A Portrait in Pointillism

  Really we all know the problem with pointillism. It is such a great idea. Let us not paint either form or colour, the excited artist cries, let us paint the atoms of colours themselves, and then watch how those atoms become a picture. All the richness of purples or indigos becomes then a sequence of points in a painting. The result? - is in sense interesting. These paintings look to be at least, as if they trap qualities of light - the yellow of sunlight or the shadow of cloud or trees. And yet there is always something missing – movement, form, dynamism. The very rigour of trapping the atoms of colour makes the composition synthetic and somewhat staid. One then traps the atoms of light, captures one or two qualities of luminescence, and yet all else is lost to the image. The result is a painting which in terms of style and composition looks rather amateur, for all the genius of the method and the laborious process.

  But as always, of course, good concepts do not die, they merely find new places to manifest: And in the end politics (always open to any craze) finds them and uses them. Indeed politics is perhaps peculiarly prone to the essentialism that lies at the heart of pointillism. Perhaps, the logic runs, all of the country’s problems or at least all of a government’s policies might be resolved into a very basic set of atoms of policy. These atoms would then need to be day to day affairs, such as ‘shorter waiting lists in hospitals’ or ‘smaller class sizes’. The kind of things that might make differences to people’s lives (or at least things they often say would), and might be achievable. The result, the claim went fifteen years ago or so, ought to be a government that was being seen to do people good, or at least acting upon its policies and their dreams.

  The great joy of this for political parties, was that it freed them from difficult ideology. In a sense ideology is always about mixing the ingredients of life to form a complex series of shadings and nuances. Policy always used to be about that. That is, about the balancing of difficult choices and the facing down or up to hard realities. And yet with pointillism, all this shading and complexity can be brushed aside in a ‘humph’ of impatience. Who cares for those big ideas about composition, when one has a pointillist future? More than that, there is a faith that the big picture will emerge from the overall perspective. That is that the atoms of policy, the little acts, will gradually resolve themselves, and with other little goodnesses both of government policy, but also of the wider system, to create some overall joined up form.  In addition, the politicians hope that there might be the added bonus that incorrect policies or else points that were not achieved, might be ignored within this overall self-coordinating system of primary colours. Some policies might not be achieved as some colour might be muffed, and yet the overall design should remain intact. Or the cynic might say – the joy of the system lay in part in the fact that although it appeared to make the government accountable, by atomising that account, one rendered each point in effect meaningless. Governments would not then be hung for their failures, even as they claimed they would take responsibility for them. That was the faith at least. And yet it can hardly come as a shock that it never worked like that.

The trouble of course in a sense, was with the very atoms themselves, the points of policy or light. To paint a primary colour or a micro-policy is to warp the system - the colour/policy block has too much power to docilely become a part of something else. On the contrary it wants to punch its weight as the thing painted – the thing that matters, the thing that will eventually (or not) do the work of the composing. All governing beyond these points are lost, and one is left with what exactly? Only those shades of colour or prejudice that the points capture one in another - and shadows of dark and light appear to haunt this perspective.

  Pointillism then sacrifices for art, dynamism and clear fluid form - and for policies, the same is surely true. A pointillist government tends to not be wonderful at adapting policies to suit circumstances. The world changes and yet the policies carry on regardless. More than that, it might be the case that one particular policy is busy warping or transmuting the system, and yet it will be impossible to end or stop that policy. For example – it has been fairly clear for a long time that an education system which has as its target, maximising the grades of the students within it, is highly problematic. There might very well be more A grades awarded at ‘A’ level than ever before, and yet what that means is not at all clear. Are teaching methods improving? Exams becoming easier? Students more clever? Or is the entire system merely designed to allow individuals to do well, where before the system centred on creating spreads of differentiated marks? In addition the very act of ceasing to create that spread, creates endless tensions elsewhere in the system. Universities tended to feed off the fact that there was a spread in the system. - It was after all, what allowed them to select at all. If that spread is then obscured, what universities select becomes difficult, and how they respond to the pupils and those pupil’s range of ability, becomes tricky. They are simply not geared up for mixed ability classes. The result is then, that the policy changed the entire system. What is more it is doing so before our eyes and yet nothing can be done. The primal policy of better educated (or at least qualified) students is paramount. Everything else goes by the wayside. There is then an irony here. Pointillism is not dynamic in itself. That is, the policy is static, and yet it creates a new dynamism around it. It warps the world into its image, an image that is far from straightforward or simple. Pointillism then does present us with dynamisms, it cannot paint it, but that does not stop it having a strange dynamism of its own.

  This last point is all the more significant because of course a culture of micro-policy and targets creates another class - a profession of managers who understand these targets and who are charged with bringing them into effect. It is then in a sense very natural that such managers are blind to everything other than the targets. Achieving these is their goal. For they are not paid to have opinions or viewpoints of their own. They are paid to manage and are rewarded or not for that management. The result is then, that not only does the art and science of management become something in itself, but an occult knowledge known only to those select CEO’s who understand it develops; a language or discipline where people or actual day to day affairs slip below the horizon of targets and statistics. But also and far more importantly, the entire system ends up revolving around the atoms of targets. It forgets then patients or pupils or users; it forgets the means, it works only on the government-given ends. No matter how then unemployment goes down (be it allowing people to starve on the street or go on working tax credits or on disability benefit or merely part-time work). Likewise no matter what cruelties or stupidities are enacted in the name of getting hospital waiting lists down or kids through their exams; all that matters is the target, and it successful enactment by the competent manager: all else can go hang. The result is then the modern system – of pointless targets, and large bonuses for effecting those targets. Targets that must become the obsession or lifeblood of big institutions (as indeed it is as their funding is dependent upon them). - Even more the case, as it looks likely enough that many of these organizations will be hived off after the election to private companies – who will be paid by targets, but will have no real interest in how those targets are effected.

  All this has the effect that any vision for larger government or more coordinated approaches or even just humane ones, is lost. As pointillism as art lost all but the most rigid forms, its current political incarnation loses the rhyme or the reason for the big institutions of government that it would want to control. And yet one must be careful not to vilify politicians and their creature-managers alone. Pointillism is far deeper and more problematic than that. In the run up to the coming election there is a distinct trend for certain parties of the right (following America's lead) to set up a stall of ‘sensible’ policies which we are told that the unheeding or God-fearing i.e. ‘moral-‘) majority would approve of. - Policies such as immediately curbing immigration or limiting tax or quarrelling with our neighbours. These policies are then in a sense a rag bag of emotional pointillism; the kind of stuff one reads on a day to day basis in certain newspapers; and the very meat and drink of the so-called ‘tea party movement’ in America.

  There is a deep problem as of course as grumbles in the pub or club or on the internet, this kind of stuff is okay. In the same way that a simple dot of a prime colour is fine in itself. But that does not mean that one ought to make an entire manifesto or painting from this kind of stuff. If one does of course, beyond these primal policies, a threatening shadow emerges, all spontaneously, the shadow of racisms and (Caucasian) Britain first and foremost (and God rot the rest), a shadow which we were almost free from. The emotional pointillism then that forms so much of our current critique of the world, is creating or would create its own and worrying problems. Or at least it might. One suspects of course that the two or three attempts at this kind of stuff in government (Bush Jr. and the current Israeli Prime Minister) illustrate that in effect in government this kind of stuff is more corrupt and incompetent than it is threatening. The shadow of racisms collapses under the sheer inability to coordinate ‘straightforward’ emotional responses into meaning patterns for government. It is as if emotional pointillism cannot resolve into any effectual form. Or perhaps better it remains what it started as - merely an expression of human desire and personal prejudice and cannot be effectively articulated beyond these points of origin.

  But it is also clear that pointillism has a deep and corrupting effect on politicians and the way that they understand government. On the side of politicians, much of the day to day decision-making becomes about working out whether a target has been effectively enforced or not, and what to do about it if it has not. At which point of course things become rather muddy. It is not necessarily clear if the policy or target itself in any one case has been effective, or if not what one should do about it (as exact colours, even primal ones still have shades). There exists then an endless series of possible actions – points at which one might intervene, or slightly different ways to nuance the enforcement of targets or coordinate how those targets reflect each other. All of the soft territory between targets becomes then the stuff of the political lobby group – i.e. those who have a vested (financial) interest in ensuring a certain set of targets are effected in a certain way, and with a certain timing. The power of such lobbyists is of course increased because often enough the politician cares less about the outcome than they do. All the politician needs is that the target is effective (or that there is a plausible case that it has been) - they do not really care how or when or even what the exact affect of that effect was. The result is then that there is plenty of scope for plausible cases to be made, by any expert (legal or political) who cares to make them. A system that was meant to provide scientific government, which published targets and that effected them, turns into an Eldorado for lawyers and shady politicians, wanting to cash in on their insider knowledge, and pull the system this way or that. Pointillism’s failure then to set form or capture movement becomes another's gain. Equally (and on a slightly different front) Pointillism actually encourages corruption. Other governments or lobby groups know the power of having a friendly M.P. to raise a pointillist point in parliament.  Point that might then affect an entire policy, or nuance it one way or the other. The creation or bribing of ‘friends’, becomes an acceptable policy for such organizations. What is more it is of course very difficult to police such an invidious policy. For friendships are notoriously difficult to police or monitor (one cannot know how hidden lobbying in pubs, clubs, bars and offices is quietly in a series of pointillist points, changing policy). One might of course point out that it was ever thus (Dickens makes this very point in Nicholas Nickleby), and yet in a sense that is no excuse; it merely warns us that any solution is likely to be very difficult and very challenging to the current politician establishment.

  Pointillism was then in the history of art, one of those ideas. The kind of idea that is very good in theory, and that ought to be tried by someone once. Once it is tried then we can all look at it, realize the problem and move on. So the question of course is, is its political equivalent so fair-minded? Can it move on? And if so what will it move on to? A problem that is so easy to state, and yet seems so difficult to solve.