For an introduction to this post see post no. 64
Another day, which was one of my timetabled gallery sessions, I noticed that I had not gone anywhere near the work or even so much as looked at it and had spent the whole afternoon with my back to it. I remember this quite clearly. I just didn’t want to think about it – about war, about death, about the awfulness of it all. It was a lovely sunny Brighton day outside and I wanted to be out there, with the throng, enjoying the sunshine – we had so little this summer, who can blame me? – so instead of engaging in any way with the work directly I realised that I was chatting happily to the Fabrica volunteers who were there. And then of course, having that feeling, that so many have talked about in relation to this work, that one’s cheerfulness is inappropriate in the vicinity of the work. But of course, even this was a form of engagement with the work. Even wanting not to see is a response. It is all valid. I have learnt to understand much more about one’s response to an artwork over time: that it shifts and changes depending on so many factors. I read recently about a new book by T.J.Clark about his viewing of two works by Poussin: “Clark's 'experiment' is essentially a diary that tells the story of his engagement with two masterpieces by Poussin, Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake and Landscape with a Calm, that hang face-to-face in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The resulting book is unusual in that it treats the act of looking as a process that occurs in time.” (London Review of Books)
I might have thought this change of response over time to be an obvious way of describing how one’s looking develops were it not for the use of the word ‘unusual’ in this blurb about Clark’s book.
