So, a reader takes me to task on the Letters page for failing to enthuse about the State-owned Farmleigh House and calls me a "delicate aesthete." Perhaps the description was intended to be dismissive, but actually I rather rejoice in it.
After all, if an aesthete is someone who possesses a heightened appreciation of beauty, who would not want to be one of that number? Who would spurn the opportunity to appreciate line, form and colour? Who would not want to relish even the tiniest detail of a building or object, as exemplified by Proust's ecstatic description of "the little patch of yellow wall" in Vermeer's View of Delft? If this is what it means to be an aesthete, then I regard myself privileged to be considered as such.
Would that there were many others. But it appears that in contemporary Ireland we aesthetes are few in number. There can be no satisfaction derived from this state of affairs; unlike the unattractive new housing estates which disfigure towns and villages throughout the country, we have no wish to be considered "exclusive". On the contrary, it would be a matter of enormous pleasure to us if there were more aesthetes around, more citizens who were sensitive to the Irish landscape and the place of buildings in it, more people aware that fragility is one of the principal characteristics of all beauty while ugliness is a hardy survivor.
Visual illiteracy
The Irish race is often accused of visual illiteracy and, as anyone who has even the slightest trace of aesthetic sensibility will testify, at the moment the accusation can be made with good reason. What other explanation could there be for the almost universal and cheery disregard of our environment, for the habitual and widespread tendency to abandon litter with no thought of the consequences, for the remarkable ability to ignore the rubbish which blows about urban and rural locations alike?
Only visual illiteracy could be the reason why so many well-designed buildings are left to fall into shameful ruination while poorly-designed examples of pastiche architecture are persistently thrown up in the name of development. Could it be anything other than visual illiteracy which has caused the centres of every substantial town in Ireland to lose their individual characters and assume, at best, a ubiquitous blandness?
There are many subjects which cause indignation among us Irish, but ugliness has rarely been one of them. On the contrary, the impression is frequently given that we should be either indifferent or blind to our surroundings. It appears to be a matter of absolutely no public concern that the appearance of Ireland has changed utterly, and scarcely at all for the better, during the past decade of economic buoyancy. While an enormous quantity of building work has taken place, almost none of it can be regarded as of any aesthetic merit. It is impossible, for example, to think of more than a handful of new private homes constructed in recent years which demonstrate original and imaginative design and not simply the regurgitation of debased old forms.
Public money
This is what must give grief to anyone who comes to be classified as an aesthete: that while the existing stock of beautiful buildings continues to diminish, the number of unattractive new ones grows steadily larger. And this is why the Government's purchase and restoration of Farmleigh is quite so appalling. A very large amount of public money, £41 million, has been spent on a house which has only one advantage - the convenience of its location. Given that Farmleigh will never be regarded as being of any architectural importance, could this expenditure really be justified?
And if location really is of such primary importance for a State guest residence, why was no consideration given years ago to a central Dublin property directly opposite that overblown - and over-lauded - piece of bombastic Edwardiana known as Government Buildings? The State owned a terrace of four exquisite mid-18th century houses on Upper Merrion Street but it opted to let these fall into almost derelict condition and then sold them in 1992. Because a group of private businessmen better understood their inherent beauty than did the Government, these buildings now make up the front of the Merrion Hotel.
"I have nothing but my eye," said that arch-aesthete Hugh Lane at the beginning of the last century. Disingenuous as it sounds today, perhaps this statement was true, but Lane's eye proved to be quite remarkable and it greatly enriched this country. However, as is well known, he found himself part of an aesthetic minority while the mass of his fellow countrymen preferred to remain aloof from all visual interests. Over the intervening period, nothing has changed.
Economic poverty used to be advanced as a justification for the lack of aesthetic engagement by our forbears, too busy struggling to survive to have time for the "luxury" of visual sensitivity. But at a time when our Government can spend millions on a mediocre Victorian pile, this argument no longer has any authority. Rich Ireland is no different to poor Ireland; there exists the same extraordinary want of awareness of good design.
Gold paint
This must be why no one - aside from one "delicate aesthete" - has evinced any concern that in the study of Farmleigh, a supposed showpiece for international visitors of the very best we can produce, a group of ill-matched and damaged chairs has been covered in cheap gold paint. It would be better to have no furniture than an assortment of poor quality pieces, better to do without than merely make do.
At present, this is not a country for aesthetes, unless they are prepared to have their senses constantly assaulted by the cheap, the gaudy, the gimcrack. But Ireland needs such people, it needs to have at least a few citizens who are capable of clearly seeing the second-rate and saying what it is. So thank you, gentle reader; it is an honour and a privilege to be regarded as an aesthete.
