A man may objectively inherit
a role in history,
reluctantly or with devotion,
soldier, functionary, rebel,
engaging himself as an instrument
of required stability or urgent change.
But the bystanders accidently involved,
the child on an errand run over by the army truck
the young woman strayed into the line of fire,
the elderly person beside the wall when it fell
are marginalia only,
normally excluded from documents.
History is selective. Give us instead
the whole mosaic, the tesserae,
that we may judge if a period indeed
has a pattern and is not merely
a handful of coloured stones in the dust.
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It should not matter how I shaped my lines,
hit on a cadence; shuffled adjectives,
replaced a showy word with one that gives
a truer texture, or, precise, defines
a signal smudged by clumsy countersigns,
or altered phrase to mark a change of gear
when word proposing word at once combines
to make some level of intention clear.
Should I expose each stutter of my thought,
each accident of memory or of sense,
through which the structure to completion brought
is seen as weapon forged in self defence?
No more absurd than that I'd hoard and store
the fringe of filings on the workshop floor.
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If I should be remembered after this,
pray providence it be by happy men
who do not feel the skull behind the kiss,
the bony knuckles round the rusting pen,
but summon from the stiff archaic words
a heart whose pulse in its best moments was
free on the wing, as natural as the birds,
as clear and common as the year's first grass.
For I was nourished by the normal year,
leafmold and frosted clod and sudden rain,
and though a sick age ran its steep career
the quiet voices were not all in vain.
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By trying to waken folk to the concept of the Region, it seemed to me the necessary step to prize Ulster loose from the British anchorage: then and only then, when free in ideology, the unity with the other part of our island could be realised and established. The North cannot be invaded, and taken by force in the Republic: if simply outvoted by a nationalist majority resentment would remain, but, realising themselves for what they are for the first time, not Britain's pensioners or stranded Englishmen and Scots, being instead a group living long enough in Ireland to have the air in their blood, the landscape in their bones, and the history in their hearts, and so, a special kind of Irish themselves, they could with grace make the transition to federal unity.
I always maintained that our loyalties had an order to Ulster, to Ireland, to the British Archipelago, to Europe; and that anyone who skipped a step or missed a link falsified the total. The Unionists missed out Ireland: the Northern Nationalists (The Green Tories) couldn't see the Ulster under their feet; the Republicans missed out both Ulster and the Archipelago; and none gave any heed to Europe at all. Now, perhaps, willy nilly bundled in the European rump of the Common Market, clearer ideas of our regional and national allegiances and responsibilities may emerge, or our whole sad stubborn conglomeration of nations may founder and disappear for ever.
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Never buy a picture because it reminds you of a place where you once
spent an enjoyable holiday. A photograph is cheaper.
Buy pictures to feed your soul, as Hafiz nearly said.
Avoid the derivative repetitive artist. If he's not perpetually
enriching
his own experience he can't possibly enrich yours.
If an artist solves your imaginative or aesthetic problems you ought
to solve his financial problems.
Reproductions are referential data for students.
Wouldn't you like to have been the first to buy a Monet or a Matisse?
Take a chance now!
What was good enough for your father is just too bad.
Buy a picture before its painter becomes famous.
Sculpture lasts.
Have something in your house made by a human being for a human
being.
Return to John Hewitt- Art Gallery Man
Mr. John Hewitt, M.A., F.M.A., deputy director of Belfast museum and art gallery, opened the exhibition of paintings in the Donegall Place gallery, the work of members of the co-operative art club, held under the auspices of the education department of Belfast Society.
Mr. Hewitt said it was part of his responsibility to visit exhibitions of all kinds, and he particularly enjoyed seeing the work of the amateurs and scouting around for budding artists. The amateur artist was the normal citizen waking up- feeling he must do something. His pictures might be well made or they might not be well made; but when once started on the road there was no limit to the enjoyment the artist would achieve and the enjoyment he gave to other people. The amateur was indeed acting as a missionary although he might not possess the great potentialities of the professional.
It was pleasing that so many of the pictures shown were representativeof parts of their own province. It was important that people should know their own places- look at them affectionately and become aware of them....
...Art had become more important to the world than ever before, said Mr. Hewitt. Through the cinema, television, reproduction of pictures in books, many people had come to know of Chinese pottery, Negro sculpture, and other forms of art in countries they were never likely to visit. These influences changed people's minds, made them realise they belonged to a world community, and tended to make people more nationally minded. This international idea was in the minds of the pioneers of the co-operative movement, a great movement of the people themselves, and it was gratifying to find co-operators in Belfast interested in amateur painting.
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