My review of the Bermuda National gallery's Biennial has stirred up far more controversy than I could have imagined possible. This is, in part, because the management of the Gallery has deliberately set out to make it so.

The Gallery first circulated in its members' e-mail letter an offensive personal attack on me in the form of a letter to the Editor of this paper. It was written by the husband of one of the artists in the show generally regarded as a lapse of good taste.

Then the Gallery paraded as one of its lecturers a New York writer about the art scene brought down at no inconsiderable expense on the Gallery's part both to attack local artists in general and, on the side, myself, with passing swipes at our Government and local residents in general.

Since then there have been a slew of letter to the editors of all three newspapers culminating in an opinion' column in this paper by Gavin Shorto. Some of the correspondents and Mr. Shorto mistook the nature and intent of my review.

I base this article on the report of the lecture in the Bermuda Sun, itself written by one of the artists in the Biennial, thus somewhat vitiating it as a balanced or fair report.

The Gallery has set itself a mission that is, in my opinion, at variance with the purposes for which the late Hereward Watlington bequeathed his collection and for which the trustees of the Gallery raised the money to finance it.

The Gallery has clearly launched a crusade to try to influence local artists to pursue a style or styles of painting that the Gallery, from what authority, knowledge or experience isn't clear, wishes to impose on Bermuda's artist community.

To this end the Gallery brings in its chosen jurors to distort rather than to reflect the best work and best artists Bermuda has to offer. Then, after taking offence at my review, which actually encouraged attendance at the Biennial, but did lament the lack of technical facility in some of the art displayed, the Gallery brought in yet another outsider to defend its rather disturbing policy.

The headline of the article in the Bermuda Sun giving prominence to their paid, imported supporter was "Don't bore me. Pandering to tourists has rendered the local art scene stale, obsolete and unchallenging."

Leaving aside his crude accusation of pandering for the moment, boredom is, of course, the inherent Achilles' heel of the whole tribe of critics. They have nothing to say if there is nothing new for them to write about. Their bread and butter is change, not quality.

I was interested to note, as Mr. Shorto did not, that Gregory Volk, the Gallery's hired gun, is not a trained art historian, but merely trained in English, a training that, sadly, was far from evident.

He has, he admits, picked up his ideas by talking to artists, but what artists he doesn't say.

I am suspicious of artists who have to back up their work with words. If the work cannot speak for itself it has failed and words won't help. I am even more suspicious of critics whose only qualification seems to consist of conversations with selected artists.

I am not a trained art historian either, but I have spent more than half a century assiduously visiting most of the western world's great art galleries and many lesser ones. Unlike Volk, however, I don't depend on something new in order to be able to write about what I see.

When I started my rather mild career as a reviewer my stated purpose was, as far as possible, to be supportive of the local art scene and to remain silent when I couldn't be either supportive or constructive.

I think, with very minor exceptions, I have remained true to my intent. I have read my critique of the National Gallery's Biennial again and I believe that I remained true to it.

What I was fairly outspoken about was the obvious manipulative intent on the part of the Gallery itself. I think the quality, not the content of the show somewhat diminished the Gallery's reputation.

I think the manipulative intent of the Gallery, however, was so obvious that it should have raised immediate objections on the part of the gallery's trustees. This kind of divisive assault on Bermuda?s artists on the part of our National Gallery can only be deplored. And, believe me, it has indeed been divisive, as any reader of the press can see.

With neither the time nor the opportunity to see any Bermuda art outside what is presented in the Bermuda National Gallery's Biennial itself, Gregory Volk nevertheless thought himself qualified to deplore a local art scene he described as "addled by money".

Since he has seen almost none of it he could only be speaking from the most profound ignorance, merely using bias fed to him by the National Gallery's management. This sweeping statement he rather dismissively ascribed to our tourist economy.

As far as I am aware the only artists working in Bermuda who set out to cater to the tourist market are the matted print brigade and they do it with considerably more quality than do most tourist resorts. Any other art is too expensive by far to appeal to that market.

Anyone who has the slightest interest in this little tempest in a teapot may by now have read my reviews of two shows that opened at the Windjammer and Heritage Galleries on the 13th and 14th of May. Both were submitted days before I was made aware of Volk's unseemly diatribe. They conclusively give the lie to his arbitrary, ill-informed opinions.

Volk went on to suggest that any artist worth his or her salt should starve in a garret in order to paint politically challenging works. He obviously hasn't priced Bermuda's garrets let alone our food; starvation would supervene before a single work could be produced.

The trouble with politically challenging works is that in a few years no one remembers what the challenge was and could probably care even less. Any painting the starving rebel might produce is soon forgotten.

Among the historically great masters the only politically motivated artist who readily springs to mind is Goya. Few now know what his political motivations were. It is his art, not his political relevance that survives.

Until our local artists start "getting up to speed in the international language of art and knowing what is happening they are in big trouble," insisted Volk, an adept at the trite clich?.

I am all for our young artists going away and learning the techniques that are essential to their art ? if they can find a school that still teaches them. The Ringling School in Sarasota is one of the few.

To follow the herd in order to feed the likes of Gregory Volk the constant flow of up-to-the-minute faddish change upon which his career as a hack writer depends would be foolhardy indeed.

Art isn't about the latest fad. If, as has been largely the case over almost the last century, the grip of the critics becomes too iron fisted, what passes for art becomes as ephemeral as any other fashion. What has genuine artistic and creative quality gets lost in the critics' ballyhoo.

Bermuda, said Volk, must bring in trailblazing artists from elsewhere simply to "open things up". The trouble with this hackneyed phrase are many. Who is to be the judge of what is trailblazing? Gregory Volk? The National Gallery? Masterworks? Andrew Trimingham? Gavin Shorto? What if the trail being blazed turns out to be a mere cul-de-sac?

If an artist really were blazing a trail, as did the early impressionists, why on earth would he take time out from his moment in the sun in one of the great artistic capitals of the world to come to a small town of 60,000 people far away in the ocean?

Why should the government stick its neck out to pay for such a risky undertaking? Volk's own government gives precious little to the arts and almost none at all to the Volk designated trailblazers. Why does he demand that ours should? Volk attacks everything Bermudian, even our framers.

As it happens I have used both Bermuda framers and the principal framer for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are all expensive. What the artist can afford dictates the quality of the framing. Maybe Volk is looking for something "trailblazing" and different. In a year or two even the frame will merely look weird.

In a moment of unusual generosity towards us, Volk had a few kind words to say about a very few of the Biennial artists, far fewer kind words about far fewer of the artists than I had.

He then said I had attempted to "invalidate the younger, less established artists." He has a higher opinion of critics than do I. I couldn't "invalidate" an artist if I tried. I didn't and I don't try. The worst I do is ignore in the hope of improvement. However, I devoutly hope some of the artists in the Biennial will brush up their techniques so that they can better convey what they are attempting to express.

He dismissed "Andrew Trimingham and his crowd of people" as "irrelevant and some kind of cloudy nonsense". He then went on to spout a long list of what he thinks is important in which the word 'specific' was repeated ad nauseam as opposed to "these woozy, hazy notions of a lovely Bermuda floating on the ocean".

Obviously he hadn't even taken the trouble to cross the street to the Heritage Gallery, let alone to look at the Masterworks collection of foreign artists of undoubted fame whose paintings of this Island directly contradict his arbitrary views.

He then harped back to his mindlessly repeated 'specificity' of which term he offered no clear artistic interpretation.

It seems to me that Volk falls short as a critic on two levels. He thinks that art can only exist for some sort of political purpose (presumably with which he agrees). He has little or no idea of what technique is about and none at all that it is vitally important to the successful expression of the artist's intent, whether in his politically charged style or in any other. He would sooner listen to the talk than assess the artistic quality of the work.

Where I can agree with Volk is in supporting his idea that our young artists should pursue and broaden their artistic vision. Then, however, he said that it "is important that artists be contemporary in their work, otherwise they are just not part of their time and if they are not part of their time they will not make it." He thus dismisses the Wyeths, for example, as irrelevant.

I am unaware of any time machine that can dissociate an artist or anyone else from his time.

He has a very specific ? and wrong ? notion of what the word 'contemporary' means. To him it means what the current artists are painting who happen to please the critics with whom he finds himself in agreement. This is a limiting, egotistical, dismissive and dangerous attitude.

If it had the slightest validity we would never have heard of Van Gogh, Turner, or El Greco.

For a man who has studied English his terminology is about as clear as his "some kind of cloudy nonsense". It is, in fact, to quote Volk yet again, "a woozy, hazy notion".

What I think he means is that Bermuda artists should join the herd of desperate would-be artists working in whatever the current cookie-cutter fad he and enough of his fellow critics can agree to support in the art world at any given moment. I would urge them to do anything but.

They will drown amongst the misguided crowd of pandering painters forever doomed to fail to satisfy the voracious appetite of professional critics for something novel to write about. The best critic is the one who buys the artist's work.

He thinks it good enough to live with, or at least to enhance his work place.

In the meantime, I think it would not be remiss for the trustees of our National Gallery to review the policies of their management team even to check again their credentials for their positions.

Alternatively they might change the name from the Bermuda National Gallery of Art, which it no longer can claim to be, to something much less broadly inclusive, but more suited to its present partisan, divisive policies.

'The Bermuda Gallery of Contemporary Political Art' comes to mind.