.
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It may appear to be resigning to the fate…but it is really not. If we can find a way to be free (or even clearly recognize just in our own personal individual self), all that which is the root of human ignorance everywhere (the selfishness, greed, tendency to exploit, violence etc.) we can clearly see that we share all that with humanity, it is there within us through our biology/psychology/social conditioning. If we can see that, within our minds, we can begin to clear it- for at least one human and perhaps be able to help others more, if in no other way, by clearly understanding (what/how/why).
So may be burying heads in sand, is not really giving up or letting go, even though it may appear to be so outwardly…may be there is some hope in this, in doing nothing but simply understanding that within ourselves clearly. A sort of finding closure…and then see how it evolves outwardly beyond that. Not to bury our heads in sand in despair but with a hope for seeing more clearly within đŸ™‚
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I’m not at all sure of the existence of “fate” as such, which brings with it the connotation of pure determinism. But I wholeheartedly agree with your search for “freedom” which does indeed lead one further and further away from human vice. And indeed the object of seeing more clearly both within and without. Enlightenment, to use another word.
Of course our religions and philosophies have pointed this way for many thousands of years – and indeed all one can really hope for is that, individual by individual, enlightenment spreads.
But I think it may take a while!
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Have you read the Bhagavad Gita, or a translation of it? I’ve just finished reading it, and I must say it was very profound and well worth a few hours of anyone’s time (The Bhagavad Gita 101: The Ancient Hindu Enlightenment Series, Book 4 – Matthew Barnes). I’ve already sent 3 copies out to people I know who like me are looking for answers
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Funnily enough I have a copy of the Mahabharata at my feet, given to me some years ago by a kind Indian gentlemen. And left mostly unopened. I have dipped into Hinduism quite a lot over the years and must revisit it!
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“I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don’t vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, ‘If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,’ but where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created.” – George Carlin
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Ha! He was right. I haven’t voted for years.
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Same here. It’s the equivalent of selecting the bloke who gets to sleeps with your wife!
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Regrettably, Anthony, to my shame I reeled with unalloyed joyful laughter at your flagrant scourging of the long dead. Sadly it did me the world of good.
However on a more controlled note, here in Canada we have, according to our Treasury, been bleeding capital for many years. Are the really rich quitting disproven progressiveness for better economical climes? That’s bad because two per cent of Canada’s population is reported to produce 90 per cent of our wealth. Another or the same two per cent pay 80 per cent of our taxes we’re told . (In the UK the two per centers only produce about 35 of your your wealth it seems). The very rich I have known or met or read about seem to enjoy simplified lives. (My anecdotal sample doesn’t include the excesses of those who flaunt in the media). So must we be prudent about scaring off the geese that lay our golden eggs? You only have to look at the old USSR, pre-capitalist China, Cuba, Venuezela, etc., to see the desolation and mayhem that happened and is still happening when that happens …
Can humans do anything about their historically chronic, perennial plight anyway without letting go of thinking they can?
Best wishes, Keith.
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I think you are right Keith. Humanity is deeply flawed and always will be. And so yes, we just need to let it go. Any attempts at change have always produced an even worse situation and again probably always will. Humans will eventually cease to exist and will not be missed!
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