According to Tate Modern -
ART CHANGES WE CHANGE
Surely, something's missing.
Perhaps, a comma. Or any of the following: when, how, where, if, and, as.
All would fit. Wouldn't they? Or am I alone in my nit-picking, pernickety little world; worrying what these words mean? What the intent was behind displaying them large above the brick wall of the iconic Tate? What they are meant to say? But fail to say. Perhaps, the point is that different people will read different things into them. If they bother to read them at all. I'm still bothered, though, about what they mean to me. And what they clearly don't mean? Or perhaps they are not being clear about not meaning anything? Am I'm trying to read something into what is essentially a meaning-free hoax? If the Tate's intention was to prick my ire once a fortnight, when I walk over the Millennium Bridge, it has certainly succeeded.
Inside my head, I see the words and groan, dipping into an resurgent OCD loop, as I start to juggle with the options
... if art changes, we change
and ... art changes if we change
and ... when art changes we change
and ... art changes when we change
and ... art changes how we change
Try the others. Inside your head ... where ... and ... as. All imply cause and effect - a nudge or a push or a shove depending how or when or where or if, that cause and effect occurred - art changes and we change.
But is the relationship necessarily that linear? That temporal? A time-line where one changes and then the other will change; later. What if change reflects a mutual dependence? Both change. Simultaneously. If the missing comma is inserted, like the fulcrum of a sea-saw the art and the us in we become dependent on each other; change in one causing an immediate change or effect in the other.
Put the comma in; it's suddenly brilliant.
Visually, simply and perfectly getting to the nub of the matter - art and life reflect a symbiosis that cannot be split. One depends on the other. Change one, change the other and evolve together. Life and the creative world joined. And balanced. They always have been. One cannot exist without the other.
Try replacing the comma with a full stop and watch as you blow the art and humanity synergy away: Art changes. We change.
The full stop rips the heart out of the relationship. Art changes ... who cares! ... We change too. Caring is the point. Man cares about his or her art. Art underlies our psyche, our history, our soul.
Mad!
I know ... I know. I walk over the Millennium bridge a bit too early in the morning and my brain is still under a duvet, dreaming of books and holidays and yesterday's garden bonfire and whether Littlest will remember the dates and details of the Battle of Bannockburn (she did!) and if Robert the Bruce was actually a murderer (he was!) and how any of us made it to the 21st century after the terror, pestilence, disease and poverty of history (we did!). Yes! Proper, early morning madness ... I know. But Tate Modern's four words woke me up. And were stilled when I found their missing comma.
Missing commas and words written high on an art gallery's wall are probably not going to provide a smooth transition to the pedant being in the water with Canaletto (see title). So, in something of a continuity blip and progressing in a rather wriggly line across London from a gallery celebrating modern art to one that, on the whole, takes a more classical approach, the procrastinating pedant arrives in front of the Canalettos at the National Gallery.
Canaletto - brief bio: lived 1697 - 1768, Italian, born in Venice. Painted for wealthy tourists. Had a workshop of artists producing paintings. Famous!
Canaletto - brief bio: lived 1697 - 1768, Italian, born in Venice. Painted for wealthy tourists. Had a workshop of artists producing paintings. Famous!
The crowded scene, the boats, the buildings, the light are all meticulously detailed and the overall composition viewed from a distance is mesmerising and rich in narrative. The water viewed up close is terrible.
Even when he nearly gets it right, he gets it wrong
beautiful bright light, accurately pulled reflections and in the foreground little white squiggles, carelessly drawn. So disappointing that I wish I hadn't gone to see them up close.
Water in paintings needs to be believable. Highlighting ripples with lines of white pain fails - it's as though Canaletto gave the painting above to an inexperienced junior artist, in his workshop, to finish. From a distance, a Canaletto is a magnificent Canaletto - perhaps, I should learn to stand back.
But ... contrast Canaletto's child-like waves with Constable's textured water in the ford of the River Stour
and the still water at Stratford Mill, rich in hue and complex in motion, reflecting the trees and the light-filled sky.
Constable painted water that would feel wet if you could reach out and touch it. Canaletto's foreground water would feel like peaked, grey, Royal icing spread on a grey cake; nothing more.
Monet, like Constable, achieves the full wet water look in a backwater of the river Seine, near Argenteuil. It is grey, swirling and luminsecent; water you could swim in and that would feel bitterly cold.
My favourite 'water artist', though, is Camille Pissarro. The National gallery has two of his paintings hanging side by side. In my non-artistic and humble opinion the one titled 'Boulevard Montmartre rainy morning 1897' is the best - rain in the sky and in the air and on the ground; water droplets everywhere convincingly portrayed. A wonderful wet watery painting. Which I was't allowed to photograph. You'll have to go and see it. It is worth seeing. Almost as good is this one - the same wet boulevard but now in winter. And photography was permitted!
I like quotes. I like quotes when they round off a piece of writing. I like these -
"A fine work of art has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place."
Robert McKee
"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun."
Picasso
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