Biteback

From The Sunday Times

September 23, 2007

Richard Brooks

Two big, slobbery kisses were very publicly plonked very close to the normally tight lips of Nicholas Serota. In the usually sedate surroundings of the Royal Academy, the director of the Tate looked extremely chuffed. The snogger was his old pal Norman Rosenthal, thanking Serota for rightly singing Norm’s praises at a party to commemorate his remarkable 30-year tenure as the RA’s exhibitions secretary.

The celebrations coincided with the opening of an important exhibition by the German painter Georg Baselitz. Dustin Hoffman, a big fan, the new academician Tracey Emin and Alan “Noddy” Yentob, the BBC’s cultural supremo, dropped in.

Baselitz addressed us in German, with Norm translating, before the boss of the German sponsor, Eurohypo, gave an impressive 15-minute lecture – in English – on why business had a moral responsibility to give to the arts. (Absent) British ministers would have found it music to their ears as they try to persuade the private sector to take up the slack from the public purse. And Serota, who needs £200m to build his Tate Modern extension by 2012, must have been enraptured.

So far, Liverpool’s plans for its year as European Capital of Culture, in 2008, have been more about shambles than arts. The good news is that the city is now doing something sensible by pruning a top-heavy board and bringing in Phil Redmond, the creator of Brookside, as deputy chairman.

Redmond should add some Scouse nous to the year, which so far seems to be of little interest to the average Liverpudlian.

On Thursday, the city will announce more events for 2008, and much of the lineup for the opening weekend. But, I gather that there will be no confirmation of Paul McCartney. How sad if Macca were not to play a significant role for the city that, frankly, made him.

Marc Quinn’s statue of the disabled painter Alison Lapper will come down from the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square next week. Not long afterwards, it will be replaced by Thomas Schutte’s Hotel for the Birds.

I’m all in favour of public art. For a fine example, go to the new Henry Moore exhibition in Kew Gardens. But the Quinn didn’t work – at least, not for me. Schutte’s coloured Perspex sculpture better suits the plinth and the surroundings. The title, however, is tempting fate. It will probably end up as Home for the Pigeons, since Mayor Ken has failed to rid Trafalgar Square of its guano-dropping pests.

A new exhibition by the venerable Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov, who has shown at Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery, has just opened in London. His wife, Vita, is the recurring subject of Intimacy.

Try reading the press blurb: “In one work, she grabs Mikhailov’s penis and pulls him along against a backdrop of palm trees.” Ouch! It continues: “It’s a snapshot suggesting the complexity of human relations, but also intimating the inextinguishable possibility of ecstasy.” The couple are not typical grandparents, then.