Whether in art or in politics, creating illusions is a dangerous game.
By Gary Scarrabelotti
The ever patient Henry Thornton prodded me some weeks back.
“Have not heard from you in a while – hope all is well.”
To which I replied,
“I am juggling many things … and thinking what to say next.”
To which the pungent Henry responded,
“Drop no balls!”
Ouch! But fair enough.
The truth is I’ve been in burn out mode. Politics Australia 2012 just about shrivelled the Scarra soul – and to think that I was only observing it! Even so, there comes a point when even Scarra Blog finds it difficult to speak for want of something good to say — especially (but not only) about our national government and its leadership.
So for five weeks I have been touring Ye Olde Tottering Museum and in that time I hardly read a paper. I dipped a couple times into the Italian press to see what Silvio was up to. And I bought the odd copy of the International Herald Tribune to serve as occasional lunchtime company. I watched some Italian TV which – if possible – is even more puerile than our own. As I hobbled along the cobbled streets of Rome and later navigated my way about Brussels, Munich, Salzburg and Vienna, Australia, I confess, was not much on my mind.
Frascati
For a few weeks, the questions that exercised my thoughts were pretty “far out”: like, what does baroque architecture really mean; does it really work; and what is its true artistic value?
On my first overseas trip in 1979 I was captivated by the baroque. But 33 years later the allure has all but gone. This time the Roman churches which once filled me with delight – the Gesù, the Chiesa Nuova, Sant’ Ignazio, and a half dozen others – almost left me cold.
One of the great features of the baroque is its mastery of illusion deployed to create a sense of depth, to contrive a door opening into eternity and into the life of heaven.
In baroque Roman church interiors illusion dominates, unfortunately. So much so that when you see the baroque for what it is – exuberant play, often childish and self-referential – the power of the illusion dissolves. Then the heavens close over, the skies darken, and what is left is a canvas of sometimes brilliant but, all too often, futile humanistic artistry.
In Rome, with the aid of a splendid Frascati, I started to write my reflections on the matter. But having got as far as “baroque is to architecture what the junk bond is to high finance”, I hit the delete button and finished off the bottle instead. Just as well, because I had no idea what lay in store for me in Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna … and about all that, I am still ruminating.
White flag
Back in Australia, with the political life stirring again after the annual sleep of January, I find myself oddly in sympathy with Graham Richardson.
In trying to fathom Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s recent decision to set the election date, seven months out, for September 14, Richo had to “run up the white flag.”
“I am obviously past it because I simply don’t understand Labor politics anymore,” (“Gillard heads into dangerous waters”, The Australian, January 31.)
“Amen, to that,” I say — except that my perplexity is less about the setting of an election date. That has a certain logic to it: it ratchets up Gillard’s (unhealthy) preoccupation with making Abbott the issue; it offers the prospect of deploying the Government’s vast bureaucratic resources against the credibility of Coalition policies; and, at the same time, Gillard surely hopes, it will suppress pro-Rudd agitation within the Labor Party.
What I do not understand, however, is how Gillard imagines that, with all this, she is actually setting the political agenda. Her record belies the confidence she has in herself.
Res gestae
It is wearisome to have to revisit the little chronicle of Julia Gillard’s deeds. It begins with her near defeat at the last federal elections and subsequent needless alliance with the Greens. It was followed by bare-faced policy reversals (the carbon tax) and graceless backflips (off-shore processing of illegal immigrants). Then there were the blunders that marked everything she touched, from international relations (the “Timor Solution”, “the Malaysian Solution”) and the management of the Federal Parliament (the ill-omened choice of Peter Slipper as Speaker) right down to the recent bungled timing of the Roxon-Evans resignations … announced after the setting of the election date. Finally, there is disorder at the strategic policy level: to whit, a commitment to implement massive new educational and social security reforms – the Gonski report and the national disability insurance scheme – without having undertaken the kind of budgetary reforms on the expenditure side that might release funds for such ambitious projects.
It beggars belief that Gillard imagines she is going to force the Opposition into prematurely making public its own policy costings when the Government, with all its resources, cannot explain how it will fund its own grandiose ambitions. But fear not, the Prime Minister is working on a plan. In the midst of the election campaign she has just launched, she is working up a raid on our super funds.
Julia Gillard just does not get it: she is the issue, not Abbott.
Whether in art or in politics, creating illusions is a dangerous game. When the illusions dissolve in the eye of the beholder, the work cannot survive, except, perhaps, as a ruin.