Art, religion and the death of the short story

Sarah Thornton. Photo / Supplied

Saturday evening at the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival, sociologist Sarah Thornton wore a sleeveless cream shift with a pink-stain waist and dark piping, accessorised with a cream pashmina, grey leggings, high heeled sandals, a Mondaine watch and loose dark hair. I mention all this because Linda Tyler from Gus Fisher Gallery introduced Thornton by talking about the emphasis on clothes in Thornton's book Seven Days in the Art World. Tyler herself wore a dress entirely covered in gold sequins ostensibly so Thornton wouldn't call her "the dowdy from Downunder". Thornton replied "I adore Linda!" and laughed - silently but with a wide open mouth - for the first of many times during the hour. She seems a fun person.

Arts writer for The Economist though she is, Thornton is adamantly not an art critic but instead says she is more interested in studying the ways the "art world" works. But she takes for granted that art is a product and artists are business people: "I don't want to distract artists from their work but how they manoeuvre themselves through the world will affect how many people will see their work," she said, adding that "every artist should have a website, it's crazy not to" so that they can control their representation. She doesn't even seem to consider critiquing the financial structures that feed her: "collectors provide liquidity to allow some of us to have a job close to art". Lucky for her. However, she is "interested in the 'artist' not just as a job but also an identity" - "it would be better if more of us made art out of our lives." Amen to that.

Thornton found interesting gender differences both among artists and art collectors. She suggests one reason why so few artworks sold for over $1 million are made by women ("maybe now 10") is that auction buyers are predominantly male, while collectors who are female often prefer to be primary buyers - that is, to buy direct from galleries and get to know the artists whose work they're buying. She says female artists in general are less interested in selling work and making collectable items, particularly in a factory-style studio - "they're less happy to delegate".

Tyler also asked Thornton about the concept of a "hard buy", which is when a collector has to prove they're important enough to buy a sought-after artist's work. It's not about the money - in fact, offering more than the asking price just proves that a collector is "declasse". When there's a long queue of collectors at an art fair, "the dealer's on top".

From the gossip department, Thornton's suing Lynn Barber and the Daily Telegraph for a review of Seven Days in the Art World that contained factual errors and, said Thornton, "made me look like an idiot bimbo who shouldn't be in front of students". (The newspaper has since apologised.) And, to finish on clothes, Thornton once agreed to wear a trouser suit for a Vogue magazine shoot, but the stylist showed up with only two ridiculous suits, so that Thornton would be forced to acquiesce to the "red shiny mini dress" which, without telling Thornton," Anna Wintour had already decided I'd wear."

In the session before hers, Thornton's colleague at The Economist and Schumpeter columnist Adrian Wooldridge was as lively and even more humorous than she was, even though his style was lecturing rather than conversational. Introduced by New Zealand Herald editor Tim Murphy, Wooldridge didn't need any questions and talked almost non-stop for 44 minutes, mostly about his book God is Back, which he co-authored with long time collaborator John Micklethwait.

Wooldridge is an atheist and Micklethwait is Catholic, so they didn't take on "Ditchens" (Dawkins and Hitchens) et al in arguing whether God exists, but instead wrote about religion as a social and economic force to be reckoned with. Their thesis is that religiosity is not counter-modernist but is using modernity to expand; that fundamentalism in particular is expanding rather than the "nervous self-deprecating form [of religion] such as the Church of England", and that it's expanding among educated people. My fellow festival goer thought Wooldridge was cherry-picking his statistics, but that's a debate for another time.

Wooldridge peppered his talk with anecdotes: "Sartre said 'God is dead - the bastard!' How French, trying to have it both ways" while nationalist Arab leaders once thought they had to choose between "Mecca or mechanisation". Interestingly Wooldridge started his research with a bias against religion but now describes himself as "atheist with a bias for religion... I'm a buttress for the church supporting from the outside". This is mainly, it seems, due to his admiration for the practical good works of religious organisations. He visited a monastery in Bangalore which "farcically" had a touch-screen system where you "press 3 for spiritual enlightenment", but commendably the monastery was also preparing and delivering 50,000 meals a day to children free of charge.

But religion can also be "a powerful force for evil". In order to make religion "tamer" to stop "wars of religion", Wooldridge proposes that the world needs "pluralism", by which he means secular states tolerant of all religions, and also foreign policy makers who take religion and its leaders' political power seriously. In UK foreign policy circles currently, "a taste for religion is seen as a taste for bondage - it's alright, but keep it out of the newspapers."

Unsurprisingly more than men than women went to hear Chris Laidlaw and Black Obsession writer Gregor Paul talking the state of the nation's rugby with novelist Lloyd Jones. And a gloomy lot they were too - apparently New Zealand rugby is rapidly turning as dull as - gasp - rugby league. In the professional era, players are mollycoddled into helplessness and rugby is a 'product' not a passion. Becoming an All Black is just a career move - players would rather have lifetime financial stability than a World Cup win.

These ideas aren't new perhaps but the trio had fun chewing them over in original ways. As Laidlaw puts it in a passage from his new book Somebody Stole My Game, which Jones read out: players are now automatons who joylessly ply their trade as bricklayers would. There was talk of "synthetic environments" versus "heritage values". The talent scouts fling their schoolboy players into a "cocoon" which is propelled on a "narrow escalator system" to the top. "Do they emerge as butterflies or moths?" asked Laidlaw, amused at his own bewilderment at his own metaphor. He then waxed sentimental about the odd shape of the ball and how it is a "symbol of the idiosyncracies of the game... Like life really." Great stuff.

Gleefully old codger-ish, Jones couldn't wait to "tackle" and "put the boot into" the younger generation (see what he did there?). Gen Y have large yet fragile egos and can't take any criticism, they said. They're individualistic and rugby depends on a "collectivist" idea of society. So, although they didn't say it, perhaps rugby really is incompatible with neo-liberalism, and Rogernomics - via its Gen Y legacy - was the start of the rugby rot.

Only a few interesting tit bits from the "Lit Crit Mag Eds" session. Granta traditionally made a selling point of not publishing poetry, so when current editor John Freeman started to do so he "got an email from one of the founders saying 'what's with this poetry stuff?'"

Founder of New Zealand's Sport Fergus Barrowman agreed with Freeman that poetry is in fine fettle, partially because, unlike fiction writers, they're not aiming to become rich and famous through their work: "Poets don't ask, 'am I going to get a film deal out of this poem?'" Perhaps it's only a matter of time...

Freeman lamented that US periodicals like the Saturday Evening Post are no longer publishing short stories: "the lack of belief that fiction can tell us something is depressing." Barrowman, however, thought that the lack of mass media outlets had improved the quality of the writing. Just like poetry, he said, "short American fiction over ten years has been written for its own sake and without any second guessing."

Meanwhile odd man out, Ben Naparstek, Melbourne editor of The Monthly, doesn't publish fiction because he feels many journals in Australia already do so. However, he does commission novelists to write non-fiction pieces, which is proving "fruitful".

Barrowman said Sport's title proved too macho for some writers, while non-writing sports fans "thought we were taking the piss - which we were". However he hastened to add that he too is a sportsman so the title isn't entirely ironic. No doubt Lloyd Jones would approve. Admirably, Barrowman edits the annual magazine as a labour of literary love in his spare time: "I am my own rich patron and infernal proprietor," he joked. "I publish Sport for myself... I don't think there's one other person who would read Sport and like everything in it."

On the web
www.granta.com
www.nzetc.org
www.themonthly.com.au