Joining the dots

 Ways of Seeing

The sky is scored, streams of white trails slash the blue, even distorting the sun above my head. It is highly unusual for the air to be cut like this over Norfolk, as usually the air is thrumming with the play-fighting of American jets, rather than with commercial aeroplanes.

I go for a drink in the Folies Bergère, where, in the 1880s Suzon would serve me in my absinthe, while I reflected on the role of mirrors in art and life....

Édouard Manet - A Bar at the Folies Bergère

Now she draws the crowds to the Courtauld Gallery, her bottles of Bass and warm champagne attracting inspection through lorgnettes....

Meanwhile, all is quiet at the Halcyon Gallery, New Bond Street, where there are spare chairs for Hockney.....

David Hockney - Sparer Chairs

It is winter near Kilham:

David Hockney - Winter Road Near Kilham

But then it is summer as well.....

And then we are in Normandy, half timbered and red-tiled.....

I find myself singing under a blue sky in Trafalgar Square (one too many absinthes, perhaps?)

And then I am on the perplexing staircase in Somerset House, aspiring to the upper floors of the Courtauld:

Under the ribbed eye whose shadow seems to be ticking like a sundial:

We are here to join up the dots of Georges Seurat's Neo-impressionist seascapes, sometimes identified as pointillist pictures.....

I stare at the wall between the frames, wondering if I am going dotty....

Then I look closer at the brushwork and try not to think of the opposing colours,

Though the closer you get the more difficult it is......

Try not to think about the way the image is created:

After all, nothing is real.  What Seurat saw on the coast of Northern France a hundred and fifty years ago is no longer there, and never was in two dimensions anyway.  In fact it wasn't even there when he 'saw' it, as light takes time to travel and then our rods and cones have to crowd down the optic nerves for our brains to interpret what is coming through the lens....

Art is a pleasure.  While some works may provoke thoughts and serve political or social ends, much of what we admire is artistry, the ways somethings are communicated.  I love the shadows in this one, not unlike Lowry, though also entirely different:

I love the transparency in this one - you can see through the boats and sails, and see the sky in the water, all of it a delightful post-impression....

I see the great courtyard outside in a similar way, the light fragmented by fine gauze, the shadows falling across the floor like drops of ink on the paving stones.....

Not far away, in the Serpentine North Gallery, Hockney (again) is looking down on us through his square glasses from his tree house:

He too is dotty. This exhibition is entitled David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, and the blurb informs us that David Hockney invites viewers to slow down and notice the extraordinary within the everyday..... Created specifically for this presentation, Hockney’s new paintings extend his lifelong fascination with the act of looking, affirming his belief that simple beauty is worth celebrating.

Although some critics have begun to hint that you can have too much of a good thing, I disagree, and love this wraparound display of the seasons at Hockney's French home.....

Whichever way you turn it's a colourful and subliminally happy take on nature and domesticity, a picture of gentle life as we all wish we could lead. The fact that it is not possible for everyone to reside in such an idyllic environment does not mean it is wrong.... It is a reminder that there is beauty in this world and that we should celebrate it.

Other images in the exhibition play with perspective and again remind us that what we are viewing is not reality, but a representation of what can be experienced if we use our imagination and look at pictures from different vantage points.....

Outside in Kensington Gardens Henry Moore's six metre high travertine arch frames the Long Water and a distant Palace.  What is it?  Why is it?  Does it matter?  Surely those are the questions that we ask about life, and there are no right, or wrong, answers....

Just as a ring-necked parakeet flying from a tourist's hand is meaningful or meaningless depending on which side of bed you got out of that morning,

Or as a photograph in The Photographers' Gallery may make you smile or shiver,

We should remember that it is magical and glorious to be able to see anything.  We who have sight are blessed and we must be grateful for what we have.  

Back home I get up early to watch the sun come up over the North Sea, amazed by the power of light to banish the dark, thrilled by the bands of grey and gold, by the streaming rays that bring us life....

I am beginning to lose the point.....

Never mind.  It is what it is....

I would like to be a dot in a painting by Miro.

Barely distinguishable from other dots,

it’s true, but quite uniquely placed.

And from my dark centre

I’d survey the beauty of the linescape

and wonder-would it be worthwhile

to roll myself towards the lemon stripe,

centrally poised, and push my curves

against its edge, to get myself

a little extra attention?

But it’s fine where I am.

I’ll never make out what’s going on

around me, and that’s the joy of it.

Moniza Alvi

I Would Like to be a Dot in a Painting by Miro

from The Country at my Shoulder (OUP, 1993)

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For my companion in art

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