Where art exists in my life
This is a blog title trade with James who has previously written beautifully about A piece of art I would like to see in person. Zachary has a list of people interested in title trades if that sounds like something you might like to do.
One of my goals this year is to get more art up on the walls of the house. Both pieces I've got stashed about the place and new pieces I'd like. I'm still in the habit of saying "We just moved in"... It's been four years.
I've got a fair amount up. Everything from watercolours of one of my favourite places and some local landmarks, old maps, and a very cool picture my wife made that we have in the dining room. To me it feels very midcentury and planetary map. I think she was thinking Bauhaus Death Star schematics.
My favourite collection of art is by my niblings. We've got one of those deep frames with an easy front-opening so we pop anything they make us in there. Currently displaying a portrait by a three-year-old of him and my wife, looking like potato people. Along with some paper bracelets they decorated and a little coloured-in heart.
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
So said William Morris. I used to live close to the William Morris gallery in Walthamstow. I like his politics. I like that his daughter May, a talented artist in her own right, had a 'companion'. I understand the Arts and Crafts Movement, it makes sense to me. I like this idea we can ask for more than mere function. Furniture, utensils, can be art also.
I used to dislike stained glass in houses... until I moved into a house with a very Charles Rennie Mackintosh 1920s art nouveau front entrance. And now I love it. I've been to the Willow Tea Rooms as well. Architecture is such an important art form. Gardens are art. Street art is art. My city has some stunning street art. Book covers are art, illustrated manuscripts are art.
- Art UK has tonnes of resources for finding art to go look at
In another sense of 'art in my life': My wife did Fine Art at university (I snuck into some of her art history lectures, helped on her projects, and sat through a lot of performance art that might have permanently scarred me.) The main character in my favourite film is a painter. For the past few years I've been working on a list of women artists, reading biographies, and trying to learn more art history. I'm doing a project on Marianne North, a Victorian botanical artist.
I love this person's interview with themself about their favourite painting. I feel extremely similarly when called on to justify my favourites.
And here's one of them:
Matisse, The Snail. Fair use, Link
An example of why seeing art in person is so great: it's huge, it's nearly three metres each way. And the textures. Very cool. What do I like about it? Other than that I just like it. The boldness. The complementary colours. The story behind it. The technique:
Matisse said of the technique that it 'allows me to draw in the colour. It is a simplification for me. Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it - the one modifying the other - I draw straight into the colour'
That quote, and the painting itself, at the Tate Modern.