The Discerning Eye 2014: Mall Galleries

When I was asked to write a few words for this year's catalogue, I felt honoured, but wondered what I could contribute to such an established, yet eclectic forum for making, presenting and appreciating art. I trained as an art historian, and as archivist for a gallery specialising in British art, I regularly research and catalogue anything from Romantic landscapes to abstract expressionist sculptures. But I probably spend most of my time interviewing contemporary artists and writing catalogue essays. This is one of the great joys of my job because I get to meet talented, generous, usually fascinating people and learn about how and why they make unique objects.

 

Some artists are their own best spokesmen, so much so that I need only do some basic research, listen closely, not ask too many inane questions, write it up and then spell-check. Other artists pose more of a challenge because they are reticent to the point of opacity. Sometimes words simply fail them but, in most cases, this reserve stems from their reluctance to be labelled according to their background, technique, forebears, etc. So I respect their reticence and weigh any advantage of coaxing information out of them against compromising their privacy or authorship of their own backstory. Finally, there are those rare cases where, for whatever reason, the artist is an unreliable narrator, making it difficult to present their work and identity in any useful context that respects both. This is when I remember what one of my favourite professors once told me: “Don't worry about what an artist did or didn't say. Look at their work. It will always tell you what they can't.”

 

So, faced with a lack of available biography or technical insights, I shift my focus to the actual form of the artist's work. Admittedly, my description might be more dry and objective than I would like, but at least I avoid projecting emotions or motives onto the artist or their work that might be irrelevant. If I am lucky, I may also signpost one or two paths towards how others can arrive at their own appreciation of that artist's work.

 

On a more practical level, when I began working as an auction specialist and was often out of my depth, formal analysis was more than a tool; it was my lifebuoy. Many times, not only did I not know what I was looking at, I didn't even know what books to consult (and Google was still years away!). So, I often judged a work's authenticity or quality based on a gut-reaction. After months of dealing with my misattributions and gaffes, a senior specialist taught me a trick: turn the work upside-down. As he explained, artists begin an original composition by working from or towards the centre of a whole, whereas copyists simply draw from the top down. Inverting the sheet helps reveal this imbalance. This little trick saved me from many an embarrassing consultation with senior experts, and I am still grateful to him.

 

Thankfully, access to objects, collections, libraries and the generosity of certain colleagues who have forgotten more about art than I will ever learn, has taught me a thing or two. However, I still use formal analysis to make sense of art because, like mathematics, it is constant. Time and geography cannot actually change line, shape, colour, texture, scale, or space; they only affect the subjective terms we use to describe them. And as art historical methodologies go, formal analysis is pretty egalitarian. It requires no specialist knowledge, no second languages, it merely asks that we take time to look, and then ask how, why and for whom an artwork was made; what was included, excluded, emphasised or obscured? In other words, what choices did the artist make (voluntarily or otherwise) and how do these affect how we see their work?

 

Approaching these questions from a slightly different angle, Ossian Ward's new book Ways of Looking: How to Experience Contemporary Art, provides a self-help guide for people who want to engage with art on their own terms. With wit and common sense, Ward outlines a six-step plan for 'understanding' contemporary art, and because he understands how deeply the information age informs our thought processes, uses lists and mnemonics to make his case. In a nutshell, he advises gallery and museum-goers to free their minds from received wisdom and 'art-guff' in order to achieve a clean mental slate. He then suggests that they give themselves Time to look at an art work; find personal Associations with it; acknowledge its Background; attempt to Understand it; take another Look; and finally, make their own Assessment: TABULA [rasa].

 

By the way, there are few more effective mental palate-cleansers for viewing art than taking a child to Tate Modern. Some of the most fun I have ever had is joining wits with a child to make head or tail of whatever is on view because children see art in its own right, perhaps because nothing else stands in the way of their experience.

 

Earlier this year, in one of his wonderful Reith Lectures, Grayson Perry (possibly the only person alive who can make Radio 4 a visual experience) discussed the pitfalls most people face when trying to appreciate art. Among many valuable observations, Perry pointed out the frustrating discrepancy between popularity and quality and how it affects both the art world and its market; how the two concepts are inherently opposed and can cancel each other out. Beauty is not democratic because, as Perry said: “democracy has bad taste” (an opinion confirmed by the Frankenstein photo mock-ups of 'ideal women' that regularly litter free newspapers).

 

He actually cautioned against using the word beauty to describe art because it can suggest elitism, sexism, even colonialism, and he demurred from pronouncing on either beauty or quality precisely because they are subjective ideas. In fact, many of Perry's observations about the art world, its market and the public's fascination with both acknowledge the role of subjectivity and its pros and cons.

 

My own ideas of artistic quality and beauty were shaped by the theories of the Vienna School and, in particular, the writings of Wölfflin and Gombrich and, admittedly, these concepts remain pretty ingrained. This aside, I believe that people can and should decide for themselves whether an artwork has merit and deserves their attention. I still see formal analysis as a touchstone for artistic quality (read: coherence) but for me, a work of art has merit if, every time I see it, no matter how often, I still notice it as if for the first time.

 

Although I am no critic, and often what I write is not strictly art history either, most of my job consists of writing about art. And since writing on any subject requires a lot of reading, I have become increasingly aware of how much art writing has changed since the rise of the Internet. For example, there are now countless blogs that approach the subject from different perspectives and levels of expertise and since the Internet is a democracy, absolutely anyone can voice opinions on art. On the face of it, this is no bad thing. (Although I hope the trend for using art as a psychological mirror - i.e. 'art as therapy' - soon dies a discreet death). What is more, the Internet and its wider opportunities encourage subjectivity, which has its merits: much of what the public reads about art trades in various levels of subjectivity. At its worst, subjectivity is mere bias, but at its best, it can encourage empathy, invite opinion and debate; it can open a door to engagement.

 

Sometimes, I am asked whether I like everything I write about (and, for the record, the answer is in the question: if I didn't like it, I wouldn't be able to write about it). But this question and its implications give me a vague idea of the huge challenge The Discerning Eye selectors must face every year. Putting six accomplished professionals in the same room with seemingly countless artworks and then asking them to declare taste must spark a level of engagement and debate few artists could expect from just hanging their work on a gallery wall. At times, I wonder if this selection process supports Gombrich's claim (and I am paraphrasing wildly here) that those who pronounce on art are like the Gauls: united in purpose, but divided into three overlapping, sometimes opposing, but not necessarily hostile camps.

 

Regardless of how they may have arrived at their respective selections, their achievement in curating this year's exhibition, and above all, the remarkable pool of British talent from which they drew, reinforce Ruskin's conviction that all of us - artist, critic, collector and member of the public alike - possess the power of a discerning eye, each shaped and educated by our unique experiences, tastes and perhaps, our shared hope for a visual record.