There is a big row going on in the Irish arts world, big enough to be deemed worthy of editorial comment in this newspaper. The row is not between Irish artists, who in time-honoured fashion usually settle their differences sensibly and efficiently by beating each other up outside public houses, but between the arts administrators. These creatures have multiplied at a fierce rate in recent years, and currently number about 37,500, easily exceeding the number of Irish artists, in the same way, quite appropriately, as Irish prison officers out-number prisoners.
Trying to find out what the row is all about is like asking what a work of art "means", and the innocent question attracts similar superior and condescending responses from the arts crowd.
In essence it is a very ordinary argument, based on local versus national interests, with the urban-rural divide making itself felt too. Indeed a good case might be made for deeming the row an old fashioned work of art in itself, if we were to apply the Thomist notion as propounded by Joyce, and check that it has, or even embodies, the three essential requisites of integritas, consonontia and claritas.
It is amusing (lip curls sardonically) that the arts mandarins consider themselves at the cutting edge of avant-garde endeavour yet find themselves (embroiled) in such a down-home Synge-like argumentative scenario.
Sticking with Aquinas and Jemser, and leaving out J, em, Synge, the row does not qualify as a drama, however, since it involves no pity and less terror. You would be a long time trawling through the statements made - beg pardon, issued, by the various parties involved before you would experience that feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human affairs and unites it with the secret sufferer, never mind the secret source.
Don't be talking, man. This row sounds a damn sight more important than it is.
Anyway, the local authority officers are no longer on speakers with the grandees of the Arts Council. There are tensions. Standoffs. Frosty cordiality in public of course, but not a word exchanged. Daggers drawn. See them coming, cross the street. Distance kept. Move to other end of bar counter. Eye contact (studiously) avoided. Coolly polite but formal exchange of views only through third parties or media platforms.
However, one particularly unpleasant note has been publicly sounded. It has been cruelly alleged by the chairman of the local authority arts officers' association that the Arts Council staff is "obsessed with questionnaires."
The council is apparently quite wounded by this accusation - they are sensitive folk over there in Merrion Square - and has sent this newspaper an urgent fax asking if (a) we agree with the allegation, or (b) we feel a debate is necessary, or (c) we favour a multiple-choice approach, or (d) we would like funding for a multicultural globally relevant installation outside our offices in D'Olier Street. (We wouldn't).
The Irish Times has suggested that the current crisis has arisen because the Arts Council all of a sudden has more money than it knows what to do with - the "stresses of prosperity" if you don't mind. God, don't we know all about those stresses - you have the holiday home, the trips abroad, the new Merc, the property portfolio, the Telecom investment, and still there's that huge heap of money in the hallway worrying you sick.
Nor is there much use in asking for common sense to be applied in resolving the row because where the arts racket is concerned, common sense goes out the window. The whole point of possessing and indulging an artistic temperament is to spurn reason, start arguments, pour scorn on logical thought, dream up all kinds of unreal worlds and situations and ways of observing, upset other people and kick up a (ferocious) stink. If there's money to be made out of it, so much the better.
Arts administrators are not as naturally talented at this game as artists themselves, and that is the core of the current crisis. It's all about the arts but it doesn't involve artists at all.
I might squeeze another oul' article out of this carry-on later in the week if time and space - those saucy imponderables! - allow. In the meantime I am urgently trying to find out where the Irish Printers' Federation stands regarding the joint declaration on justification to be signed by church leaders in Augsburg next Sunday.