Viewed from this perspective, Danish artist Christen Kobke's Outside the North Gate of the Citadel is a superlative piece of political art because it attempts to change how citizens relate to one another (116). In the painting, an officer cadet can be seen lounging on the bridge, quite at ease with an itinerant young salesman and a couple of poor local children, all enjoying the sunshine on the water. Without labouring the point, it presents an attitude of informal companionship between different levels of society, where there could easily be tension and distrust. It is a moment of quiet simplicity. The beholder is invited to recognize patient thoughtfulness as a public virtue, and thus it acts as a counterweight to the general tendency to get instantly agitated whenever we see things we dislike in the political realm. One could imagine this image being beamed into every home before the news, to reduce the likelihood of people screaming at the screen or posting an irate comment online.
Kobke is trying to tell Danes what they should be like, and to nudge them in a good direction. Remarkably, the picture has had some tangible success in this endeavour. Along with many others, it has helped crystallize a conception of what it is to be Danish, what a Danish attitude to life might be like. You sec Kobke's work in postcards and posters across the country. Art has played its part in the development of one of the world's sanest and most decent societies.
In 2012, the Anglo-German artist Tino Sehgal produced an updated version of this kind of political art in London for the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall (117). He trained a group of strangers to become experts at talking to one another with the help of some specially positioned conversational prompts. A small army of volunteers approached visitors at the Tate, told them something about their lives and asked them for their personal stories, based on big, intimate questions formulated by Sehgal ('When did you feel a sense of belonging?' 'What does 'arrival' mean to you?' 'Of whom are you afraid?')
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What to Jo if you are angry with a banker.
115. Scbastiin Erra/.uriz, Watt Street Nation. 2012
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Many an artist has highlighted our social isolation. Schgal - more interestingly - tried to solve it, and did so as an artist, with intelligence and originality, yet without any of the traditional tools of art. Though a political artist, Sehgal understood his brief with refreshing broadness. He didn't feel the need to attack the obvious abuses of English society. He knew that one of the prevalent but quasi-invisible problems of living in England is that very few people know how to talk honestly with one another, and that they like to hide their vulnerability behind a detached, ironic air. He was internally strong enough to know that addressing this problem also counts as changing the world (like Kobke, he wasn't in love with the grand gesture). Finally, he stretched our preconceptions of what an art work is and what an artist should be doing. No longer docs being an artist have to mean making anything tangible. It may mean choreographing a form of interaction in a public space so that people will be less frosty and boring with one another. Sehgal is refreshing in his understanding that the task of political artists is to analyse and then refine the collective personality - and that this can involve making use of all means at one's disposal, even marshalling a band of volunteers to approach strangers for a chat. This, too, can be good art - and good politics.
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The Unilever Sene
An attempt to guide the psyche of a nation.
A political agenda for changing the way we talk to one another.
117. Tino Schgal, Tacc Modern Turbine Hall. 2012
116. Christen Kobkc. Outside the North Gate of the Citadel. 1834
Political art often points out what is wrong with a country, but an important part of its mission is to show what is right with it, in order to highlight what we can be proud of. We tend to feel awkward connecting pride with art. We shouldn't be. National pride is quite readily embraced in other parts of cultural life. Sporting triumphs arc regularly experienced as matters of national euphoria, especially when the success appears to flow from some feature of the collective self-image.
Huge crowds acclaimed Jonny Wilkinson and the England team as they made their way to a reception at 10 Downing Street following victory in the 2003 Rugby World Cup (118). It was not merely the fact of winning that 'made all England feel wonderful' (as a writer for the Guardian, a newspaper usually sceptical of triumphalism, put it). Jonny Wilkinson's last minute drop-goal against Australia fitted perfectly with the national mythology of resilience in adversity and coolness under fire. Even the persona of the team - a mixture of roughs and gentlemen - played up to the idea of who the English are and fed the sense that the nation itself, and not merely a few individuals, had done something magnificent.
What is There to Be Proud of?
The task of art is also to show us what we wight he proud of
11H. England Rugby Team Victory Parade, London.2003
We should learn from this. One of the surprising lessons of late twentieth-century history was that lack of pride is really a problem. Sophisticated culture had been quite stern in its hostility to national pride. This did not make pride go away; it only left it unguided and undeveloped. The desire to feel proud of one's community is in itself a natural and good impulse. It deserves the attention of artists. The task of art is not necessarily or only to condemn society's worst fai lings; it is to direct our capacity for pride. Pride can be dangerous and loathsome.
What Switzerland can be in its best moments.
119. Steven Hoi I. Swiss Ambassador's Rcsidcncc, 2006
of course, when focused on unworthy or idiotic things ('we are great because we have lots of iron ore mines' or 'because we have white skin'). We need to channel this natural impulse in the most intelligent and valuable directions. Collective pride is important because there isn't enough to be proud of as a single individual. The psychological frailty that we very much need arts help with is that we are more or less compelled by nature to be proud of something collective, but we don't know what to be proud of.
A comparatively minor but intriguing opportunity to address this frailty, and teach us the true shape our pride could take, is presented whenever a nation commissions an embassy building or ambassador's residence. In order to design the new Swiss Ambassador's residence in Washington, DC, the architect didn't only have to consider practical spatial needs, he also had to ask himself about the identity of an entire country (119). The residence is more than just the place where a senior diplomat happens to live: it is a home of a nation in a foreign land. It can hence be seen as a built response to the collective question of those who paid for it: 'What should we, the Swiss, be proud of in our country?'
In some ways the building provides a poor answer. It isn't setting out a manifesto. It doesn't provide a mantra to chant at a rally. Nevertheless, the building is quietly but profoundly eloquent about what is best and most attractive about the country that owns it. For a start, it is quite upfront about formality and elegance. The pin-striped, sand-blasted glass is carried across the facades so that there is minimum visual disruption. The whole is neat and clcan. One could imagine a more apologetic architect feeling that the Swiss obsession with such things was slightly embarrassing in the modern world, but Steven Holl has decided to give this attitude a noble visual expression. What could have been petty and fussy is presented in its grander, more ambitious manifestation. The edges of the building are picked out in charcoal-coloured concrete blocks. Visual boundaries are made as distinct as possible. The pursuit of precision in thinking and feeling has been translated into architecture. It is as if the architect were saying to the Swiss: This exactness, which you know people mock you for, is, in fact, something worthy of pride'. The contrasting veiling of many of the windows, which lie behind the surface of the glass walls, creates an effect of inner cosiness, muted and soft in its outward display. At night, when seen lit up, these facades tell us that the things to be proud of about Switzerland are not secrecy and numbered bank accounts, but warmth, care and elegance.