British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (right) offers sausage rolls while Prime Minister Chris Hipkins provides the tomato sauce at 10 Downing Street in London. Photo / Jenni Mortimer
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (right) offers sausage rolls while Prime Minister Chris Hipkins provides the tomato sauce at 10 Downing Street in London. Photo / Jenni Mortimer
Opinion
“Pretentious? Moi?”
I’m sure most Kiwis enjoy what I shall call, for want of a better term, a coming down to Earth. What I mean is probably best explained by a recent example.
When Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and his UK counterpart Rishi Sunak met at 10 Downing Streetlast week, the banquet table, the starched napkins and sparkling silver cutlery gave way (at least for a little while) to... a platter of sausage rolls. Sunak provided the sausage rolls and Hipkins provided a bottle of tomato sauce that he took with him from New Zealand.
I can’t help wondering whether he took it in his hand luggage and, if so, wouldn’t it be considered a liquid? Mmmm.
If Sunak comes to our shores, perhaps Hipkins could offer a chip butty to make the visitor feel at home. On the other hand, perhaps he could welcome him to our way of life by taking him down to the dairy for a hokey pokey icecream.
Another good example I remember fondly also involves 10 Downing Street. My late aunt visited London during the time of Margaret Thatcher and, as part of her tourist tiki tour, went and stood outside the prime ministerial residence. I’m sure she also took a snap of it.
But she said her biggest hope was that, while she was there, the door would open and Thatcher would come out to shake the mats. That didn’t happen, of course. She had her own mat-shaking people.
Wyn Drabble offers his thoughts on the topic of pretension.
Were she alive today, my aunt might have attended the coronation. Her biggest wish, however, would have been to go to the beach after all the pomp and ceremony was over and catch a glimpse of King Charles III in his togs and jandals.
Most of us already know that an art gallery is a good place for utterings of artifice and pretension. Don’t believe me? Just listen in to the following comments, some of which are real and some of which have been generated by an Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator (or me):
“That work is so pretentious it almost made me choke on my honey-cinnamon latte.”
“I agree/disagree with some of the things that have just been said, but the subaqueous qualities of the biomorphic forms spatially undermine the larger carcass.”
“That painting’s a real cracker. The colours are fab.”
“Eeerrgghh!”
“Any five-year-old could paint that!”
“Baffling, exhausting and irritating, but somehow pleasing as well.”
“When art critics get together, they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”
That last one was actually from Pablo Picasso.
Online, can will find some helpful sites which suggest words and phrases that might assist you at an art exhibition. Armed with pieces of vocabulary like ‘organic’, ‘dynamic’, ‘earthy’, ‘sanguine’, ‘curvaceous’, ‘asymmetrical’ and ‘negative space’, you should be able to sound authoritative, or at least bluff your way through the event. Or sound really silly.
Closer to home, I once went to a local event at which a significant painting was to be unveiled. I heard no pretentious utterances when the work was revealed, but I did hear one real killer of a comment.
It was delivered, I feel, not as a considered criticism but simply as a genuine gut reaction and, as such, it was a humorously refreshing voice of reality.
As the painting was unveiled, the voice said, “Too big!”
The food on offer at this unveiling was quite sophisticated. That last comment suggests to me that sausage rolls and tomato sauce may have been delightfully appropriate.
