Guardian Unlimited
But do I like it?
When Joan Bakewell was asked to turn 200 works by 60 artists into a coherent exhibition, panic set in
Monday April 21, 2003
The Guardian
This is the story of something that has never happened to me before. Out of the blue, the Newlyn Society of Artists asked me to choose and hang the paintings for their spring exhibition. Being in my 60s, I believe in accepting every new challenge at once. I said yes.
But what had I let myself in for? I could think of plenty of excuses: Newlyn, which neighbours Penzance, is too far and a single day's visit would not be long enough. I was also unsure how to go about it. When I read the Newlyn Gallery brochure, I was positively alarmed: "The selector's eye brings a new perspective to their show." Where was I to find this new perspective?
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Time to do some homework. First Newlyn itself. An artists' colony sprang up in the 1880s, flourished once Newlyn Art Gallery opened in 1895 and rivalled St Ives to the north. Unlike the mandatory modernism of the St Ives of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and their circle, Newlyn favoured a genuinely eclectic range of styles, though the avant-garde was here, too: Peter Lanyon was a star turn; so is Terry Frost. The opening of Tate St Ives in 1995 gave a further fillip to West Cornwall as a place where art happens. Today Newlyn Society of Artists has 130 members, all professional artists, and for this show each is allowed to submit three works for my consideration. Clearly I needed some advice.
Artist friends first: Michael Craig-Martin suggested I "look for something that is unique, something you have never seen before that excites you". Patrick Hughes hinted at the pleasure: "Choose whatever it is you enjoy." Teresa Gleadowe, who heads a curating course at the Royal College of Art, hinted at how tricky it would be to make the show coherent. She said: "Curating is about making relationships: you will have to consider how each of the works you choose will be presented." She wasright: it was the organising and hanging that were to be the most absorbing and difficult tasks.
I arrived at Newlyn Gallery on a blithe spring day, walked through the door and there it all was - canvases stacked along the hallway and several deep around the walls of the upstairs gallery. It was a gorgeous mass of images and impressions:abstract, representational, landscapes, the human figure, still lifes, splashes of colour, odd shapes and all sizes. Some 60 artists had submitted around 200 works and I had eight hours to make sense of it all.
There was nothing for it but to take several deep breaths and get stuck in. I would make my choices blind, not knowing who the artists were. Perhaps I risked offending some of the society's lions, but it was the only way I could keep some perspective. I once made a television programme of selectors choosing pieces for the Royal Academy summer show and was distressed to see how on average they gave each work a mere one or two minutes' consideration before nodding a yes, no or a possible. Now I would be operating on the same principle.
My assistants, Blair and Jeremy, set out the work of a single artist against a white wall, while I prowled up and down, stood back, stood close, opened myself to the artist's purpose, let the work have its effect on me, and then made my decision.
I found that the impact of a work is at its greatest within those first, almost instantaneous moments of seeing. And something extraordinary began to happen. With my attention focused, and the work - exciting, vivid, the essence of its creator's energy - continuing to stimulate my imagination, I began to get almost high on what I was seeing. The art simply took over. I cried out with pleasure at the exuberance of a large splash of colour. It was one of two that turned out to be by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, the doyenne of West Cornwall artists. She is now in her 90s and evidently still going strong.
The adrenaline was pumping so hard by now that when we stopped for lunch - a traditional Cornish pasty eaten outside in the sunshine - I had virtually completed my first selection. Now I had to turn this medley of some 40 works into a coherent show.
What connected them? All I had to go on was that something in each of them had caught my attention. So here it was: "The new perspective of the selector's eye." Many of us don't examine at all critically why we like a particular work of art. The appeal is direct, visceral, a gut reaction. This is what I had been doing so far. Now I had to examine what it was that I had chosen. What impulses ticking away in my psyche had come together?
First I realised that I react strongly to how marks are made on surfaces. I love peering closely at brushwork and get a sensual thrill from the way paint is deployed on a canvas. Taking that idea further, I recognised an interest in the marks we leave behind everywhere - the traces we humans scatter across the planet. A number of works seemed to me to have this archaeological feel to them. Hanging them together reinforced that idea.
As what I called my "wall of traces and marks" took shape, other ideas were formulating. A quite different joy in sunlight and colour had appealed to me in several of the works, and now was the time to give them their own setting. I had a boarded-up window in the lower gallery opened to daylight , restoring a view of the shoreline and sea beyond. In this gallery I put my choice of seascapes and horizons; bold and brilliant, or muted and cool. Meanwhile, in the upper gallery, another concept was taking shape: what it is to be human. Here I grouped my selection of paintings of human bleakness and isolation.
Not everything came together. Some things resolutely insisted on standing alone. The challenge of curating is like three-dimensional chess. Each piece strongly influences that alongside it. Context is the thing. Remove one and the mood is ruined. Juxtapose the wrong two and the mismatch screams across the gallery.
As the afternoon wore on, I became more frantic. Blair, Jeremy and I were racing between the galleries. We moved, we rearranged, we tried the sculpture here, then there. We took one selection apart and virtually started again. I slowly came to take possession of the choices and arrangement I had made. And I began to take pride in having done it.
That night, I spoke to the Newlyn Society of Artists of the reasoning behind the show. I had chosen work by some 40 artists and many were in the audience. I was literally on the spot. For the first time I could see my choices through their eyes. "Not much chance if you paint in yellow," said one, and I realised how monochrome I had made the upper gallery.
I think I must have made Bren Unwin's day when I compared her work to Vermeer. It looks nothing like the subject of a Vermeer, of course, but something about the arrangement of planes and light reminded me. We are, after all, no more than the sum of our visual experiences. Putting mine at the service of a gallery show was a merciless way to confront my own tastes and judgment. I shall never take curators for granted again.
· Critic's Choice, curated by Joan Bakewell, is at the Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, until Saturday. Details: 01736 363715.
NSA
Critic's Choice
Prof. Norton Lynton
The Lemon Street Gallery, Truro, Cornwall, takes great pleasure in hosting the Newlyn Society of Artists (NSA) annual Critic's Choice Exhibition that will be selected by Professor Norbert Lynton.
Norbert Lynton, Professor Emeritus of the University of Sussex is a distinguished British art historian, writer and teacher. He has served as advisor to the Arts Council and the British Council and as trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. His books include The Story Of Modern Art and studies of Paul Klee Ben Nicholson, Victor Pasmore and jack Smith - and with Erika Langmuir, the Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists. His most recent publication is an extensive biography of William Scott, published by Thames & Hudson last year (2004). In 2003 Professor Lynton was included on a panel of judges for the jerwood Painting Prize and now the NSA has the honour of his selection in their forthcoming exhibition at the Lemon Street Gallery this summer.
The Newlyn Society of Artists (NSA) was formed in 1895 and has an inseparable history with the Newlyn Art Gallery that was built in that year with an endowment from John Passmore Edwards to support a "known set of artists" - the Newlyn 'School' or 'Newlyners' as they were sometimes referred to. This early group of painters included Norman Garstin, Stanhope Forbes and Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes, Harold Harvey, Ernest Procter, Julius 0Isson and Charles & Ruth Simpson to name a few.
Over the 110 years both the Newlyn Art Gallery and the NSA have seen manly developments and changes to their respective and overlapping organisations. Today the NSA has approximately 130 elected members and holds annual Easter, Summer and Christmas exhibitions at the Newlyn Art Gallery; along with regular Critic's Choice selected shows. In past years Critics have included Mel Gooding, William Packer and Sasha Craddock.
With the forthcoming major renovations at the Newlyn Art Gallery initially scheduled for 2005, the NSA has collaborated with the Lemon Street Gallery to host the Critic's Choice Exhibition. Lemon Street Gallery is very pleased to be involved in this prestigious event and is looking forward to collaborating with Professor Norbert L ' ynton to produce an exciting and vibrant show of outstanding "degrees of excellence" within the current NSA membership.
Critic's Choice' means playing God for a while, sorting out the blessed from the wicked to send one lot up and the other lot down. No, I don't see myself as Christ in Michelangelo's Last judgment, more like Lucien Freud in his self-portrait, painted when he was in his seventies and naked apart from his paintspotted boots and wielding a palette knife with intent. I won't compare myself with Christ in case the prophecy is correct, but must point out that lie gave about thirty years to living as a man (and eternity to being God) whereas I have been an art historian for fifty-five years and an art critic for about fifty. My qualifications for selecting the works on show - now hung with care, I have no doubt. in this elegant and professional gallery stem frorn that: I live with art around me and in books and in my daily work, I have close contact with artists and know a lot about why and how they work. In short, I care incessantly about art, even more than I care about music and literature, arid I trust in that intimacy.
You too may be an active art person. You are surely a visitor to the exhibition, and it is this second you I am addressing here, perhaps quite unnecessarily, Please do not look at the works on show in order to bless or blame them. Start from the assumption that they are all blessed, and don't keep asking yourself whether you like them or not. Art does not exist to be judged immediately. In sport we recognize success from numerical results (and then worry about whether the ball crossed the line or not). There are no such yardsticks for art.
Each exhibit was chosen for good reasons, and you might like to speculate what they, may have been, If you find that something appeals to you or doesn't appeal, try to decide what it is in each of them that produced this response. Each picture offers many relevant aspects to consider: its subject if any, its size and presence, the way design, colour and execution (neat or rough) affect that sense of presence, the general character of its message, e,g. peaceful and generous versus tough and challenging of ourselves and our ideas about art. I hope you will be made to feel acquisitive and perhaps buy something, but whether it would do well over your fireplace or go with the curtains is not art I s prime concern or virtue. Not all art means to please.
You might also like to consider why, when we keep being told that painting is dead, it thrives to this day. I have some arguments with which to support the fact (as it seems to me) that pictures are an art form that fits well into our lives, enriching experience and enlarging understanding. As a visitor to this exhibition you may well agree with me about this, but in stew of the now quite old antagonism to painting you may like to think in what waYs these pictures add to your life.
Sculptures, too, of course: an interesting and possibly beautiful sculpture is a wonderful thing and calls for amazing abilities and resources from the artist. How do young and unestablished sculptors cope) Here there are only a few; but not many more were sent in. Pictures demand our attention only when we offer it; sculptures sometimes demand it, plucking at our elbows when they are not kicking our ankles. The American painter Ad Reinhardt said decades ago that sculpture is what we fall over as we step back to admire a painting. But sculpture by, say, Caro or David Nash or Rachel Whiteread? Ideally sculpture calls for separate displaying, particularly when it is sculpture in 'real space', as people say, as opposed to being on stage-like bases and pedestals. We don't mind pictures on walls. Sculpture on the floor challenges our sense of territory like improperly parked cars. But do cross the threshold this implies: the few sculptures on show here were chosen with confidence.
Norbert Lynton 2005
