The Triumph of Art, Celebrating 200 years of the National Gallery

Photo by Grace Mahoney

In Trafalgar Square on the 26th of July, an enormous cohort of artists, musicians and dancers came together to bring the National Gallery’s 200th birthday celebrations to a close. Featuring works from across the UK, commissioned by artist Jeremy Deller, the festivities ranged from wicker head pieces and hand crafted souvenirs to a tent dedicated to the claim that  ‘William Morris was Right’. Combining traditional art, in the form of a still life of Adam and Eve with modern dance and music, most notably the dancing animatronic DJ booth, the celebration promised to have something for everybody. 

Described as a ‘giant party’, The Triumph of Art encouraged expression, involvement and general joy to its visitors. With interactive art across the square, the event worked to be all inclusive and inviting. Nelson's column identified this intention of artistic unity, as each face on the column held a different message; ‘They want to fight, We Wanna Dance’, ‘A Future without Fear’, ‘Strong People’ and ‘Freedom to Party’. Being seen from any space in the event, the choice to place these words on Nelson’s column ensures these statements are present across the events but identifies the square away from its naval history, to encompass contemporary politics in an artistic space. The festival therefore allowed Trafalgar Square to become a space centred around community rather than imperial identity. 

Photo by Grace Mahoney

Each piece across the square created a space dedicated to a variety of artistic expression. Jeremy Deller, who commissioned these pieces, collaborated with choreographer Grace Nicol to create a performative space centering the festival. The students of The London Contemporary School of Dance began the performative pieces at the bottom of the National Gallery’s steps, with their piece entitled ‘A Hogarthian Rave’. Inspired by William Hogarth, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of English art and whose work features in the National Gallery, his focus on the ‘modern moral subject’ came into play in the ideas of contemporary art and expression that ‘A Hogarthian Rave’ embodied. In his 1753 book 'The Analysis of Beauty', Hogarth leaned into the beauty behind the unconventional… that a curved line is perhaps more interesting than a straight one. We saw this kind of unconventional influence in the performance itself, with how each costume uniquely displayed newspaper headlines detailing the phrase ‘Get Out of My Pub’, the piece brings Hogarth’s eighteenth century contemporary style into the twenty first century artistic space. 

What began as a low tempo, slow-motion race towards the square, where the students were situated across the breadth of the stairs, was abruptly swarmed over by a fast descent to the dancefloor space, accompanied by the song ‘Incredible’ by M-Beat and General Levy. The dancers drew together on the floor to forge together in a style between street dance and animatronic movement, where each dancer interlocked to create a single performative entity. 

Moving between high energy, and impassioned movements to flitting back to the novelty of victory, the dance became entirely allergic to stagnation. With each dancer choreographed to face every surrounding member of the audience, the four intangible walls imposed by the dance floor dissolved. With the fluidity of performance and movement, the dance seamlessly glided from the hunger of victory marked by the lyrics ‘you’re losing your mind’, to visualisations of cannibalism, where the dancers twisted and contorted to imitate the act of consuming one another. What we see at play in this performance is a transcendence across genres of both music and dance – embracing the multitude of artistic outlets expressed across ‘The Triumph of Art’. 

Photo by Grace Mahoney

The performance began to uncover a theme across the event; the victory of the individual, through whichever artistic outlet most resonated. If art can contribute to our own victories, then whichever outlet or expressive form it takes, should be encouraged, materialised and externalised. Regardless of its place in the ‘ordinary’, self expression across the event idolised through the message, ‘Do Your Own Thing,’ was interposed on t-shirts, signs and banners, ensuring that each corner of the event represented the importance of art and the self. 

Deller described the Hogarthian Rave and the festivities in Trafalgar Square as ‘Bruegel meets the Simpsons (if we’re lucky)’. In Deller’s belief we see the event as an element of the National Gallery that we don’t see within its four walls; an appreciation for the contemporary. With its history of traditional art, from the renaissance to revolution, the gallery leaned towards ‘higher’ forms of art in its dedication to royal portraiture and depictions. The 200 year celebration has enabled the gallery to extend itself beyond traditionalism to encompass not only contemporary art but contemporary politics concerning the freedom and expression of the individual. This, however, was all enabled by The London School of Contemporary who used dance as an expressive outlet. ‘A Hogarthian Rave’ showed that everyone is in the same race in the beginning, but eventually come together in a united space, as the dancers encouraged audience members to come onto the dance floor and invoke what Nelson’s column reads as the ‘Freedom to Party’. 

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Edited by Daria Slikker, London Editor