Q. Funding the arts seems to be an extremely difficult job. It is very hard to make judgements about the value of art and the abilities of artists. Contemporary art is especially controversial. How do you carry out your responsibility of handling ￡200-million of taxpayers' money?
Equality before the arts
A. I do not think that the Arts Council, or anything I do at the Arts Council, with the ￡200-million we will get next year from the government can create great artists. Our responsibility is to create an environment in which the arts can flourish, and give the artists an opportunity to do their best. As for the work of evaluation, the Arts Council has panels of experts to look at this. The arts bureaucrats themselves are only responsible for executive work.
Q. What is "an atmosphere in which the arts can flourish"? Van Gogh lived a life of poverty, Kafka was a depressed bureaucrat, and Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death, reprieved, then thrown into prison in his youth. One also recalls the famous line from The Third Man to the effect that fifty years of war and bloodshed created Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Italian Renaissance, while 500 years of peace and prosperity in Switzerland created--the cuckoo clock! I do not suppose you are thinking of creating a scene of war and bloodshed to stimulate some great art?
A. (Laughing) We certainly cannot create a Van Gogh or a Kafka. Art must be created by artists. Our role is to support them and let them have an opportunity to use their talent. I cannot guarantee the arts in Britain will improve because of the Arts Council, or fail--this will be left for history to judge. We can try to make sure that all citizens, poor as well as rich, have access to enjoying the best work and have a chance to become artists. We can also ensure that the arts are spread around the country. We can build theaters, but we cannot build playwrights!
Providing space for creativity
Q. The Arts Council cannot create artists, but its rules and organization for subsidizing and assessment are very complicated. Can I ask you, for example, if an artist of Chinese descent living in a Chinese community in Britain wants to apply for a grant, what procedure will he or she have to go through?
A. The Arts Council is concerned with work of a national or international remit. So, for example, we fund the national companies, like the Royal Shakespeare Company. We are also concerned with encouraging innovation, new work and national touring.
Apart from London, the main Chinese communities in Britain are in one or other of the great cities, such as Liverpool, Manchester or Birmingham. All these places have regional arts boards which the Chinese artists should go and talk to because they know the local community far better than anybody else, and they will tend to support art that is of regional significance.
Q. What are the standards for assessment? Are there any political or moral criteria?
A. No, there are no political or artistic constraints at all. The Arts Council is absolutely nonpolitical. We are here to act as intermediary between the government and the artist. This is designed to protect the artist from the politician, and also the politician from the artist. This means there is artistic freedom of expression.
Assassination of the prime minister? No way!
Q. Are there really no exceptions? What if a play promoted independence for Northern Ireland and supported IRA terrorism? Or what if it promoted homosexuality, or was sympathetic with the Argentineans during the Falklands War? If these were works of high artistic quality, would you still support them?
A. Well, it must be within the law. We could not support terrorism or a play which advocated the assassination of the Prime Minister. As far as homosexuality is concerned, we support the leading gay theater company in Britain, which we have funded for 15 years. It is occasionally a bit controversial, but we are there to cope with controversy of that sort.
There is another constraint, which is that we do not want public money to go to the support of any political party or campaign because our money is for art, not for political activity. However, if an artist wants to make a political statement through his or her art, that is absolutely fine. There is a very successful play on by one of our greatest theater companies which is a ruthless critique of the legal system and criminal courts in Britain. But we cannot allow anybody to actually use their art as part of a political campaign--which I think is reasonable.
Q. If then it is a question of "art for art's sake," I am very curious. The nature of art is that it is hard to evaluate. With the added problem of the culture gap, who can actually judge what should be subsidized? When a Chinese opera troupe from Taiwan performed in Britain last year, most of the critics described their sound as "cat's wailing." If a Chinese artist wants subsidizing for a work of art or a book, how can he or she expect to be fairly judged?
Up against the culture gap
A. There is a difficulty. The Arts Council has panels of experts and the bureaucrats do not have any say. But if the panel has no Chinese expert, we would have to go to people we could find who had a reputation as critics or artists in that field, take their advice, and decide.
Q. Might not this give rise to a kind of "old boy's club" situation? Take the example of Chinese actors. It is already hard for people with Chinese features to get roles that are not limited to refugees or prostitute s. How can they be expected to allow newcomers into a situation where the opportunities are already tight? I think that such a situation must be very hard to avoid in the British arts scene. Do you really think that experts can do better than bureaucrats?
A. I believe that bureaucrats should not decide on arts funding, but there is a difficulty in the case of the Chinese artists--there is a sort of gap of ignorance on both sides. The problem is that they are comparatively isolated communities, who do not often come out into the broader society of Britain.
British society has also made very little effort over the years to relate to the Chinese communities. So, although there is considerable friendship by the mainstream British community towards the Chinese, there is still a great deal of ignorance and estrangement. I think that is one of the reasons why the Arts Council and many of the regional arts boards fund much less Chinese arts than, for example, arts from India or Pakistan.
Who will balance the culture deficit?
Q. The Chinese community is the oldest immigrant community in Britain, and the third largest. Has the Arts Council made any special efforts to break down this barrier?
A. Yes, the Chinese community is more than 250,000 people and it goes back certainly to the nineteenth century, and perhaps even earlier. One of the great gifts that has been given to Britain following the fall of the British Empire has been that the Empire has, so to say, imploded into Britain, so that we now have the most multicultural society in Europe. We have wanted to profit from this by trying to develop the arts of the minority communities.
We have concentrated especially on the arts of the Afro and Caribbean communities, and the communities which originated from the Indian subcontinent. In fact, we would like to do more work with the Chinese communities, but I am bound to say--perhaps it is our fault--that we find them more inaccessible than, for example, the Afro-Caribbean community.
I believe that the regional arts boards are doing their best to make contacts with Chinese communities. We do not have a clear idea at this stage as to what the artists within those communities would like and what form of support they want. There is no point in us, in a patronizing way, deciding what the Chinese community wants.
The wealth of multicultural society?
Q. Multicultural exchanges are at the root of a rich civilization, and in pursuit of this aim you are pursuing more cultural exchanges. But in your lecture you said that English culture is still very parochial when it comes to Chinese culture. Because of this, you went on to say: "Cultural exchange is the way forward for you to redress this imbalance." Is this compatible with that reliance on the efforts of both sides that you are always stressing?
A. What I was trying to say there was that in Taiwan there is a lot of knowledge of European culture, but in England there is too little knowledge of Chinese culture. You will listen quite readily at the National Theater to Western orchestras or talk about Shakespeare; we do not talk about Li Po, and we do not have any opportunity, except perhaps once every two or three years, to see Chinese opera. So there is an imbalance in perception. The way forward is cultural exchange--we need to see more Chinese art in Britain.
There were three reasons why the Arts Council adopted a strong international policy. First, there was a sort of cultural complacency among British artists. For example, people in Britain have a tendency to say that British theater is the best in the world. But do we see any theater from other parts of the world? Very little!
The second reason goes back to the question of the minority communities who originated from different parts of the world. As Black-British artists, or Chinese-British artists develop their skills, they will probably find it useful from time to time to see work of artists from their countries of origin working in Great Britain. They can set themselves against those artists, maybe learn from them, and maybe criticize them and say: "No, we want to move in a different direction." So it is very important that the multicultural arts scene in Great Britain be enriched by foreign art coming here from all over the world. That is why I see Taiwanese culture having a part to play.
The third reason is to do with the European Community and the single market. Last year the Treaty of Rome was changed to include culture for the first time, so now culture falls within the Community's competence. That is going to be very, very important for cultural exchange. For example, if a company from Spain wants to come to Britain, it can apply to the Arts Council and will have to be treated equally to a British company; a British company applying to the Ministry of Culture in France ought, in theory, to be treated on an equal footing to a French company. We felt that we needed to get British culture geared up to being open to international influence before we enter Europe in a much more vigorous way.
Seeing the Cloud Gate Dance Ensemble
Q. Does the Arts Council have any concrete plans to respond to this international scene, such as inviting any performers or making any plans for exchanges?
A. Nothing is fixed yet. Yesterday, I went to see the Cloud Gate Dance Ensemble. Their kind of meeting of traditional and contemporary dance would certainly attract a lot of interest if it came to Britain and would certainly be attractive to the Chinese community.
Q. Will European unity increase or decrease the chances of the Chinese artist to get funding? Might not the ethnic minorities be sacrificed on the pyre of "European culture"?
A. No. Everybody is saying that there is no such thing as a European culture and that the EC will not develop, we all hope, a major funding role. Europe is a federation of lots of individual cultures, and the European Commission should coordinate and advise, it should not fund. The national states should really provide the subsidies in my view.
Chinese artists should have neither more nor less opportunity than they did before. I do, however, think that minority communities are sometimes less welcome in some other member states than they are in Great Britain, even though there are many problems in Great Britain. We at the Arts Council are certainly taking a lead in trying to ensure that artists of whatever ethnic origin have an equal share of the funding cake.
Q. We know that the Japanese had a massive exhibition about Japan in Britain recently. If Taiwanese businesses were willing to provide funds for a similar festival of Chinese arts, how should they go about it? Could they apply to the Arts Council for some kind of joint-funding?
A. Just write to me and I would be glad to handle it. The Arts Council is a funding body, but it does not actually get involved directly with promotions. But if people in Taiwan wanted to have a festival in Great Britain they could write to us and we could advise them who to go to--what promoters--maybe the South Bank or the Barbican Center.
We put ￡50,000 into the Japan Festival, but it was managed by a commercial company on the basis of a lot of sponsorship from Japanese businesses and some British businesses. Of course, the Arts Council helped with information and promotion, but we had already put in government money and could not confuse our public role with organizing the activities.
Q. You said that Britain is very parochial and needs some multicultural stimulation. However, activities need money. So because Japan has economic muscle, their festival was huge and omnipresent. Could the result of this be that, on the one hand, people will react against it and, on the other, that what the British people Will actually see is propaganda rather than true cultural exchange?
For example, recent programs have been telling British people about how great and beautiful Japanese culture is, how the Japanese suffered so much from the atomic bomb, and so on. Is not this a way to hide the truth and distort history? Then again, take a look at the recent exhibition at the British Museum about porcelain, which made out that Chinese porcelain was but a small branch of Japanese porcelain. Is this fair?
Hopes for a festival of China
A. That is very interesting, but I do not want to get involved in any quarrel between China and Japan. And I do not want to adjudicate on this question of the Japan festival. This is the first time I have heard such a point of view, and I will think carefully about whether what you say is fair.
Britain is a very open society and no agency controls any feature of life. Perhaps the Japan festival did show the best things about Japanese culture but, on the other hand, people would be very surprised if a Chinese festival did not paint Chinese culture in a good light. Perhaps when looking at cultural influences we should not look at short periods of time but rather at decades. This year we had a six-month Japan festival and in a few years we can have a large festival of China or India. Is that not fair?
I think there is a strong case for us to start looking at the possibility of a major Chinese festival that looks at Chinese arts across the field, both contemporary and modern. Of course, within that there is room for a Taiwanese festival, and maybe we should look broader--that would be for people in Hong Kong, Singapore, and mainland China to consider.
I think that the 1990s will be the decade of China. I said that the British people do not know a lot about China although we admire Chinese culture and have been influenced by it. So such a Chinese festival would be great!
Q. Thank you for accepting this interview so shortly before you board your plane. Let us hope that we can soon see a Chinese festival in Britain, or a British festival in Taiwan. Bon voyage!
[Picture Caption]
Anthony Everitt, secretary general of the Arts Council of Great Britain, was invited to Taiwan for a week by the Council for Cultural Planning and Development.
Anthony Everitt was invited to visit the Taipei Municipal Fine Arts Museum by director Huang Kuang-nan.
A war-time wedding in Britain. Chinese form Britain's oldest and third largest immigrant community and are of special concern to the Arts Council. (photo by Wang Chih-hung)
London's Chinatown. The Chinese communities are a vacuum for the Arts Council and Anthony Everitt hopes they will be more forthcoming.
Who says Chinese opera sounds like cats wailing? The culture gap is a barrier to arts appreciation. (Sinorama file photo)
The Cloud Gate Dance Ensemble's mix of tradition and modernity left the guest with a deep impression. (photo by Vincent Chang)
A performance at an Asian puppet festival. A multicultural environment enriches artistic creativity. (Sinorama file photo)
The Chinese pegoda erected in England's Kew Gardens in the 18th century. Britain admires and has been deeply influenced by Chinese culture. (photo by Arthur Cheng)
Chinese porcelain from all over the world was sent to Taipei's National History Museum for an exhibition. Variety of cultural exchange is important for the artistic environment. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
A war-time wedding in Britain. Chinese form Britain's oldest and third largest immigrant community and are of special concern to the Arts Council. （photo by Wang Chih-hung）
Anthony Everitt was invited to visit the Taipei Municipal Fine Arts Museum by director Huang Kuang-nan.
London's Chinatown. The Chinese communities are a vacuum for the Arts Council and Anthony Everitt hopes they will be more forthcoming.
The Cloud Gate Dance Ensemble's mix of tradition and modernity left the guest with a deep impression. （photo by Vincent Chang）
Who says Chinese opera sounds like cats wailing? The culture gap is a barrier to arts appreciation. （Sinorama file photo）
A performance at an Asian puppet festival. A multicultural environment enriches artistic creativity. （Sinorama file photo）
The Chinese pegoda erected in England's Kew Gardens in the 18th century. Britain admires and has been deeply influenced by Chinese culture. （photo by Arthur Cheng）
Chinese porcelain from all over the world was sent to Taipei's National History Museum for an exhibition. Variety of cultural exchange is important for the artistic environment. （photo by Pu Hua-chih）
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