One of the more endearing features of life in Melbourne is the coverage given in the Age to the arts and culture and in particular the vigorous and critical debate in which that organ regularly engages on those subjects, uncompromised by any commercial or other vulgar considerations. Thus, the cultural uplift that we derive from the Age is uncontaminated by the more coarse and basic instincts of mankind, like greed and the lust for money.

This was illustrated last week, when my attention was galvanised by the news that there was shortly to be opened at our National Gallery of Victoria or, as we lovingly call it, the NGV, a travelling exhibition of jewellery and other objets d’art brought to Australia by the famous house of Cartier under the auspices of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I was thrilled to read this news and naturally rushed to open the Age to see what it had to say about this promising cultural feast and to obtain some guidance on how I should approach it. And, indeed, I found that it had quite a lot to say.

The paper, or as it describes itself in its noble and lofty manner, ‘this masthead’, carried two reviews of the exhibition which, taken together, had the tone of an editorial which left no doubt as to the considered opinion of the Age on the event we were about to experience. The first of these contributions expressed disappointment at what it called the ‘pimping’ out of the NGV, which, given the popular meaning of that unsavoury word, could only mean that the NGV had been tizzed and tarted up, and that it was in danger of selling out to moneyed interests by allowing the house of Cartier to get a foothold in our renowned and beloved cultural institution. ‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘this is a good start, because it shows that the Age has kept to its traditional path of renouncing filthy lucre and that it has struck a blow for ars gratia artis’. The second and more recent review, written with the exhibition now up and running, was no less robust and forthright, and adopted the same uplifting tone. Its opening proposition was that the exhibition was a ‘blockbuster’ but ‘light on insight’. It went on to say that the exhibition was, sadly, promoting a ‘brand’, obviously the Cartier brand, that it was ‘garish’ and that the real trouble with the items on show was that they were ‘rarely tasked with standing on their own merits- there is always a name attached’. This theme was developed to its denouement that the jewels and other accoutrements in the exhibition were ‘designed to showcase the wealth of the wearer, and a jewel is nothing if not draped across a powerful figure’, like the Duchess of Windsor, the Aga Khan and the other glitterati linked to Cartier’s treasures simply because they had owned and wore them. Moreover, we were told, the story revealed by the exhibition was one of ‘shifting wealth, influence and power across the century’, and that ‘the spectre of commerce hangs over it all’. The punchline of the argument, and you could see it coming, was that Cartier had obtained ‘the fawning approval of a respected public institution (that) offers legitimisation and status which, one might argue, is what the brand is all about’. In other words, the NGV had sold out to mammon so that the rich and famous could promote their favourite brand.

Putting both reviews together, I was thrilled to conclude that the Age was espousing its traditional and uplifting line that the sacred NGV had wrongly allowed itself to be compromised by hosting the Cartier spectacular and that the purity of arts and culture had been sacrificed to the commercial interests of promoting a brand, and all for the glory of wealth and power. And how fortunate we are, I reflected, to have a newspaper that is so courageous that it is prepared to expose in such a vigorous way the pernicious dangers of allowing the twin evils of money and brand to sully the purity of art, especially when that sin is being committed in a public institution.

Thus, satisfied that Cartier had been firmly put back in its jewel box, I moved on to read what was happening to those other delights of living in Marvellous Melbourne: fire bombings, home invasions, car jackings, gang warfare, rapes, drug deals, injecting rooms, machete knifings, corruption in the building industry, the vibrant trade in illegal cigarettes, and similar diversions. However, I noticed that my Age was unduly heavy this day, being encased in stiff covers and bulging with a substantial supplement promoting the Cartier exhibition. Surely the Age was not supporting the same brand-driven and celebrity-tainted spectacle it had so roundly condemned for lack of artistic purity. Yet, sad as it is to report, here was the Age in the embrace of its motto ‘Independent Always’, branded with the label of the pimped-out NGV, heralding and promoting the same exhibition and its garish works so demeaned in its own reviews. Here in glorious technicolour were the Cartier diamond brooches, necklaces, pendants, bracelets, tiaras and other wonders, all breathlessly exalted as having been draped over a galaxy of dowager duchesses, queens, counts, actresses and celebrities, a panoply of ‘shifting wealth, influence and power across the century’, while ‘the spectre of commerce hangs over it all’.

It was therefore with a tinge of sorrow that I worked my way through this supplement that was so spectacular a departure from the nobility we have come to expect from the Age. But fortunately, my despair was tempered by one final reflection. It could not possibly be that the Age itself had made money, and presumably a lot of it, from publishing this glossy insert, for if that had occurred nothing would be sacred. It must surely have prepared and published as an act of charity and a contribution to the purity of art and culture, as I am sure it was.