Which is the honest view? I suppose you could do things the American self-help book way: Today I am irritated

Which is the “honest” view? I suppose you could do things the American self-help book way: “Today I am irritated by your weight problem and can only see your selfish side.” But although it’s an absolutely splendid way to talk in theory, I don’t know a single soul who, though they endorse the idea behind it, can bring themselves to speak like that. “You’re fat and selfish” is something you can think on a Wednesday, but on Thursday, after he’s spontaneously visited your old mother in a nursing-home and then taken you out to dinner, you might think: “You’re generous, lovely and cuddly”. Instead of telling me to get lost they have almost invariably said that they appreciated my honesty, and have taken it as a compliment.Anyway, what is honest or not is often a question of mood. I have said the most frightful things to people, but added to a cream sauce as it were. Not very nice if it’s forced, whole, down your throat all at once, but perfectly delicious if added to another dish. Rather than say: “How could you have been so rude to our host?” you could say: “I think you hurt our host quite a lot by what you said, although I’m sure you didn’t mean to It didn’t do you justice.”Honesty is a bit like a lemon. It might be less destructive if they just took it in turns to stab each other with sharp knives.

I know they say that “sticks and stones can break your bones and words don’t bother me”, but the wounds from sticks and stones do heal up eventually, while the things that people say rankle for ever, however hard you try to forget them.And anyway, what does “being honest” mean? Surely it doesn’t mean being hurtful when there’s no need to be? Or does it mean “not being dishonest” – a very different matter? And where do good manners and respect for your partner come in?Is saying: “Well, yes, I suppose you could lose a couple of pounds” any less honest than saying: “You’re fat”? What about: “Yes, you have been putting on weight, but I’ll always love you whatever size you are.” It’s usually possible to be completely honest, but elegant and polite and kind at the same time. Dennis’s girlfriend read a book on relationships, and they had an `honesty’ session. He told of old affairs and said she was overweight; she said she was still a bit in love with her old boyfriend This has driven them apart. How honest should you be in a relationship?

VIRGINIA’S ADVICE
It makes me squirm to think of Dennis and his girlfriend sitting down in all seriousness to be “honest” with each other.

This brings us back to where we began: Burden gives galleries problems because his instinct is that institutions need to be challenged. I think he feels an artist has an obligation to be absolutely an individual, to stay free – and, well, to take flight.`When Robots Rule’ is at the Tate Gallery, London until 13 June, sponsored by American Airlines.Hugh Stoddart was director of the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 1978-81, and is now a screenwriter and art critic. He wants us to get a good feel of these things in our nice white galleries, once in a while.Taking the art outside the museum isn’t necessarily progress: Burden is uneasy about “public art” because he feels often there’s an undeclared agenda – the art is needed to distract from something, or it’s there to decorate. He’s interested in the forces which shape us, in power and money, in the forces we can control if we want to, in the choices we can make. It doesn’t follow, as I’ve been at pains to point out, that Burden is permanently radical, an ageing revolutionary – but it does mean that he’s standing at the gallery window looking out, not standing outside eager to come in He doesn’t make art about art. He’s less happy with that piece, though many people would have fallen eagerly on it to show that yes, Chris is OK, you know – he’s on the right side.Burden is my generation: we “came of age” (as people used to say on reaching 21) around 1968. His tactic is confrontational but it isn’t propagandist: to advocate pacifism he regards as propagandist as well He wants us to make our own decisions.

In contrast, for The Other Vietnam Memorial – made at the time of the Gulf War, and with that in mind – Burden had 12 sheets of copper inscribed with the names of three million Vietnamese people who died in the war there. In fact, he wanted to take something which everyone reads in Newsweek but which remains so abstract, and he wanted to make it real. He titled the piece The Reason for the Neutron Bomb and received a bashing from people convinced he was being gung-ho or crassly male; that he was naively supporting US militarism. We so much want our artists to have opinions, and we want to know their motivations. There are so many taboos (racism, militarism, sexism, right-wingery etc) and we want to be reassured the artist is steering a safe course amongst these dangerous rocks.In 1979 Burden had 50,000 nickels set out across a gallery floor, each with a matchstick placed on it Each nickel represented a Soviet tank. But art is being subsumed by education: the training of artists is increasingly academic, the presentation of art is increasingly dictated by the need to educate the viewer. When Burden famously had someone shoot him through the arm as a performance piece in 1971, it was because that was the only way he could ever truly know what it felt like to be shot.Burden is very committed to not being committed Art is about “unfettered enquiry”.