Treasure

Written by:Stephen Mitchelmore.

Just enjoyed another “Best of” programme on BBC2. This time a bunch of British Museum experts choosing what they considered to be the top ten treasures in their collection. They were all dug up around the country. The website allows everyone to vote for their favourite. Luckily, nobody will sneer at the curators’ choices for being “elitist”, as the criteria for their judgement is clearly defined. One explained that it was how much each artefact or stash of artefacts had contributed to our understanding of British history rather than beauty, monetary value or popularity with visitors. To my surprise, they chose the plain Vindolanda Tablets from Hadrian’s Wall as number one rather than the Sutton Hoo ship burial and jewellery. Of course, as they said, it isn’t about consumerist whim, as it is in art-related lists, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Where art is concerned, we have to endure the anxiety of media types afraid of appearing uncool and snobbish: “it’s all subjective, innit?”. This usually results in appallingly average artists being overrated. “High art” is meant only to be good for us, like a dose of cod liver oil, whereas we all really prefer trash, don’t we, if we admit it? The possibility that great art (much as I hate that phrase) might actually give us more than we could ever imagine � and exceeding our imagination is, by definition, what great art does � is not allowed admittance to proceedings. Just another instance of why our understanding is to blame for the apparent diminishment of art to a commodity in our culture, while history and science claim an exalted place.

And talking of great art: by coincidence, last night I changed my Current Reading to volume three of In Search of Lost Time by Proust, and, though I don’t normally look at it, I clicked on our “other blogs” link to Today in Literature, which today features the same M. Proust. How nice for me. Apparently, on this day in 1909, he “dipped toast in tea and tumbled into the childhood memory that triggered the seven-volume, fourteen-year” novel. I wonder if it’s that straightforward, but it’s a nice story. The site also tells us that it’s fifty years since Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. What are we to make of that? I suppose we could celebrate it in order to forget the futility of this “happy” new year!

Posted on January 2nd, 2003.

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