Perhaps the most impressive political speech ever made was the funeral oration delivered by the Athenian statesman Pericles in 430 ВС. At the heart of the speech is an attempt to sum up the character of Athens as a society. He is asking his audience: who arc we? In a central section he gives part of the answer: 'We are seekers of beauty, but avoid extravagance. We admire learning, but are unimpressed by pedantry. For us, wealth is an aim for its value when used, not as an empty boast. And the disgrace of poverty lies not in the admission of it, but more in the failure to avoid it in practice.' He is describing a set of attitudes: how Athenians think about money, success, failure and beauty. To be like this is to be Athenian. What is refreshing is that we are reminded that Athens, which we may know well through its buildings, was also a set of characteristics. Pericles was searching for admirable traits in the best people of his city. He was also putting his finger on a crucial problem of politics. Great monuments and the chief buildings of a capital city may loyally express ideals, but ideals die if they are confined to occasional grand architectural statements. They need to be identified and mirrored back in the ordinary activities of the community.
The great problem with monuments and cities is that they are small instances of goodness that one wants to be more widely spread. The War Memorial in Canberra highlights ideas of loyalty, sacrifice and solemnity, but these fine qualities shouldn't be locked away in a memorial. They belong in the everyday life of a society; they shouldn't only come into focus when school children make a once-in-a-lifetime visit to a shrine.
Likewise, the spirit of reasonableness and calm so finely conveyed by the National Congress building in Brasilia needs to permeate the marital bedrooms, family kitchens, classrooms and boardrooms of the whole of Brazil.
This is a reminder that the term 'polities' has two rather different meanings. On the one hand, politics is legislation, government, policy papers, elections and political parties - politics as we see it in the news. On the other hand, politics is the collective life that exists every day in the polis, or city. A clue as to how this aspect of politics might be improved through art is provided by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner. In 1955, Pevsner delivered the BBC's Reith Lectures, later published under the title The Englishness of English Art. Pevsner set himself the challenge of discovering where one could locate England's national identity in the art of its past. What was revolutionary was where he found it. Unlike other historians, he didn't locate it in the monuments, the big governmental buildings or the war memorials of previous centuries. He found the Englishness of English art - and identity - in the nation's soup tureens, chairs, bookshelves and doorhandles.
The rebirth of national pride.
128. Christo and Jeanne- Claude. Wrapped Reichstag, 1995
If any of Jane Austen's most likeable characters, such as Admiral Croft or Elizabeth Bennet, had bought a bowl for serving soup, one imagines they might have gone for a plain creamware example, typical of its age and country (129). It is like them: direct, graceful, unfussy, but noble, in an undramatic way. There is dignity in the tureen, certainly, but it does not force itself upon you; rather, it expects that you will be kind enough to
pay attention and notice its charms. For an obviously upmarket item, it is beautifully well-mannered. Thus it exhibits qualities that have been the ideal of secure, middle-class English prosperity for several centuries: do not stress your merits, but be quietly confident that others will appreciate you. This is the articulation of an attitude one might feel proud of, but it hasn't required a monument to convey it.
Such objects may seem incidental when we first encounter them. Pevsners point, though, is that bowls and plates and chests of drawers are where national identity is principally forged, and for better or worse - revealed. This should tell political leaders something vital about what needs to be addressed in order to create a sense of identity that a nation can be proud of. Governments shouldn't just be concerned with war memorials or iconic public buildings: they should get more interested in street furniture, park benches and the modern equivalents of soup tureens. To update Pevsner's project, a modern British identity to be proud of can be found in the road signage of the graphic artists Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir, in Alec Issigonis's Mini, Mary Quant's mini dresses, David Mellor's cutlery and Robin Days stackable plastic chairs (130, 131, 133).
In other words, a country achieves dignity and identity through small details, and getting these right should be recognized as part of a political programme in the same way as legislation and economic policy. The Mini suggests a crowded island, a dislike of showing off, a preference for practical solutions rather than grand statements, small families,
England might he in here.
129. F.nglish
Crcamwarc Tureen, r.1790-1805
A portrait of Britain.
130. Margaret Calvert. Children Crossing Sign. 1965
131. Mary Quant. Mini Dress in Wool Jersey. c. 1960s
132. Robin Day. Polypropylene Chair for Hi lie. 1963
133. David Mellor. Cut lery.r. 1960s
independence, respectability and conformity; lots of people could have them. Plastic chairs speak of a commitment to resilience, simplicity, lack of snobbery and a spirit of making do. If a David Mellor cutlery set were magically brought to life as a person, we would recognize it as an exemplary citizen of the country that made it - and might want to befriend it, too.
The underlying idea in Carlo Crivcllis Annunciation is well known in the context of religious art: the concept of incarnation (134). Although the term sounds arcane and scholarly, it points us to something important and recognizable, the process through which something intangible - spiritual, if you will - becomes physical, and hence more present and real to us. This is dramatized by the golden shaft of light from heaven entering the body of Mary; in Christian theology, this is the moment when God becomes man, takes on human characteristics and walks among us.
The very same process can be seen at work in a secular context: the 'idea' of Britain can be fleshed out and made tangible in a road sign, a dress, a chair or a car. This is why we can also read the object in the reverse direction, going from the sign, dress, chair or car to the idea of the nation that it represents. This is one of the most ambitious concepts of art. Art is the skill of incarnating an abstract idea in a material object, of finding a way to make an idea palpable and direct. Just as in religion, where the point of Jesus was that a distant and vague concept of God could be brought into contact with ordinary life, so secular art can take the distant and vague idea of being proud of one's country and turn it into a reality observable as one scoops some strawberries into a bowl or dresses for a party.
Repetition is key here: only if we keep seeing the spirit of something again and again does it have chance to achieve a hold on us. We need to be in touch with it when we go to kindergarten and when we come home in the evening, when the street lamps come on and when we prepare the supper. A visit to a museum once or twice a year wont be enough to fulfil the underlying promises of art.
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Censorship does not meet with much enthusiasm these days. We tend to think of it as a small-minded, defensive interference with a cherished freedom to express ourselves. We associate it with book burning, political repression and ignorant intolerance. The heroic events that pulled down censorship bear this out. For instance, the suppression of Diderot's Encyclopedic in 1752 - after the publication of the first of what eventually became twenty-seven volumes - was clearly a narrow-minded attack by vested interests on the most sophisticated intellectual project of an era. The publication of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatlcrleys Lover was delayed in England until 1960, having been privately printed in Italy in 1928. When the publishers, Penguin, were tried under the Obscene Publications Act, the prosecution appeared dowdy and dim, while the defence was passionate and intelligent. In the heroic instances of the history of censorship, it is always something of real value, profound, earnest and true, that is condemned because it is unpalatable or unfavourable to corrupt authority.