Talking Pictures - a wonderful term a correspondent used in response to comments made in the last entry (Layers). She didn't want to contribute personally but I found what she had to say so personal, moving and instructive that I asked her if I could share it. She wrote:
I thought I'd pass on my reactions to an afternoon at Tate Britain earlier this year.
A whole room was given over to the works of John Craxton - his paintings really grabbed me and I spent a long while looking at them. I then wanted to know more about the artist - perhaps because I'm not an artist myself I don't know so much about the technique and skills involved - I just get a gut feeling when I look at a painting - does it touch something inside me?
Fortunately David Attenbrough was a fan and...
friend of John Craxton and had made a short film about him for "The Culture Show".
This was showing in the gallery and brought the artist and the background to his paintings alive for me. I was enchanted to find a young boy - about 8 or 9 - sat next to me and was as engrossed in the film as a I was. He noticed that one of the paintings in the film was hanging on the wall in front of us and wouldn't leave until his mother let him go and have another look at it. I think it was David Attenbrough's very personal comments on why he loved the painting that made both of us want to look at it again. Is it wrong to be influenced by another's opinion on Art? I don't think so - if it helps you notice something you hadn't before. And you don't have to agree with what they're saying!
Similarly I like to know a bit about the artist and what inspired them to create their art. Sometimes by just looking at the painting - I don't get it. I like
titles and labels. Although I noticed at the Tate now they don't put the label right next to the painting. So you have to look at the paintng on its
own and then move to one side to read about it. Then I found a quote by John Craxton on this very subject:
"But why explain pictures. No meal can be made more exciting by a running commentary analysis of flavours. Everyone has a different tongue.
"Pictures need no literary introduction. What they always need are open eyes and minds free from preconceived ideas."
So obviously the artist knows what his or her picture is all about - but perhaps the innocent viewer like me needs a little help.
Writing back, I told her that I always...
... think of Craxton in that romantic post-war Paul Nash bracket, probably completely inanely and something I'm sure he would have hated. His quotation is very much of that period and maybe even of now come to that. I have never been able to subscribe to this purist sentiment, too precious for me. I'm much more in your field. Plenty of people (inc. chefs) talk about food all the time; you can't turn on the TV without some bloke (usually a bloke) going on and on about it. Writers discuss their books endlessly, and you could argue that writing is perhaps the one art form where extra words are superfluous. Every day on Radio 3 there is a succession of muscicians rattling on about their work. Yes, labels and titles are a way in to a work. It's a question one is always asked: "Where did that come from?". So people want to know; how can we be so superior as to deny them that? Sometimes, I'm sure it is defensive: if you don't talk about it, it can't be criticized in the same way because you can always say, "Ah, well, I didn't mean that" or in so many words, "You don't get it do you? I work on an higher plane that you couldn't possibly understand"!
In my own small way (as you may have guessed from my website) and as a painter not a writer here, I soak up like a sponge reviews and interviews with visual artists. And there are good abstract painters, like the late Patrick Heron who write terribly well about art, though perhaps not about his own directly. But if you listen to a painter like Maggi Hambling talk about art in general you get a very good insight into their own work too. Others - I'm currently reading the biography of Elisabeth Frink - meander in their views on speaking about their art.
As mentioned before I'd be very interested to hear your views. It would help my work too because, basically, I've always considered painting as a means of communication between perpetrator and viewer - a conduit of ideas. And of course what's great about art is that communication goes on long after said perpetrator is dead: witness the current Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery.