The European Muddle and Other Matters

Sir: Several articles (O’Sullivan, Murray, and Martin-Jones) in the December edition touched on the unfolding muddle in Europe. I happened to be in Europe in September when the migration wave was reaching its crescendo, as Chancellor Merkel announced an open door and the media was in full flight.

I use the word migration deliberately. Other publications (the Economist and Time, for example) in their breakdown of figures of source countries demonstrate that Syria is only a small source nation (others ranged from as far as Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa). Virtually none of the great mass of people arriving in Europe would qualify as refugees; even amongst the Syrians they are certainly displaced but not refugees. The misery the Syrians are fleeing is very real.

Germany, if only 800,000 migrants turn up in 2015, will be taking the equivalent of 1 per cent of its population (like Australia taking 230,000 migrants that are not selected for skills and so on, as we currently do). Given the policy setting of Merkel, I (and others) would expect several years of at least 800,000 migrants turning up there (and if you are wondering about the future, or a change of policy, I am not sure that has been thought about yet!). Absorbing these migrants in Germany will be challenging.

Virtually all of the people I spoke to in our travels across western and central Europe had serious misgivings about this migration. The most articulate expression of this occurred in Germany, and I’ll call him Andreas. Andreas was well read (he enjoyed the Economist), very anti-Nazi and very European, and pro the EU and civil society. He was highly critical of Merkel for her policy, which he saw as arbitrary and knee-jerk, without any real thought as to implementation. The analogy he pointed to in recent times also with Merkel was her knee-jerk policy response to the Fukushima disaster to close down nuclear power plants. Germany is now slowing down this policy, and despite being covered in wind turbines (and only generating 26 per cent renewable energy) is now buying record amounts of nuclear-generated electricity from France.

France has really serious integration problems, Scandinavia is heading the same way, and other western and northern European nations are experiencing problems. Eastern and south-eastern Europe has less of a problem (apart from people transiting through their nations to the north and west). The EU is potentially at risk.

The stifling political correctness we experience in Australia is noticeably absent in many parts of the world. On returning to Australia I came across the September 23 edition of the Straits Times with an article headed, “Germany popular because of social welfare benefits”. This summed it up clearly and concisely: people are migrating to a developed country with the laxest entry restrictions and the highest socio-economic attractions and the highest welfare benefits.

I have misgivings about a policy that is not fully thought through and may bring integration problems within and between European nations. By all means accept legitimate refugees and choose migrants based on skills, but this disorderly policy (and the nuclear one) was brought about in a nation that we think of as being methodical and orderly. Let’s hope it works, but if it does not it will be disastrous.

Martin Gordon
Flynn, ACT

Sir: Your “Reflections on the Civil War in France” (December 2015) set me wondering about how we might combat these threats to our way of life.

Australians live in one of the freest and most prosperous societies in the history of mankind. This has not happened by chance. It is due to the institutions we inherited from Britain: the rule of law; the principle of private property; a free enterprise economy; a culture that accepts a wide range of human rights—to free speech, to political and religious beliefs, to choose whom we may marry, and so on. Our freedoms and prosperity are also enhanced by living in a democratic society where all men and women are equal before the law and have an equal opportunity to contribute.

These are what distinguish us from the totalitarian regimes which deliver poverty, destroy trust among their citizens, and terrorise, censor and imprison or kill those who disagree with the party line. If we wish to convince others that our ideology is superior, then first, we must understand its concepts and its roots, and second, we must live its truth.

Today, jihadist Islamism presents us with a clash of ideologies. Whilst we may attempt to combat this militarily and politically, the real battle will be in the realm of ideas.

Tomorrow on your train to work there may be a stranger wearing a suicide vest. Or when you meet a friend for coffee, a stranger may enter the café with an AK47 and shoot you and your friend and all the other pagans.

Your government promises to protect you. They bomb Raqqa. They close the borders to refugees. They equip police to intercept everyone’s phone calls and search their homes without a warrant. Security checks at airports become more thorough and take twice as long.

But the stranger does not come from Raqqa. He is not a refugee. He is unknown to police. He is just a guy who believes passionately in jihadist Islamism. He yearns for a theocratic caliphate. He believes that all states should conform to sharia law and that all people should convert to his version of Islam. He believes in the use of force to spread his views. Whilst the stranger is Muslim, that alone does not define him. Most Muslims are peaceful citizens who can and do participate productively and peacefully in society. The stranger is hard to identify; his distinguishing features are inside his head.

Our wonderful, free and prosperous society is being threatened by ideologies, from within and without, that compromise the reasons for its success. If we are to succeed in our battle with competing ideologies, then we need to acquire an appreciation of the legacy of our Western civilisation and be determined to live up to its ideals.

Peter Fenwick
East Melbourne, Vic

The Ngarangani

Sir: Patrick McCauley’s assessment (December 2015) of my mother, Elizabeth Durack, and her last creative phase, expressed through The Art of Eddie Burrup, is thoughtful and refreshing.

McCauley brings some original insights to the all-pervasive presence of landscape across literary and visual disciplines. Within this timeless genre he firmly and accurately positions the Eddie Burrup paintings. He says the Burrup landscapes were painted “at the confluence of where Aboriginal spirituality—the Dreaming—met Western lore, Western law and the Western environmental enlightenment”. This is true. Moreover, he says, “Durack’s first-hand knowledge of both Western and Aboriginal cultures [rests upon] an archipelago of human thought and art which is profound and worthy of serious consideration.” His observation that the Burrup paintings can be seen as “a cross-cultural spiritual narrative with the stated intent of achieving reconciliation”, likewise, is spot on.

However, when he claims the images of the Ngarangani (the Dreaming) “describe the Aboriginal spiritual afterlife” and that they “are landscapes of the afterlife”, I would suggest Elizabeth/Eddie—and above all, the Ngarangani itself—are not concerned with an afterlife, for within the Ngarangani there is no future, no afterlife. Rather, the Ngarangani is all about The Beginning … and The Present. It is this that Elizabeth/Eddie were painting and writing about.

Evidence of the artist’s primary concerns can be found at elizabethdurack.com and also in catalogue notes from the first solo exhibition in 1997 of The Art of Eddie Burrup:

In a Dream world—the twilit world of the Ngarangani—totemic creatures from an archaic hierology are in turmoil. Embattled, neglected, marooned—they inhabit The Art of Eddie Burrup.

The aridified petroglyphs of the Pilbara, the fading Wandjina of the Kimberley, remnants of old ceremonies and half-remembered legends … A macrocosm once so undisturbed is plunged into an ever-accelerating state of change and beset with vexed emotions: regret and hope, nostalgia and cupidity. The Art of Eddie Burrup incorporates all these diverse elements.

In the ever-fluid, subjective realm of present-day art commentary—and in an otherwise welcome reassessment of Durack/Burrup—the point about the afterlife is, perhaps, a minor quibble; yet one important enough to clarify.

Perpetua Durack Clancy
Djumpakine, WA

What is Art?

Sir: In “The Life of an Artist” (November 2015) Robin Norling raises an interesting question, “What is art?”—interesting not least because “art” remains a popular public pastime, judging by feet through the gallery turnstiles across the world, or the ever-climbing stratospheric prices paid for a square metre or two of decorated canvas (and some sculpture, especially Giacometti), a recent highlight being a record US$170 million paid for a sensuous Modigliani “Playboy” nude from 1917-18. No hint of the war in this image!

Mr Norling’s answer focuses on aestheticism, thus art should provoke a constructive aesthetic response, but then begging the question of the nature of this aesthetic response, but presumably entailing some concept of beauty. Another interesting definition comes from Arthur C. Danto’s famous 1964 essay where he suggested that art is whatever “the artworld” (that is, the collective art “industry”) decides.

But both definitions seem too narrow. Stepping back, art is whatever visually perceived arrangement (such as painting, sculpture, installation, video) provokes a conscious response from an engaged viewer calling on one or more facets from a spectrum of categories including, say: pleasure-seeking sensual indulgence; conveying knowledge; deliberate comment for any of a wide range of reasons (religious/spiritual, political, economic, social, psychological, thus including moral or allegorical instruction); and in-your-face polemical flame-throwing, including propaganda by states.

We could even differentiate between human art, caused by human intervention, and natural “art” where viewers respond to a sunset or a flower.

And what is “good” art? This obviously depends on your criteria, but, among other things, it is a question that should pay revisiting.

William Etheridge
Tamarama, NSW