You might be forgiven, on the basis of the recent content of this blog, for thinking that I am living in some kind of art bubble, into which the concerns of the wider world don’t penetrate. In fact this is far from being the case, and I am actually quite deeply engaged in one way or another by current events both in this country and in the wider world.
In my former professional life I was an academic specialist on the affairs of the Balkan region, working for a short time as an adviser and witness at the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. It has been interesting over recent weeks to reflect on the echoes of that experience in our current international situation. These reflections could occupy much more space than I have available here, but I will just mention one line along which my mind has been running.
By coincidence I am preparing at the moment for a retrospective exhibition of my work at a gallery in Ilkley, to which I have given the title About Time. The idea is to draw together a selection of my paintings which are occupied in one way or another with the way in which human life is lived within time, and within a world shaped by time. In our current political situation I have been interested to reflect on the way in which the current war in Ukraine is unintelligible if removed from its historical context. Also, the accounts which different actors offer in order to explain their situation and their actions exploit highly selective versions of history. The trouble is that outsiders, such as western European politicians and journalists, do attempt to provide a historical context to events, but (as in the Yugoslav situation) typically select the wrong historical framework, or a very partial one.
During the Yugoslav wars it was common for outsiders, for example, to root their explanations in terms of the “age-old hatreds” which supposedly characterised different south Slav ethnic groups. This was, in fact, largely nonsense. In a kind of mirror image of this error, contemporary observers of the situation in the Ukraine root their accounts in the history of the Cold War, and the collapse of Soviet Communism. This tells a part, but far from the whole, of the story. The way in which European history is taught in our schools is typically silent about the far longer-term history of Russian imperialism.
It is far from being the case that my current immersion in art provides a retreat from the wider world of events. What I am in fact doing is reminding viewers of my art that every aspect of human affairs needs to be understood as being “about time.”