The critics' critic

January 20, 2005
Leo Schofield is leaving Bronte House and auctioning items from the home.

Photo: Robert Pearce

Leo Schofield's geniality coincides with a certain literary pugnacity, writes Paul Kalina.

Leo Schofield's good graces are in inverse proportion to his ability to cause a ruckus.

With his polite manners, highbrow tastes and cultivated diction, he's the quintessential educated, urban dandy, albeit one whose fearless views on culture and the arts can instigate the chattering class equivalent of a pub brawl.

Here's a sample of what he had to say in his column in a recently published piece about Canberra's troubled National Museum: "It was and remains an unmitigated disaster, an obscenely extravagant monument to architectural ego, faddishness, misguided political correctness, parochial vanities, compromise and technomania. Visiting is a dispiriting business. Finding anything to like about it is almost impossible."

That attracted a sack full of hate mail, considerably more than the usual serve, he admits. But the role of stirring the public consciousness is one that Schofield is content to play.

These days, debates about the arts, he complains, are notable for their absence. Where are the arts rallies that marked the Whitlam and Keating eras? Where was the discussion over arts policies during the last election?

Yet Schofield readily admits that his latest pay TV venture, the interview series Leo Schofield in Conversation on Ovation, is not meant to be a critical discussion, or confrontational.

"The series is titled 'a conversation' and I keep them very relaxed so that the other person can speak. One of the most galling things about interviews is when you never get a word in edgeways because the interviewer is so busy talking. The audience wants to hear what the other person says."

Schofield doesn't use notes, and if the conversations often have the relaxed tenor of old friends talking shop over dinner, it's a legacy of the decade-long associations the former Melbourne International Festival of the Arts director enjoys with his subjects.

As far as influences are concerned, he says he is "sufficiently old-fashioned" to have liked John Freeman in Face To Face (a legendary interview series made between 1959 and 1962 in which Freeman did not appear on camera and only his questions were heard), Huw Weldon (a former managing director of the BBC) and "to a certain extent Melvyn Bragg".

Schofield confesses to being something of a traditionalist in his cultural leanings and preferences. "If it was a program called Cutting Edge I'd be chasing other things, but then I probably wouldn't host it anyway, someone else would. This is tailored to the ABC Classic FM audience," he says.

"I'd rather that my daughter (Nell Schofield, an actor, columnist and occasional television presenter) did that, she's more tuned to what's hip and current. Sometimes I don't feel sufficient passion or interest, or that I'm not the right person."

A topic that does elicit Schofield's passion is what he sees as a dearth of arts coverage on television.

"It's tragic, particularly on the ABC, which has abdicated all responsibility for promoting the arts. If we got as much time as rural matters, sport or even politics, perish the thought, we might be somewhere, but we've been hard done by in recent years."

The ABC will launch a new prime-time arts show this year to replace the underperforming Critical Mass. Why is it so hard to get it right, I ask? "Because they're in pursuit of ratings and the arts is never going to give them ratings," he replies.

"I think it's a disgrace that the Adelaide Ring performance wasn't filmed and broadcast and treated as a commercial opportunity for a DVD and an opportunity to get publicity for Australia."

The arts community itself also shoulders some responsibility, according to Schofield, as do some of the journalists covering those beats. "I blame arts practitioners for not getting together and forming the proper lobby groups like those that exist for sport and other business and cultural enterprises. Politicians perceive the arts industry as a rabble, as totally disorganised and it doesn't carry political clout.

Journalists are often seduced into wanting to be part of the establishment. They're there to criticise and report, but they have to report fairly and bravely."

Schofield has first-hand knowledge of the perils of critical journalism, having been at the centre of a famous defamation case following a tough restaurant review in The Sydney Morning Herald.

In 1984, he was sued by a Sydney restaurant after he was served up a lobster he said resembled "albino walrus". Publisher John Fairfax paid out $100,000.

Schofield says it's harder to find good art, good performance and good food now than in the past. He himself, he adds, has become impervious to criticism.

Today's biggest challenge is to raise funds in a climate where the arts and dollars have become inextricably linked, he says. "In America at one time, the way you were assured of a place for yourself and your heirs in what counted for society was to give lavish amounts of money to cultural institutions, and that still prevails.

There are vast millions given in America to cultural pursuits because there is a general regard for that as an expression of good citizenship. I think we're a selfish nation, I think that many people, having achieved great riches, don't feel the need to put it back into the community, they'd rather spend it flying a plane.

"There has to be some tactic whereby people who give money are not just thanked in program notes. I hate to say it, but in the old days you gave someone a knighthood. If we had peerages to dole out, indulgences to sell . . . "

Leo Schofield in Conversation screens on Ovation on Sundays at noon and on Tuesdays at 10pm.