Real Families: More about the captions than the pictures

 

Alice Neel, Nancy and Olivia: "the fierce protectiveness of mothers, and an infant's feelings of security in being held". 
 

Perhaps it is the me generation finally reaching the hallowed territory of the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Fitz usually has exhibitions on standard art-history topics, such as, in recent years, plein-air landscape, and Degas; here, in contrast, is an exhibition, Real Families: Stories of Change, which comprises around 100 images related to families, and curated by an academic, not an art historian. The classical stuff is there, of course: the exhibition opens with an 18th-century family portrait, and includes a Durer woodcut, and a Poussin. But I as a viewer felt there was a very clear distinction between the traditional and the modern pieces. These are the focus of the exhibition; many of the works date from the 21st century, and they include photographs, audio and video clips. The difference between the two groups is very plain: the modern stuff is about me. The artist depicts their own situation as the subject. The older works are about classical or Biblical themes, or portraits: they make no claim to be self-referential. 

Admittedly, there are a few works that fall slightly between these two extremes: Winifred Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, for example, but we are invited in this exhibition to see these artists as honorary members of the self-exploration club. 

The focus on self is not the only distinction between the two groups of exhibits. For the modern works, the focus on the message and situation was, I felt, more important than the aesthetics. I walked past an exquisite Virgin and Child, where I admired the quality of execution, the pattern, the arrangement. It was a satisfying composition in its own right. For the newer content, in contrast, well, Jane’s comment sums it up: “it was more about the captions than the pictures”. The captions provided the interpretation, how you were supposed to respond to the work. In some cases, it would have been difficult to respond the work at all without the help of the caption. 

Perhaps this is not surprising, given the background to the show. It is curated by Susan Golombok, an Cambridge academic, whose subject is child psychology and family relations. She opens the catalogue by describing how overwhelmed she was to see in the Tate Gallery a mixed media sculptural assembly of a grieving father with two young children (a piece by Cathy Wilkes, not in this exhibition). It conveyed the feelings she encountered every day in her professional work. “To me, the desolate father and vulnerable children … summed up decades of psychological research on the effects of parents’ adversity on their children. But unlike academic research, it went straight to the heart” [catalogue, page 9] 

In other words, for Golombok, it’s the story that counts, not the quality of the execution. It’s more about the captions than about the objects. For Golombok, 

Artists are uniquely placed to translate their internal representations of family to the outside world.

This text (which I assume is by Golombok) is displayed as an introduction to one of the exhibition rooms; I didn’t find it in the catalogue. It’s a remarkable claim; why should artists have unique insight? Does that invalidate autobiography? What about fiction? Yet is it on the basis of this statement that the exhibition has been compiled. 

My traumas – but not those of others

As you might expect from someone who founded and is Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, Golombok’s interest is in families. But the impression I got from the exhibition was of the artist and their trauma, without reference to the others involved. For her, personal and family traumas are to be, well, almost celebrated - and in this exhibition, to be interpreted in just one way. One of the two artists she singles out as being especially moving for her, Stuart Pearson Wright, describes how he discovered he was fathered by a sperm donor rather than the man he believed to be his father. He has since devoted his life to tracking down his father and indeed meeting the donor. Now, I’m sure this might be very meaningful for the artist, but what about the donor? If you as a donor donate sperm to help families who could otherwise not conceive have children, do you expect to be confronted by your offspring twenty years later? I don’t think that would be a pleasant experience, and indeed could cause great suffering for the donor: I am pretty sure the donor did not sign up to meet the children he fathered by this method. 

One photograph shows what appears to be a celebration, with adults and children. The caption reads: “Not too long ago, my father had another child. I should be happy for him, but watching him play with her, feels like a bruise someone keeps pressing”. 

Here is an example of a photograph that could be interpreted in many ways. The caption imposes one interpretation, and we know nothing of the others involved. Are we expected to judge this as a work of art? Are we supposed to take the artist’s view as the only interpretation? 

I won’t let this trauma define me

This exhibition focuses exclusively on the former group, and the art is the depiction of that trauma. In this case, many of the artists define themselves and their work by their experience in families: donor child, single parents, step-sibling, gay parent, and so on. What about those people who go through similar experiences, but don’t talk about it? Does that make them less valid? What about those in the same situation who didn’t create artworks? Do they not count? After all, as we are told, artists are "uniquely placed". 

Didactic captions

For many of the objects, the captions are very clear indeed about how you should interpret the situation. I am sorry to say that many of those captions struck me as very didactic and one-sided, ignoring the views of other characters in the scene. 

For example, Ishbel Myerscough painted a life-size collective portrait of her family, including her partner and children, All, 2016. The caption to the painting states: 

Ishbel Myerscough’s portrait of her family shows a time when they were particularly close-knit. She reflected: “I see my daughter growing into an uncanny reflection of my younger self, same hair, wearing my old clothes. Life is full of echoes.” Family ties remain important for adolescents, providing them with a foundation for entry into the adult world.

Whose interpretation is this? There are five people in the painting, but only one view in the caption. I feel sorry for children when they get little opportunity to speak, and certainly not here. Did the children agree to this wording? Did they agree to be represented? I assume the caption is authored by the artist, but why does she have the right to present her interpretation exclusively? 

It made me very uncomfortable to see several photographs with tendentious captions like the above: this is a happy child. These are people suffering. Without the caption, we might not have known; and these are images selected and interpreted by the photographer. Family photos, of the kind the are seen on office desks, are often of children in moments of happiness. Or what purports to be happiness: we don't know. In my opinion, family photos of the children having fun may well be intrusions into the private world of the child, and should not be commandeered by parents as a statement of a relationship that tells you more about the parent than the child. 

Quality vs message

Unfortunately, the quality of much of the contemporary work is lacking. These works, if they appeal, have an interest by their situation, and frankly I don’t go to an art exhibition only to find out about people’s family situation. I want the artist to convince me that their situation is moving, is relevant, and that requires some artistic skill. 

Of course, this interpretation of the exhibition is somewhat simplistic. There are some modern works where the quality of execution is stunning. Lucien Freud’s depiction of his mother, for example, has some remarkably detailed clothing. The caption ignores the textiles, and simply states that the artist couldn’t bear to see his mother looking at him. But we don’t learn much detail about Freud; in fact, the artists themselves get a surprisingly good press. The revelations about Freud since his death reveal him to be one of the most heartless and, frankly, abusive in his relationship with women – but none of that is mentioned here. There is a picture of Ben Nicholson with his eldest child. The caption states that he soon afterwards left Winifred for Barbara Hepworth – but he still visited the children regularly, so that’s alright, I suppose. No mention of how Winifred brought up the children by herself. There is no text by Winifred Nicholson about her situation in the exhibition; just the pictures. Perhaps she felt the pictures themselves were justification enough to be looked at. We simply don’t know. The information here seems remarkably selective. 

Another exception to the outline above is Paula Rego. My simple artistic quality versus obsession with self breaks down a little here. For Rego drew and painted fairy tales, fictional stories, but also depicted figures from her surroundings. Crucially, however, her work is stunning, and her quality of execution draws us into the stories she depicts.  

Humour

Grayson Perry is represented by a beautiful vase. On looking closely at the vase, you can see it is full of references to his own childhood, including his teddy bear, Alan Measles. The vase is well executed, and is satisfying in its own right, before you notice the teddy bear and the other subject matter from Perry's childhood.

While I was at the exhibition, a father taking his child around pointed out the teddy bear –“Look!  It’s a teddy!”. The presence of a teddy bear injected a note of humour into the show, which was noticeably absent elsewhere.  I don’t think there would have been much else for children in this show. This show is intended very much for adults being told how to interpret and to come to terms with their own experiences – and traumas, if they have them. The caption leaves no room for doubt about what this vase means: “ 'Vase Using My Family' presents Perry’s strong family unit. He found that being a father raised questions about his own childhood”.

To conclude: the subject matter of art is of course important, but when the subject matter replaces the art, or, in the words of Jackie Wullschläger, when an exhibition attempts to “erode differences between activism and art”, the results are rarely successful. The exhibition could have been far more impressive with better art.