I can’t help smiling now when I think of the way a small army of painters, musicians, actors, dancers and theatre people crowded panting at Joseph Muscat’s feet in the last general election campaign. You’d think the arts crowd would be a little brighter and more intelligent, but no – apparently, it’s emotions which win the day, and feeling excited about something in an otherwise terribly dull existence.
The first thing that happened was that, instead of the Minister for the Arts they were led to believe would be theirs, they got landed with a two-penny parliamentary secretary and, to add insult to injury, it is that noted philistine, Jose Herrera. The second thing that happened was that David Felice, who they all respected and who they imagined would stay on, was tossed aside as chairman of Valletta 2018 and replaced with that other notorious philistine, Jason Micallef. Jason Micallef and Jose Herrera are friends, which figures, and both are bristling with resentment towards the Prime Minister – Herrera because he wasn’t made Minister of Justice, and Micallef because of reasons as yet unknown.
The third thing that happened was that Davinia Galea, who headed the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts with considerable success, was summarily dismissed and replaced with a tedious and very lazy fossil from another era, Albert Marshall. His first act on being appointed was to take off for Australia for two months, leaving everything suspended until his return. Marshall’s outlook on the arts is retrograde. He is stuck in the 1970s, and I suspect knows little or nothing of what is happening in contemporary Europe.
And that brings us to the newest big thing to affect the arts crowd and the rest of us who are interested in that part of life: Jose Herrera’s announcement yesterday that “China will be playing a leading role in Malta’s cultural development”. Now this sounds an ominous note, not only because it reeks of colonisation through culture, which is exactly what this is going to be. There is another significant reason for concern: China knows nothing of cultural development because it has had absolutely none of its own for centuries. In history, Chinese culture was great and far more advanced than European culture, but then at some point several centuries back it was frozen, and the essence of that culture became the repetition of traditional forms over hundreds of years until those forms reached the pinnacle of perfection. This meant, however, that there was little or no innovation and very little of what Europe recognised as art rather than a highly elevated form of exquisitely sophisticated craft, most of it rooted in the magnificent court of the emperor.
The removal of the last emperor was followed fairly swiftly by the arrival of Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution, which involved the smashing and obliteration of all the beautiful porcelain, jade sculptures, silks, paintings and jewelled creations the Red Guards could find in their raids on private homes and public buildings. And ever since, not only was artistic creation actively discouraged and artists treated with hostility and suspicion unless they served the interests of the communist state, but those with a burgeoning drive to create were deprived of all inspiration and points of reference, and so could not develop. It is only in the last few years that any kind of art scene has begun to develop in China, and still it is light years behind because, in creative terms, Chinese society is now literally starting from zero. Matters are not helped by the fact that the Chinese education system is designed to stifle creativity and innovation. In anything design-related, China is a copyist and not an innovator. Where China excels, industrially, is in taking the designs and innovations of the West and copying them cheaply.
Malta already has some very serious handicaps when it comes to cultural development. The last thing we need is China’s influence: the blind leading the blind.
And now the Luvvy Crowd must be even more thrilled than the rest of us are to hear Jason Micallef announce the details of his plans for Valletta 2018. We’re to have an under-17 football tournament at Ta’ Qali, televised by Eurosport, a Malta fashion week and a ‘green consciousness week’, whatever that might be. There was no mention of anything to do with creativity – no music, painting, theatre, street performances (except perhaps by some Chinese troupe?) or any attempt at encouraging people to take an interest in anything creative. It’s a tragic waste, but then it’s no more than we deserve for letting it happen.
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