Ways of Looking

This month has seen our first visit to the Cheltenham Literary Festival (which was celebrating its 70th year!) After visiting the Hay Festival for nearly 20 years, this was long overdue and we thoroughly enjoyed our events and the beautiful town of Cheltenham itself. I won't bore you with more musings on the Arts & Crafts movement but, if you do visit Cheltenham, make sure to visit the amazing Wilson Gallery

Our first event was unusual, but extremely interesting and useful: Ways of Looking at Old Masters was a fresh perspective from art critic Ossian Ward, and he referred back to a fascinating 1972 TV programme and book produced by John Berger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk

Ways of Seeing. Berger tells us that 'perspective makes the eye the centre of the visible world' and that the way we see things, including paintings, changed with the invention of the camera: "the invention of the camera has changed not only what we see, but how we see it... The painting on the wall, like a human eye, can only be in one place at one time. The camera reproduces it, making it available in any size, anywhere, for any purpose". How much more is that the case now we can see images across the world instantaneously on the internet? And, of course, the more valuable a painting, the more differently we view it, trying to understand why it is so special rather than looking at it for ourselves. Berger's best advice I felt was to use silence and stillness. It really is a very good programme.

Ossian Ward aims to make looking at Old Masters more meaningful by using a mnemonic Tabula Rasa (Latin for 'blank slate'): T - time, A - association, B - background (context), U - understand, L - look again, A - assessment, R - rhythm, A - allegory, S - structure, A - atmosphere.

I had already booked to see the forthcoming William Blake exhibition at Tate Britain, so determined to try and use it to improve my critical eye. It was difficult. In order to really 'see' a painting, using Berger's silence and stillness or Ward's tabula rasa, you really need to have the room to yourself! The Blake exhibition was very busy and many of the works are small. It is the largest show of Blake's work for almost 20 years, with over 300 original works, and has, at its core, the revolutionary times in which he was working. I was particularly interested in the fact that Blake was first an engraver and made his living from that for most of his life. My favourite work of art was an engraving of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and there were many beautifully illuminated books too.

My intention to use tabula rasa was, however, fulfilled as we decided, whilst at Tate Britain, to visit the Turner Gallery. There were many opportunities to put it into practice and it really can make you look at a picture in a different way. The Turner Gallery has reunited two pictures shown together in the Royal Academy in 1831: Turner's Caligula's Palace and Bridge and John Constable's Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows. These were the leading landscape painters of their day and I had not seen the Constable. I was particularly interested in it, living, as I do, close to Salisbury and delighted that a creative sound interpretation has been created by a group of young people to welcome the painting back to Tate Britain: Under a Cloud

I can't wait to put my new found skill into practice at the next exhibition - Pre-Raphaelite Sisters at the National Portrait Gallery until 26th January.