Some stories come around with the certainty of a comet returning to earth’s orbit.
One of the classics made its media re-entry at the weekend with the ‘shock’ news from the BBC that Belfast City Council has spent £150,000 over the past 10 years on portraits of the city’s lord mayors. Every time a portrait is unveiled someone belly-aches about it.
The report told us: “Critics have branded the portraits a ‘vanity project’, saying the money could be better spent to support the arts.”
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Belfast City Council spends £100,000 on mayor portraits
Supporting the arts
On the face of it, it’s a fair point; but it doesn’t stand much scrutiny. Visual artists are some of the most marginalised in the cultural sector – and among the poorest paid. If commissioning portraits isn’t supporting the arts, what is?
These portraits are important. I suspect that’s not a popular position. But there you go, I’ve said it. In defending them I’m in the same company as former lord mayor Jim Rodgers, whose near full-length portrait by Carol Graham is a classic of the genre – full regalia, frills and white gloves.
Times are tough, and £15k a portrait may seem profligate. But as a proportion of Belfast’s annual expenditure (£170.6 million), it’s not even chicken-feed.
As a collection, these portraits give a more accurate insight into the city’s politics than any written history. Commissioning them is money well spent. (The editor will welcome letters from readers who disagree.)
The power of art
There is no better way of understanding the shock of David Cook’s election as the first non-unionist lord mayor than comparing the kitsch, backward-looking portrait of his predecessor Jim Stewart, and Neil Shawcross’s ‘two fingers to the establishment’ depiction of Cook.
It shocked when it was unveiled in 1979 and it shocks still today. That’s the power of art.
Then there’s the 1987 photo-portrait of Sammy Wilson (in a cheap suit and mullet) with his lady mayoress Rhonda Paisley. The ‘Belfast says No’ banner in the background gives the political context, and is a reminder today that unionism still does not understand the march of history.
By 2001 and his second term, Wilson’s mullet had gone – as had Rhonda. But Tom Hallifax’s depiction of the ruddy-faced politician, no longer in the flush of youth, is one of the better portraits in the collection. It also shows Wilson, loafing in his blue suit, as a unionist maverick.
First nationalist mayor
Most of the unionist portraits are ‘man as coat-hanger’, all gold braid and frills. Like Rodgers, John Carson, Billy Bell, Hughie Smith, Eric Smith, Bobby Stoker, Nigel Dodds and Herbie Ditty, among others, go full-bling. That says a lot about them as people and their ye-olde politics.
The best portrait in the collection is Derek Hill’s intimate study of Belfast’s first nationalist lord mayor, Alban Maginness. Again this picture tells the story of a political upheaval still being played out today.
Robert Ballagh goes for a Pearse-like profile view for Sinn Féin’s first lord mayor, Alex Maskey.
In shirt-sleeves, and without his chain of office, Maskey’s portrait, complete with its ‘City of Equals’ slogan, is art as politics writ large. Ballagh’s hyper-informal depiction of Máirtin Ó Muilleoir in running gear couldn’t be more different, but it’s not as radical as the Shawcross. But then Sinn Féin is now the new establishment.
Portraits of women
Equally significant is the more recent appearance of women in a collection dominated by middle-aged men. Striking portraits of Naomi Long, Nichola Mallon, Nuala McAllister (with son Finn), Deirdre Hargey, and Kate Nicholl (with baby bump) speak of the contribution women have made to the city, and their emergence as political leaders.
Some of the portraits in the collection are so-so. The one of Grace Bannister, elected the city’s first woman lord mayor in 1981, does not do her justice. But many are by artists of international standing – Hill, Ballagh, Colin Davidson, John Lavery, John Keane, Ross Wilson, Nicola Russell. Their insights give us a take on politics you will find nowhere else.
If Belfast is short of 15 grand, it should look elsewhere for it. This project is too important to be sacrificed. If anything, the city needs to spend more on art, not less.
