Interview: Richard Demarco on the Church, the arts, and the Edinburgh Festival

The first time I interviewed Richard Demarco was in the late 1980s; we were walking up Edinburgh’s Royal Mile during the festival. He suddenly dropped to his knees, bowing profusely. An American tourist thought it was a street performance and took photographs. A Japanese tourist thought it was an American and took photographs. In fact, Richard was answering my question why he did not apply for grants from the Scottish Arts Council: “Because this is how they want me to make my application,” he explained.

Today, Demarco, who turned 94 on 9 July, might not be able to drop to his knees as quickly, if at all. When we met at Summerhall, the temporary home of the Demarco European Arts Foundation, he held my hand in friendship as much as for support. As we shuffled along the corridor to his office, which overlooks Edinburgh’s glorious Meadows, we stopped before the numerous paintings, his pin-sharp mind providing a fascinating commentary on each one.

Demarco is widely recognised as one of the most important figures in the Scottish and European arts world over the past seven decades. He is also indisputably and heroically Catholic. He has, perhaps uniquely, attended every Edinburgh Art Festival since it began in 1947 and exhibited every year since 1952. He is a co-founder of Edinburgh’s prestigious Traverse Theatre.

Anyone visiting a Demarco festival over the years may have encountered Sean Connery leading an acting masterclass, or bumped into Joseph Beuys or Paul Neagu holding court with young artists. Was that Billy Connolly tuning his banjo in the garden, Tadeusz Kantor rehearsing a play or Bianca Jagger making tea in the makeshift kitchen? The answer was always yes.

In a recent BBC documentary, Demarco exclaims: “No one else could have done this.” And he is correct. He worked with artists such as Beuys and Marina Abramovic before they were famous; before they went on to exhibit in the Tate in London or New York’s Guggenheim. No one else could have done this, and so much more, always on a shoestring budget, with no paid staff or guaranteed studio space in which to exhibit.

No one else could have done this with their only income a state pension after Demarco was cancelled by the Arts Council. His offence was working with convicted murderer, Jimmy Boyle, and a former Alcatraz death row prisoner. Both men were eventually released, becoming respected artists.

“In 1980, in the middle of the festival, I was summoned to the office of the Scottish Arts Council,” Demarco smiles. “They told me I had brought dishonour on my gallery, on the Edinburgh Festival and on art itself. I would never beg them for money.”

Despite this, the Demarco European Arts Foundation would go on to win major festival awards from arts critics every year. In 1976 Demarco received a gold medal from the Polish government and in 1986 he was made a cavaliere of the Italian Republic. He has won numerous other personal prizes, and was appointed CBE in 2006.

Demarco’s cancellation by the arts bureaucrats, which made headlines around the world, could not extinguish the flame which had been kindled when, as a teenager in 1947, he heard the great German-born conductor Bruno Walter play at the very first Edinburgh International Festival.

Walter, a Jew, fled his homeland; it would be ten years before he was reunited with the Vienna Philharmonic. Demarco, 17, was among the audience which gave Walter a five-minute standing ovation. He knew then he would dedicate his life to the arts.

“You can’t imagine what Edinburgh was like just two years after the war ended,”  he says. “Clothes, food and even electricity were rationed. Edinburgh was a spiritually and culturally dark place. I didn’t live in Edinburgh; it was the desolate city in which  I just existed.

“When the festival began, it was a  blessing which I grabbed hold of. It has dominated my life ever since. For three weeks, Edinburgh is the world capital of culture. But then it ends, and I am like a child when the circus leaves town.

“I race after it, pleading, ‘Don’t leave, I need you, please come back.’ I am left facing winter, gloom and darkness. I am also facing the Scottishness of Scotland. It is the contrast of night and day, hope and despair.”

Post-war Edinburgh was also a city where racism and anti-Catholicism were rife. The centuries-long dominance of Reformation Scotland – the Kirk – affected everyday life.

“From a very early age, I experienced anti-Catholic prejudice,” Demarco says. “When I walked to school with my friends, the Protestant children and their parents threw stones and screamed abuse at us. They loved spitting at the cross on our uniform. We had to have a police escort every day.

“My name on my baptismal certificate is Ricardo Demarco, which was what I was called as a child. However, on the day Mussolini came to power, my father told me I would now be known as Richard, or Rikki. He was concerned my baptismal name was too Catholic, too Italian – making me an easy target for the bigots.

“Even when I entered the Edinburgh College of Art, there were only four Catholics and certainly no Italians.”

It was there he met Sean Connery, who became a lifelong friend and supporter: “I got him started in acting. Sean was an artist model. He didn’t have much money. I’d share my lunch with him. He told me he wanted to be an actor. I knew a director who needed two men over six foot to play soldiers in a play.

“I encouraged Sean to audition. I said he’d earn twice the money a model was paid and he’d be warmer too. He got the role.”

Demarco attends the Traditional Latin Mass, and his festival catalogue always includes Catholicism in some form. “Sadly, the Catholic Church does not have a positive image,” he laments. “It does not attract artists. It does not know art.”

“The Church doesn’t like to spend money on art but at least it should open its doors and halls to events for the festival. Many of our churches contain beautiful Stations of the Cross – let the world view them!

“This year I am featuring a new play on St John Ogilvie, who was canonised in 1976, as well as a Catholic opera on Robert the Bruce performed by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. But you won’t find much, if any, Catholic art available to the millions from around the world who flock to Edinburgh for the festival. Every Catholic parish in the city should hold or host an exhibition.”

Demarco also despairs at the lack of art education in schools: “Most Catholic children in Scotland have no knowledge of Christendom. Most Scots think the Saltire represents a fluffy white cloud against a blue sky. They do not understand it represents a cross, a piece of torture on which St Andrew was martyred – our Catholic roots.

“On Iona, there is a huge cross, which is the first thing you see on arrival. Most people believe it is to do with Columba. It is actually dedicated to St Martin of Tours, the first Roman soldier to convert to Christianity. He links Scotland to Rome, to Christendom. We are moving further and further away from Christendom.” He adds quietly: “I still have not recovered from Brexit.”

Summerhall is crammed with thousands of art works, photographs, statues, sculptures and magazines. Many of the paintings are originals, not bought by him but gifted to Demarco by artists. Endless numbers are stacked against walls or stuffed into boxes. The collection is worth millions. During our meeting, he takes photographs of me, as he does with everyone, from the camera which is forever around his neck.

“I have not spent my life creating an archive,” he says. “This is not an archive, it is an experience of art. People don’t want to visit an archive. They want to see a painting or a sculpture or film or whatever.”

Demarco shows no evidence of slowing down. He works 12 hours a day. “I don’t know what will happen to all of this after I am gone,” he says, waving his arms around his office. “Around 98 per cent of the people I worked with are dead. I miss them. I no longer have a five-year plan. I take one year at a time. Yet, at the same time, I feel I am just at the beginning of my work on this planet.”

I had been booked for an hour-long interview. Three and a half hours later, we were still talking. I ask an easy question – what is art? “Oh, that is easy,” he smiled. “At its highest level such as Shakespeare, Mozart, Dante or Chaucer, art is essentially aspiring to the condition of prayer.” 

Not a bad motto for the past 70 years.

James Hastings is a journalist and author. Photo: Vanessa Hastings