Take a walk through 500 years of British art....

The other day I spent a rewarding morning with a friend walking halfway through Tate Britain’s new ‘hang’ – a rearrangement and refresh of its collection of British art, providing a circuit from 1545 to the present day. We only made it halfway through before we had to head out to other commitments, but we made a firm promise to do the rest of the circuit as soon as we can.

The walk takes you around the perimeter of the main gallery, and the works are hung in chronological order, as opposed to by theme or movement – thus creating, as the Tate’s notes state, an ‘open conversation’ between the works, and indeed between the viewer and the viewed. The end result allows you to form your own conclusions about the relationships between the works, and to think about why some works have become so well loved and others so unknown. Skill, certainly, marks some out from others; the collection includes the great, the good, the bad and the indifferent. Seeing paintings together that may have nothing in common but the year in which they were made gives on the one hand a strong sense of what was fashionable in the way of painting styles and subjects and, on the other hand, a unique insight into the way artists responded to their contemporaries – or sometimes seemed to ignore them.

One painting we both loved seeing again was Canaletto’s London: the Old Horse Guards from St James’s Park. He painted it in 1749, three years after coming to London, and it's one of about two dozen views of the city he painted in the years he was here. This one shows the old Horse Guards building just a few years before it was replaced by the Horse Guards building that exists today. The painting is a wonderfully detailed portrayal of eighteenth-century London life - or at least the slice of London life that had the leisure to wander on a sunny day.

Interestingly, the people in the painting didn’t have the choice of taking a walk through 500 years of British art on a sunny afternoon. At the time Canaletto painted this scene, there were no art museums in London. There were museums of curiosities and museums of armour, but until the British Museum opened in 1759 with the personal collection of Sir Hans Sloane, there was no museum in the city showing artworks. Around that time, in the mid-eighteenth century, the painter and printmaker William Hogarth provided a unique opportunity for artists to exhibit in public for the first time. Hogarth was a governor of the Foundling Hospital (now the Foundling Museum), and he persuaded artists to donate paintings and sculptures to the hospital to attract wealthy donors. It was a win-win: donations for the hospital and wider reputation for the artists.

Hogarth’s great idea led to the formation of the Society of Artists and, indirectly, to the establishment of the great museums of the city over the next 150 years. The Royal Academy was founded in 1768 and ran its first exhibition the following year. The National Gallery opened in its current site in Trafalgar Square in 1838, the Victoria and Albert Museum opened in its South Kensington site in 1857, and Tate Britain opened in Pimlico 1897. It was a golden age of acquiring art for the nation, and it illustrates how the public’s access to art has changed so dramatically from the time of Canaletto’s Horse Guards painting.

Tate Britain: BP Walk through British Art

“…I have presumed to think that, in connecting or in breaking the various lines of a picture, it would likewise be a good rule to do it, in general, by a similar scheme of proportion; for example, in a design of landscape, to determine the sky at about two-thirds; or else at about one-third, so that the material objects might occupy the other two: Again, two thirds of one element, (as of water) to one third of another element (as of land)… .”

John Thomas Smith, Remarks on Rural Scenery, 1797

Spend two-thirds of the time looking, and one-third of the time doing. This was the advice given by my friend Elaine back in that watercolour workshop that led to this blog. I’ve been thinking about that equation a lot since then and hearing echoes of it in many areas of life.

A pleasing composition – of a landscape, say – has a one-third/two-thirds arrangement. One-third land to two-thirds sky. One-third ocean to two-thirds sky. Two-thirds floor to one-third ceiling.

The ‘Rule of Thirds’ was first articulated by Smith, who quoted an earlier work by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the 18th-century English painter and founder of the Royal Academy here in London (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds). 

When we learn to draw a face, we learn – usually to our surprise – that about one-third of the face is forehead, and two-thirds the eyes, nose, mouth, chin. The surprise, at least for me, is that the forehead is so large and that the other features don’t take up all the face space. Children often draw faces with the eyes at the top, below which there’s a nose, and below that a mouth, then a circle or oval all around. I think that’s what our brains tell us a face looks like. But it isn’t really.

We spend a lot of our lives in this one-third/two-thirds arrangement. One-third of the day sleeping, two-thirds not. Many of us punctuate our waking day into thirds by meal – breakfast, lunch, dinner. And some of us spend one-third of our waking day at work, on the job, and the other two-thirds not. Whether this is as pleasing an arrangement in day-to-day life as it is in a landscape or a face is, I’m sure, a personal matter.

I’ve decided to live to this equation in a slightly new way this year. This year I am probably hitting the two-thirds point of my life. I turn 50 at the end of the year, and though I’m not dreading it in the way we’re told we must, I feel I need to notice it, to mark it. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I did secretly make a January pledge to myself, one with a negative and a positive, a limitation and an expansion – not to attend any mediation conferences this year, and to go to at least one art exhibit each week this year. I’m doing well with both, and I've been to some wonderful exhibits so far, including:

Photocollage at the Photographer's Gallery
Judy Chicago at Riflemakers Gallery
Braque at Washington University (St Louis)
Kurt Schwitters at Tate Britain (twice)
Judy Chicago (again!) with Helen Chadwick and Tracey Emin at the Ben Uri
Looking at the View at Tate Britain (twice)
Tudors at the National Portrait Gallery (especially to see the portrait of Thomas Cromwell after finishing Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies)
Kaffe Fassett – wild colour and gorgeous textiles at the Textile and Fashion Museum
Roy Lichtenstein at Tate Modern
David Bowie Is at the V&A Museum
Fate, Hope and Charity at the Foundling Museum
Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan at the Wellcome Collection
Pompeii and Herculaneum at the British Museum

I also went to the Wool House show at Somerset House and learned to darn with TomofHolland, made a book at the Open Day of the new London Centre for Book Arts, and was absolutely bowled over to learn about Barbara Jones (1912-1978) and her work on popular art and ephemera at the Whitechapel Gallery’s ‘Black Eyes and Lemonade’. She was an inspiration, driving around the country in a converted taxi collecting art of the everyday for the Festival of Britain in 1951.

All of this has made me want to look more than everyday life usually allows us to do. So in the final (roughly) one-third of my life, I've decided to spend one-third of my time in gainful employment and two-thirds exploring the tempting art-sweetshop that London is. And I’ve become a volunteer Welcoming Ambassador at the Victoria & Albert Museum, one of my favourite places in the world. It's a fantastic job, an opportunity to learn and share and have what my mentor calls 'moments of shared happiness' with complete strangers. More on that in another post.

As Smith said, two-thirds of one element to one-third of another element. Perhaps a useful recipe for life as well as art? 

Here in England we still can't decide if spring has arrived. We go from being sleeveless and bare-legged one day, to sweatered and tighted the next. But one thing is clear - the buds are finally bursting. 

It's a great time of year to appreciate how plants grow. It's surprising what you see when you get up close and personal with plants. 

Taking a closer look at plants must have been a preoccupation of Anna Maria Garthwaite (1688-1763), an English freelance textile designer in the early eighteenth century. She was a part of the silk-weaving industry that produced what is known as Spitalfields silk, fine fabrics for the fashionable of the time. 

Much of the silk weaving at the time was influenced by French Rococo designs, and much of the silk was produced by French Huguenot refugees, who settled in that part of east London. Garthwaite, who was unusual in being a notable female designer and an independent woman with a career, brought a distinctively English style to the silk. Her work - and she produced more than 80 new designs a year - reflected the growing interest in Britain in botanical illustration, and her patterns display more realistic images of plants and flowers than the stylised images in French woven silk. 

Here is one of Garthwaite's patterns, at the V&A Museum:

Introducing 'the principles of painting into the loom'

Spitalfields Life explains Garthwaite's unique talent:

'[She] contrived an enormous variety of sprigged patterns each with different permutations of naturalistically rendered flowers, both cultivated and wild species. Yet equally, her work demonstrates a full understanding of the technical process of silk weaving, conjuring designs that make elegant employment of the possibilities of the medium and the talents of skilled weavers. Many of her designs are labelled with the names of the weavers to whom they were sold and annotated with precise instructions, revealing the depth of her insight into the method as well as offering assistance to those whose job it was to realise her work. She was credited by Malachi Postlethwayt in The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce of 1751 as the one who “introduced the Principles of Painting into the loom.”

There's a Blue Plaque at the house in Princelet Street in Spitalfields where Garthwaite lived and worked with her sister (and which she bought with her own earnings when she was 40). You can read more about her house here.

You can read more about Garthwaite here, and see photos of examples of her work.

And you can see her watercolour patterns and fabrics at the V&A Museum, where a section in the British Galleries describes the work of the weavers and designers of Spitalfields silk.

This is the name of a fascinating exhibit at Tate Britain. I love that it brings together surprising works, ones you might never see side by side. They are by different artists, produced at different times, sometimes different centuries, using a range of materials and techniques. What brings them together (well, aside from the curator, obviously) is that they are all an artist's interpretation of the landscape. Works are grouped together in pairs that share a common vision - something about the framing and composition that is similar and that affects the viewer and the view in a similar way. The exhibit notes describe 'surprising coincidences and remarkable affinities' and say it offers 'insights into the ways in which a viewer is engaged in the process of looking'.

My favourite pairing is really a trio not a pair, of what I call 'sky' paintings - Arnesby Brown's The Line of the Plough, an oil painting from 1919; JMW Turner's Hill Town on the Edge of the Campagna, an oil from 1828; and Lisa Milroy's Sky, a lithographic monoprint from 1997. They're very different in feel and style but the treatment of the sky, which takes up the majority of the painting in each is exquisite and emotive.

Looking at the View is at Tate Britain until 2 June 2013 (no charge).

"Sew unto others as you would have them sew unto you."

Yesterday my sister Susan flew into London for a visit and a week of sewing together. She arrived at 8am and by noon, after breakfast and a walk in the neighbourhood, we'd found ourselves a sewing machine. It was on the pavement, with a couple of boxes of other stuff. Someone was looking out for us. It was clearly left out to be taken. But at first I had that strange worry: Can this really be free? Has somebody just left this on the pavement for us?

We don't trust good fortune, most of the time. No such thing as a free lunch and so on. In the city, we rarely trust strangers, and we know not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Or a gift sewing machine.

I know all that, but my experience tells me that we find good fortune all the time in the places we live. Especially in a city, where we're crammed together on tight spaces, in our flats and on the tube, we help each other out, we put up with each other's smells and noise, we make space. It doesn't always happen that way - we snap and snipe at each other too - but most of daily life as it's lived on the street shows the good in us, not the bad.

When I moved back to the city I had to give away my antique sewing machine; it was a lovely thing but I had no space so I gave it to a local charity shop. The manager was pleased to have it, both for the window and as a piece to sell. My regret at giving it away was assuaged by the thought that it might make someone else very happy.

I like to think the person who gave this machine away also has that satisfaction. What I'd say to that person is, "Thank you for this wonderful machine, which means that my sister and I can sew together while she's here." And I'd like to point out what a fabulous sewing machine it is - fittingly called 'New Home', it's probably from the 1970s, metal, with a motor and fan belt. It weighs a ton and is a workhorse, able to handle very thick fabrics without whining. We've already put it to work on Bledsoe items. Here's a picture of it on the deck:

“This is the dark side of a beautiful picture.”

I saw this quotation on a gravestone in my local cemetery. Is it a grim thought? A poetic one? Or merely a realistic one? I couldn’t decide. But I do know I love cemeteries and I seek them out whenever I’m walking. 

In Brompton Cemetery I've found surprising splashes of colour. 

In the graveyard at Chiswick Parish Church (St Nicholas), which my friend Carey and I visited during one of our 'talk and walk' sessions along the Thames, we saw the tomb of William Hogarth, the painter and engraver who lived nearby and was buried here in 1764.

Tomorrow, 27 April, is Slow Art Day. The point is to look at five works of art for ten minutes each, then meet with others to discuss the works. The goal? To encourage the art of seeing. Kind of fits with Good at Looking, doesn't it?

Apparently the average viewer spends just 17 seconds looking at each painting or sculpture when wandering through a museum. In his book How to Look at a Painting, Justin Paton (who rightly questions if there is an 'average viewer') suggests there are two types of art lookers - the  Suddenlys, who want an epiphany that hits like a freight train, and the Slowlys, who think art deserves patience. Paton thinks it can take an hour in front of a single work for the the 'stray associations' in the brain (the parking meter, the piped-in muzak, the grocery list) to settle down and allow the picture to disclose itself.

He also recommends taking good company to get the most of that hour. What better way to spend tomorrow than to go spend some quality time with a friend and an artwork?

Slow Art Day is an international event that was started in 2008 and so far most of the venues are in the States, but there are more than 250 museums and galleries participating, including Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery and the Photographers' Gallery here in London.

“We told each other which colors we liked best together, and I remember the feeling of profound originality I experienced when I insisted, although it had just occurred to me, that I had always liked black and brown together best. I saw them floating in little patches of velvet, like the crazy quilt, or smooth little rectangles of enamel, like the paint-sample cards I was always begging for at the general store.”

Elizabeth Bishop, Exchanging Hats (Carcanet 1997)

Where do you stand on this issue of colour? I wondered about this as I went through the small but vibrant exhibit of work by knitting guru and textile designer Kaffe Fassett at the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey. I’m someone who believes black is the loveliest colour there is, and like Elizabeth Bishop I like black with brown – earthy colours. This show was way out of my league colourwise. 

Fassett considers colour to be 'a vital ingredient in life', and he was greatly influenced by a trip to India twenty years ago. Travel seems to be a key source of creative use of colour for him; a video showing in the museum's shop on my visit showed him ecstatic to discover a stall of hardware at a market in Vietnam, with screws and nails set out in small wooden boxes, making an impromptu patchwork quilt of bronzes, golds, silvers and greys.

Colour is vital and has great significance – historically, culturally, politically. Just think of the fuss made this week about what colour tie various newsreaders would wear when reporting on Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. We know that in different cultures colours mean different things. In Britain, for example, white only became associated with wedding dresses in the mid-nineteenth century, during Queen Victoria’s reign, after she was married in a white dress. Marrying in white meant you had money; otherwise you got married in whatever your best clothes were. In the US, red means Republican; in Britain it means Labour; in India it’s the colour of weddings. For anyone interested to learn about colours, have a look at Pantone: A Color History of the 20th Century; Brain Pickings has a lively review of this ‘fascinating and uncommon lens on familiar cultural history’ on its site at www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/11/23/pantone-book/.

‘Extravagant’ is one term used by the Fashion and Textile Museum to describe the range of colour and texture Kaffe Fassett uses in shawls, sweaters, cushions and quilts. That’s an ambiguous term, suggesting lushness but without purpose. For some, Fassett’s work lies on the decorative crafts end of the art spectrum, with all the twee connotations of knitting and interior design. For others, his pushing at the boundaries of traditional arts, including knitting but also quilting and embroidery, is inspirational - and all the more so for being a man in a traditionally woman's world. 

Whether you like his work or not, there’s something unnerving about so much bright colour in one place. It’s a sort of assault on the senses, but in my view that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes we need to be assaulted – shaken and stirred.

Kaffe Fassett: A Life in Colour is on at the Fashion and Textile Museum until 29 June 2013.

I bought the most amazing book the other day, from Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. It's called Walking the Block, and it's a wonderful book of poems by Ruth Weir, who was inspired by two women artists who ran a textile printing business in the 1930s – Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher. They did hand block printing, making their own vegetable dyes and blocks. Weir’s poems don't narrate their life stories but instead pick up on events and inspiration in their lives. The book sets the poems amongst colour pictures of the textiles Barron and Larcher designed. It is a richly rewarding book to spend time with - to read, and to revisit. Its very existence is evidence that e-books will never make real books unnecessary.

But this isn't a rant about e-publishing. It also isn't a review of the book. But it does nick the book's title - which comes from what you do when block-printing fabric - you lay the fabric (or 'stuff') on a large table and walk the printing block along the length of fabric as you print. I love that image. And I love walking. And the title reminded me of the famous line of painter Paul Klee's - he supposedly said that drawing is just taking a line for a walk.

Walking is a great way to practise active seeing. Walking along my local streets recently, I noticed the shapes of the access covers (formerly known as manhole covers, but in desperate need of a more poetic and gender-neutral name). They are graphic gems, with beautiful geometric designs.

What they remind me of are the textile designs of Enid Marx. At one point in the 1920s she worked with Larcher and Barron, then started her own workshop. She was commissioned by the London Passenger Transport Board to design the fabric used for the seats on buses and tubes – called moquette, it is a durable velvety fabric that can withstand abuse. In its obituary of her in 1998, The Independent quoted her describing the strict brief she had to work to:

“The seating needed to look fresh at all times, even after bricklayers had sat on it, so there was a camouflage problem. The design, therefore, had to be bold but, because it was for a moving vehicle, should not be dazzling to passengers. In order to achieve the right effect strong contrasting tones had to be used, combined with changes of texture, from cut to uncut moquette. The scale of the repeat was governed by the economy of cutting up upholstery for seats of divergent sizes.”

Marx later became a member of the Board of Trade Utility furniture, and was in charge of textile design for this post-war initiative to produce inexpensive furniture to replace that lost in bombings. 

You can see Marx’s moquette designs at www.colourfulbeautifulthings.co.uk/colour-pattern-joy-2/

Chevron, Double Diamond and Shield are all designs that she produced that are still available. You can see these on the London Transport Museum website.

Compton Verney House in Warwickshire has an exhibit of Marx's work, on until 15 December 2013.

"Forever we will search and give our thought to the picture we have in our mind.
We are walking around now as sad as can be.
The nature of our looking.”

Gilbert and George, The Nature of Our Looking, 1970

I started this blog after being in a painting workshop run by my friend and colleague Elaine, a brilliant watercolour painter and also a speech and language therapist and fellow mediator. She taught us that painting is about two-thirds looking, and one-third doing. Look, really look…and try not to paint what your brain thinks it sees. A chair is a chair, right? Your brain tells you it has four (or maybe three) legs, a seat, maybe a back and arms. But forget all that and just look at the damn thing, and draw what your eyes see, not what your brain sees. Be a good looker and you will learn to paint.

She didn’t actually say all that – I’ve elaborated and embellished, and I hope she’ll forgive me. But what she said resonates with me in so many ways. As a mediator – my vocation for 25 years – I’ve been trained in active listening, hearing people’s stories attentively, indicating without words that I’m paying attention. Interestingly, active listening is about taking in information un-mediated by our own assumptions, beliefs, stereotypes. It’s exhausting but energising at the same time. I think active looking feels the same way. And it takes some practice.

To mix my metaphors, it’s a bit like what’s said about muscles, and brains – use ‘em or lose ‘em. Your creative bone needs to be stimulated, nudged, maybe even poked and prodded. That sometimes feels like too much hard work. I hope this blog will make it easier.

First step - consider the nature of your looking. Don't ask someone else, How do I look? Ask yourself.