The Art We Deserve? - ACE082.3

Leslie Waddington, "one of the most powerful contemporary art dealers in Britain", explains the prices of art works in his gallery – David Hockney’s The Room, Tarzana (1967) is about £35,000, one of Christo’s drawings for the Running Fence project (c.1975) about £3000, one by Morris Lewis worth about £45,000, etc. Cork says that modern painters "like Turnbull, Heron and Hoyland" consequently often contract with gallery owners who ensure their work is kept marketable in a "rich man’s ghetto where ‘art’ means merchandise that commands the highest possible profit", but keeps it inaccessible to most people. Waddington thinks that Sunday Working and the others "don’t contain art" and would appeal to purchasers for only a few days before being ignored. He relates an anecdote about Picasso eating the apples of a sleeping realist painter. Outdoor display and sale by Ealing Art Club. Cork suggests that many amateurs hold to "a very conservative notion of what ‘art’ should look like"; he believes this might change "if the popular press was prepared to treat modern art seriously". He quotes editors’ (negative) responses to his requests for interviews for the film. Larry Lamb, editor of the Sun, says newspapers cannot provide customers with what they don’t want or their circulation would suffer; there must be an appropriate balance between widening interests and catering for those that exist. Examples of the Sun’s "Page Three’s Old Masters" series. Lamb believes that visual arts play only a small part in most people’s lives. Scrap-book of critical articles and satirical images from the 1976 controversy concerning the Tate and Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII (1972). Lamb believes it is only natural that taxpayer will be angered by the use of public money on things for things "in which they can see no point". Tate Gallery staff unpacking the bricks and assembling the art work. Cork’s VO suggests that "the sheer abusiveness of the attacks on the bricks … showed how the very real hostility separating minority art from mass culture prevents any rational discussion of the reasons why this gulf exists". News reporter Fyffe Robertson calls them "phoney art". Robertson’s original report on the bricks. Whitechapel Art Gallery. Cork’s VO suggests that Andre’s real failure is his refusal "to reach out towards a broad audience". Andre talks about his work and contemporary art in general. Voices of unimpressed visitors to the Whitechapel exhibition. Andre says that his work meets a deep need within himself; "it is not a hoax". Exhibition scenes with more VOs. Andre doesn’t believe that an artist should try to be popular; his own art has been made "fundamentally to please [him]self"