Author: Michael Chappell

It must take lots of practice, as my few efforts at a selfie always depict me with some manner of ailment that might be characterized as far-gone dementia. Mind, the use I make of my iPhone extends to the now rare receipt or placing of telephone calls, and the much more frequent placing or receipt of text messages- except in England, where the cost of a single text message is about equivalent to a starter, entrée, and pudding at Rule’s. So, displacing texts in some quarters, substitute emails.

With all that, I do need to take a selfie, albeit rarely. The Warburg Institute, where I hang my academic hat of late, requires an updated ID photo, to affix to an updated ID card, annually. Given that the full compliment of Warburg scholars is only about 80, one can imagine that, with all of us well known to each other, it is rarely anyone has given my ID card even a first look, much less a second. Good thing because, as noted, had anyone done so, they’d opine I was some manner of mental defective and had no hope of flourishing in an environment of advanced scholarship. A sidebar- that sounds ego-driven, as I am not sure to what extent I am in actuality flourishing. However, I am still there, with my colleagues still friendly, but it might be they’ve taken pity on an old man of diminished capacity.

Now I have put my colleagues on their mettle to come to my defence, and before the cries of ‘no, no- you’re highly valued’ become overwhelming, let me crack on.

Of course, those cries would be voiced virtually, and that’s what I really want to write about, the confluence of selfies and social media. Can one in this day and age avoid social media? In the olden days, that is, three years ago, when we closed down our last gallery location, we had already established our presence on Facebook, Instagram, Medium.com and Twitter- which isn’t even Twitter anymore, but not claiming social media maven status, I don’t remember what it is called- so take that, Elon Musk.

Our motivation for all this was entirely venal, or should I say, less cynically, ‘commercially motivated.’ We’d have images of current stock, images of stands at various antiques and art fairs, images of the gallery spaces, and, just rarely, ourselves depicted within, doing whatever it is we were doing. Although a lot of what we were doing was hoovering the floor, most typically we were shown expatiating, and this generally linked to the images of the gallery interiors, in our attempt to provide some manner of virtual experience for punters.

Did it work? Was any of this worth it? Well, frankly, yes. We achieved a few sales early on from people who, ultimately, never did darken our door, and with our need to move on in life and eventually close down our bricks and mortar premises, we believed that, along with the Chappell & McCullar website, we were well along the road as successful online merchants.

As perhaps we were. We quickly determined, however, that we were not the only venal ones, and that our online posts were hardly seen by anyone save being ‘boosted’ with some manner of strange and mystical algorithm that magically presented our posts to those others who, based on their online affinities, might be interested in what we were selling. So far, so good, one might say, and, for a time, it was. We acquired friends and followers, most of whom one would have to stretch the general understanding of those words to so characterize them, but we had them all the same, and in vast numbers.

And sales increases thereby? Well, no. The magical algorithms regularly linked our stock in trade with things like painted flower pots, throw cushions, and pet care items. Go figure.

However, the cost to promote our posts was cheap, but did require the keeping on file credit card information and that, finally, is where we had to part company. Despite so very many assurances that our credit card information was secure, we were repeatedly hacked and while nothing ever happened beyond the inconvenience of having to cancel the card on file and then replace it with another, we figured, reasonably enough, that we were just asking for it. Besides, the utility of the posts for sales purposes had run its course. I found, like so many others- so many millions, in fact- I was viewing the success of a post by the numbers of times it was liked and the numbers of new followers/friends it engendered. This very nearly became a mania, or addiction- you choose- from which, thank goodness, I recovered. Hello, my name is Michael- I am a social media whore. By the way, it was my third nephew then age 27 who so characterized me. I suppose that might be counted an intervention.

And so it is, I suppose in my recovery I feel some manner of superiority to those sods who are still in the throes of addiction, posting selfies every damn day, or more often, in any manner of inane activity. Mind, the more comely the person depicted, the more followers they seem to have, but I would also note, very many of these ostensibly non-commercial posts are promoted by the poor sods. The question is, why? ‘Friends,’ or ‘followers’, or what have you, that are having their addiction fed by others

1. Living vicariously, ‘liking’ images and activities more attractive and interesting compared to what’s happening in their own dismal lives, or
2. The selfie posters attempting to live vicariously through other’s lives, with the hope of some vague affiliation and ego strokes from ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ who will provide kudos about one’s otherwise inane posts.

That of course, if one were on fire, these same friends or followers wouldn’t provide an ounce of piss to put out the flames, even if they could, has, sadly, restructured the heretofore generally accepted definition of friendship. Friendship, it now seems, no longer implies a degree of intimacy that carries with it an understanding of frequent, and person to person, social interaction.

That interaction, the central tenet of friendship, has gone out the window, and what there is of it that does survive, survives only to the extent it mirrors one’s ‘friendships’ on social media. And I suppose that’s where selfies form some manner of matrix, that if one meets a person in real, as opposed to virtual life, if that person does not accord with the facial imagery one has chosen to befriend on social media, one gives that real life person the go by. With all that, I doubt the late great director of the Warburg Institute, Sir Ernst Gombrich, would fare very well on social media, but then, I can’t picture him taking very many selfies, either.

Will the row over the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles ever cease?  

The short answer is no. For those who believe that in this modern age repatriation is entirely appropriate, it might be worth remembering that, upon their acquisition by Lord Elgin, there was no ‘patria’ in existence, as Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire and I would venture to say, not exactly the empire’s keystone. Res judicata? Certainly the British government thinks so and has done since Parliament said so in 1816. Although opinions differ as to its strength, no one disputes that Lord Elgin, and consequently the British Museum has more than a slightly tinged colour of a legal claim to them.  

So, the translocation and eventual placement of what are no longer identified as the Elgin marbles have been safely cared for and displayed proudly in the British Museum. No one has ever tried to mask their origin or done anything that would denigrate, in fact just the opposite, has served to appropriately lionize the miraculous culture that gave them form.  

But the culture that wrought the Parthenon marbles, that exist as an externalized memorial to an enduring ethos that we experience every day in the way we think about ourselves, the way we govern ourselves, and the very way we consider our place in the universe, is now world culture, and hardly specific, nor has it been for centuries, to Greece. In this regard, the Parthenon marbles are not what they once were, nor are they really what the Greek government considers them, objects solely emblematic of the modern Greek nation state.  

Reading the political to-ing and fro-ing about the Parthenon marbles, however, makes me think it is largely that. They are an easy talking point for Greek politicians to divert attention at least briefly from Greece’s ongoing fiscal problems and simmering unrest because of inward immigration. I don’t say the Greek government doesn’t really want the return of the Parthenon marbles, but that they haven’t got them yet provides something in the way of a continuing step upon the moral high ground. Where formerly Greece was able to use the return of the Parthenon marbles as some kind of at the ready, one size fits all bargaining chip when dealing with the EU, now post Brexit, Greece has fewer allies as there are no governments that have any manner of ability to directly influence Great Britain.  

The issue of repatriation is a knotty one and complicated, paradoxically, by the fact that it is an issue generally reduced to simplistic terms. If an object was acquired from its country of origin under terms and conditions that were by the way we measure things now less than salubrious, then, upon demand they should be returned. The Benin bronzes are perhaps the most cited and arguably the most legitimate example, stolen as booty concomitant with the British military incursion in Nigeria in 1897. No one questions the imperative that drives their repatriation as they are integral to the heritage of the geography from which they came. 

Were the Parthenon marbles stolen? At the best, that’s arguable. The fact of the matter is, items of varying degrees of cultural importance change hands each and every day. If that didn’t occur, Christie’s and Sotheby’s couldn’t stay in business. Are we now more mindful of the provenance of the object that might be on offer, and the consequent morality of its sale? Yes, of course we are, witness the frequent discovery and consequent return of artwork looted during the last war. But at some point, a line needs to be drawn.  

Very many of the artworks in the National Gallery are extraordinary Italian Renaissance paintings acquired in Italy through dint of the extraordinary efforts of its first director, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake. But I have misspoken- there was no ‘Italy’ in the 1840’s and 1850’s when so much that formed the corpus of the gallery was being acquired- nor would there be until the finality of the risorgimento in 1871. Indeed, much of the Italian peninsula was in political and economic chaos that then allowed Eastlake an unparalleled opportunity to acquire exquisite Italian art. Does this start to sound a cognate with the acquisition of the Parthenon marbles? It should. While it currently appears unlikely the UK government will acquiesce in the return of the marbles, if they were to in a weak moment it begs question where this might lead. If one then goes into that bastion of world heritage that is the National Gallery and finds it bereft of very many of its Italian pictures, you’ll have your answer.  

What’s been revealed about Dr Peter Higgs, longtime curator of Greek antiquities at the British Museum, while eye-poppingly brazen, shouldn’t, for those in the museum world, come as anything of a surprise.  

For those few of my gentle readers, and I know there are very few of you, who are unaware of this, most accredited museums of even the humblest stripe invariably have more objects given to their care than are ever at any one point out on display. Witness those items allegedly stolen by Peter Higgs, valuable though they might have been, they were, none of them, ever displayed and kept by the museum for study purposes, presumably handled by a very few scholars for purposes of academic research.

Or maybe not.

For most museums, their so-called back room contains a welter of objects, as my farmer father would have said, not good enough to keep but too good to throw away. When items are accepted into a museum’s permanent collection, it is very often at the whim of one or two people who may, or may not, accord with a museum’s accession policy. This further assumes such a policy exists, and often it does not. Further, a less than desirable gift might accompany something highly desirable and it is a rare donor that allows the museum to cherry pick- one must take either all or none, and the taking of the none might prove opprobrious to a donor otherwise highly esteemed by the museum.  

So the institution is between a rock and a hard spot, and in consequence, is in possession of very many more items that are of mediocre quality and do not therefore articulate with those a curator might deem worthy of public presentation. Mind, everything taken into the permanent collection of an accredited museum requires the preparation of a curatorial dossier, an accession file that documents at a minimum a description of the object, notes on its condition, details of how it was acquired, and, importantly, good photographic images. And, of course, an inventory number is assigned.  

Simple enough, yes? The problem is, certainly in the case of the British Museum, very many objects were acquired literally centuries ago, and some rudimentary curatorial dossier might have been prepared, but, no surprise, itself not looked at by anyone in decades. As in the case of the light-fingered Dr Higgs, save the sharp eye of a nameless researcher who saw one of the objects offered on eBay, no one might ever have known the object had been filched.  

One has to note that very many of the most prestigious museums are in locations where the cost of living is, by most measures, prohibitive. I think of one long tenured senior curator of my acquaintance in London, who, until recently, lived in a small basement flat in Hackney. But even that, with Hackney up and coming, proved too expensive but the death of a near relative resulted in a legacy, and, with much of the salt removed from his tears of mourning,  allowed him to stay put. I am hardly an apologist for the sticky fingers of museum personnel, but the financial exigencies of living in London, or Paris, or New York make the prospect of relieving their museum employer of a few unappreciated items more than a bit tempting.  

In the 2017 documentary ‘The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin’, Maupin defines himself as a writer who’s gay, and not a gay writer. Ostensibly an important distinction and an odd one to make, given how he’s lived his adult life as an out gay man, and his initial claim to fame, Tales of the City which ran to several volumes, was nearly iconoclastic in its depiction of gay characters, and serialized in The San Francisco Chronicle.

However, at the time, I understood what Maupin meant, that he sought not to be pigeonholed as a writer whose works of fiction could only extend to portrayals of gay characters. He sought, in what I think he considered somewhat polemical, to resist being marginalized by his sexuality.  

Well, okay, but it has been six years since I heard him make that statement, and for longer than that, I’ve been niggled by what a statement of that sort connotes, that in fact, queerness is solely an aspect of one’s makeup, not the totality of what makes one whole. But what’s implied, however, is that one’s being queer can be compartmentalized, which sounds awfully like some kind of cop out, a communication to the larger world that queerness is safe and not to be feared as queers can contain their queerness within them. 

Well, screw that. Indeed, my own sexuality is not the whole of who I am, but it is pervasive, and as concomitant in my being as my blue eyes. I suppose when I write it is not always about gay men, but it is always from the point of view of a gay man. How can it not be? And moreover, why should it not be?  

And that’s I suppose what troubles me about Maupin’s statement, that he shouldn’t be pigeonholed but in effect, his statement says he’s acquiesced in a broader societal effort to marginalize him.  

And as pervasive as my own sexuality is, is the effort to deflect it. Subtle though it might have been formerly, now into my eighth decade it is sadly surprising how often I encounter homophobia. The most frequent, when, in meetings, I find someone explaining something to me in excruciatingly simple terms, and when my response is to make my interlocutor aware that their effort is not only unnecessary but dismissive of my own intellect and experience, I will often encounter pushback that can result in an exchange that will become strident. The why of this I should long since have understood when, well over 60 years ago, a friend- indeed at the time my best friend- described the employment of an epicene man of our acquaintance as, quoting, ‘a fag job.’  

Indeed, that is how queer men are yet seen, with some manner of adle-brained, light-in- the- loafers trope still very much alive and operative, and so ingrained that, when someone such as me rails against it, it engenders either insistence, or dismissal. Homophobia? Indeed, and perhaps of the worst kind as the perpetrator, I’m sure, would be horrified to be branded a homophobe, so as a consequence would be unlikely to even consider the opprobrium of their mindset, much less to alter it. 

I can’t say that Keith McCullar and I are modern day embodiments of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, but we’re both socializing strike forces. Within the very first few minutes of conversation with a stranger, both of us make a point of making it quite clear that we’re gay. ‘Socialization’, I’ve always called it, an effort even if it is practiced on one benighted person at a time to make them aware, with me as a living exemplar, of the ubiquity of queerness. Mind, of course it is easier for Keith and me than for others. We’re men, and we’re white and I readily admit we’ve manifold fewer challenges than any woman or any person of colour. 

But we do it as it is what we can do if we don’t do anything else. I was almost going to write something about how whatever makes as much difference as one pebble on the beach, in the fulness of time, might make so-called safe spaces for the queer community redundant. Would that they didn’t have to but within the jollity of Gay Pride Month, the safe spaces- gay bars and clubs and any other manner of venue- exist not despite, but primarily because of, the yet pervasive homophobia we need to fight against . 

For those of my gentle readers of a connoiseurial bent, you’ll without prompting recognize my blog title derives from Outsider II, the last instalment of the memoir of the late critic Brian Sewell. Mind, I am not so much afflicted with inflation of ego to think myself a latter-day Sewell. Well, not so much, but if I’m honest, more than a smidgen.

A question Sewell never asks but that occurred to me, drawing a parallel between his late in life confessional- not apologia- and mine is when does an enfant terrible, one possessed of strong opinions, controversial, perhaps, but well-reasoned, turn into a curmudgeon? Of course the immediate difference is the advance of age, but the one less obvious, except to the former enfant is that the curmudgeon’s opinions, while remaining well and often better reasoned, are no longer given much if any regard. ‘An old man’s ramblings…’ as Sewell would put it, and with this I take exception. If anyone were to be considered a connoisseur, it was Sewell, and had he thought about, which I am sure he did but didn’t put it succinctly into print, connoisseurship is not the province of the young. It can’t be. The honing of one’s eye, the development of one’s intellect, and the mingling of the two in proper measure to yield a confluence wherein aesthetic appreciation is wedded to intellectual understanding takes years, and a very many of them.  

Of course, any one who has written an essay for which they received as little as a second-class mark can write a review of an art exhibit, regardless of the attendant subject upon which they’d written. And in this age of the tweet, a thoroughgoing consideration of anything gives over first place to brevity. Tweets aside, one has to attend very many galleries and see very many artworks before one can truly deliver a considered opinion. And when I say ‘considered’ I mean more than a popular response to something that passes for artwork that’s at best an objectification of contemporary zeitgeist.  

In this, Sewell in his reviews, indeed in all his writings, is pointedly free of the presentism that pervades contemporary artwork and the presentist blather criticism that seeks make some sense of it. ‘Presentism’- were Brian Sewell to read this, I’d get a proper dressing down for using this modern-day neologism. ‘Fashionable nostrums’ would be and archly synonymous- and directly quoted from the late critic.  

Over the course of this last week, I twice visited a popup gallery that’s housing work from living artists, the sale of which will benefit a not-for-profit contemporary art gallery. And based on what prices that were asked, I hope the artists will also be compensated. They should be, of course- ‘starving artist’ is a trope that works well in opera but is not very comfortable in the living when one receives a notice to quit or pay rent from the landlord. One chap, perhaps the canniest of the group, was offering a pricey NFT. I doubt he’s starving. 

While the work on show, to an artist, depicted not unsurprising themes of the despair wrought from the unfair rigours of modern life- all legitimate concerns, I’ll grant- not a single object was anything I actually felt an affinity for- a dearth, as Berenson would have it, of tactile values. The second trip I’d made in the company of my partner Keith McCullar, who queried ‘Should a person have to talk themselves into making a purchase?’ And for me the answer must be no. Mind, a few, indeed many, of the works were good examples of craft in a variety of media. For those figurative works, and again, there were many, the narrative content could be understood prima facie. Nothing occult or with abstruse iconography.  

But also nothing that my own eye, which is not entirely without practice, could conceive of ever entering the canon. I cannot help but then consider again the fellow trying to flog the NFT. As he was visiting from the major art market city where his studio is located, he was something of an outlier, but in a good way, if one considers ‘good’ as being lionized by the local community and being given an hour’s long public platform in which to discuss his work and the NFT associated with it. Glibly possessed of what one would call artspeak- you’ll excuse this term as it is a neologism Sewell actually employed- he could indeed talk a good game.  

But his art did not speak for itself. In this regard, I am not talking about an ostensible, apprehendable narrative content. What I mean is an absence of immanence, an animating principle that, in the viewing, stirs both soul and intellect. As Brian Sewell the critic and connoisseur would have it, nothing to see here.