Diary

John Bayley

A visit to the exhibits at the Tate Gallery short-listed for this year’s Turner Prize shows how professionalism today runs not only artistic theory but art itself. There was nothing to take in except the theory of it. Animated discussion, even cries of pleasure and pain, were to be heard from the neighbouring exhibition of the strange and superb work of Gerhard Richter. But from the viewer of ‘the best that is being done by younger British artists today’ no ordinary expression of opinion seemed worthwhile, or indeed possible. Amateur appraisal had become pointless. I was reminded of a pamphlet called ‘Speaking for the Humanities’, issued by the American Council of Learned Societies, which stated that since the humanities are under threat they must be run by those who take them seriously – ‘by professionals rather than by amateurs’ – and by specialists who do not make the mistake of assuming an audience ‘both universal and homogeneous’.