by Celia Sage.
It was one of those blinding flashes of the obvious....
For a pursuit based traditionally so largely on the OBJECT, the business
of selling art is as dependent on location, image and ambience as any other.
I was reminded vividly of this the other day when I decided to replace a
faded print on one of my walls with one of my own paintings that had come
home after knocking about from venue to venue for some time. I was uncertain
about the painting in the first place but decided to give it a chance within
the walls of my own home. After I hung the thing and came back into the
room, I saw it -- literally -- in a new light. Formerly always seen in scrupulously
neutral conditions, it now looked entirely different in a room and on a
wall whose colours and lighting were sympathetic to the mood of the work.
It was as though it needed the rest of the room to be complete. Context,
it seems, is important.
All too often context is overlooked when art is displayed, or at least it
runs second to other factors. Usually, this is for perfectly valid economical
reasons. Obviously, when a gallery shows work in a variety of styles, neutrality
is a democratic principle. Probably, none of the artwork is shown to its
absolute best advantage, but at least there is an even playing field. In
fact, I wonder if sometimes we create, either consciously or unconsciously,
work to fit within a neutral setting. It might be interesting to display
the work in the messy studio environment, informed with the artist's palette
of colours and the light in which the work was created.
This notion of having art works as objects in splendid isolation is by no
means sacrosanct as installation artists have gone to great pains to demonstrate
in recent decades. Art of all the great traditions has been enhanced by,
and often even depended on, its context: visual, aural, even olfactory.
Think of the great Byzantine mosaics in their dim, incensed churches; think
of the play of Mediterranean sun on Greek statuary in its context of busy
temple/market. Think of the warmth great portraiture acquires when hung
in the intimacy of a historic dwelling. In all of these cases, the full
impact of the work is dependent upon its setting. Isolated in museums, they
are impressive but perhaps lack much of their life.
Seeing my orphan painting acquire a new life on my dining room wall led
me to consider the hitherto unthinkable. I had always pretty well gone along
with the thinking that showing one's work through an interior decorator
meant having one's creativity harnesed to the demands of wall size and fashions
in upholstery (although I've never been convinced that SOME limitation to
the form art takes is necessarily bad -- there's a very good case to be
made that such constraints can actually refine and enhance creativity --
examples cited above, for instance). But a good decorator, after all, does
more than just assemble furnishings in the latest colours -- she creates
an environment, a mood, perhaps even makes a visual statement (there's a
point to ponder next time we set about to define "artist"....).
Showing some judiciously chosen pieces on her walls just might be the way
to help them find a place where they're at home. I think I'll call her this
week.