Sir, – I would like to thank Mike Murphy from the bottom of my heart, what’s left of it, (April 25th) for his perfectly reasonable criticism of RTÉ’s programming and coverage of the arts and especially the Visual Arts.
I have been critical of this visual medium lacking empathy for another visual medium in the past.
Mr Murphy quite rightly points out that RTÉ is still in the Dark Ages when it comes to scheduling, but to be marginalised is the lot of living artists.
A notable fact of the “Masterpiece” programme is that except for one of the artists, the rest are all conveniently dead. Living contemporary artists have this nasty habit of opening their mouths and expressing opinions that not everyone will agree with and making art that’s “difficult”, hence RTÉ’s reluctance, I think, to deal with such people who don’t always do or say what is expected.
Unlike in RTÉ, artists do not go around in an hermetic bubble; they disagree and get it wrong all the time, which is obviously not good for television where the visual arts exist within a rose-tinted world of assent.
I do not expect RTÉ to be knocking on my door in the near future for arts programming purposes, I just want it to do the job it is paid to do in as objective a manner as possible and with some respect for the subject matter they are obliged to cover under the remit of public broadcasting. – Yours, etc,