The York Art Gallery

 

Grayson Perry, Melanie, 2014

Having responsibility for an art gallery is something of a challenge these days. When I visit a gallery with a permanent collection, such as York, I imagine the curators having sleepless nights about how to present it. Outside, the world is shouting (quite rightly) for equal rights, sexual equality, political justice, much which seem to be diametrically opposed to many of the works in the collection. Like most galleries, York has plenty of old paintings: a Saint Sebastian with arrows through him, a St Barbara being whipped, a male model strung up with cords, and so on – not the kind of images you would want to present without some explanation. How does a gallery deal with this challenge?

York Art Gallery’s response is quite dramatic. The main gallery is largely handed to members of the York LGBT community, who appear to have chosen the paintings displayed and added captions to them. A second room devoted to paintings is entitled “Treasures from the Stores”, although it includes some of the best-known pictures from the collection. Finally, a couple of big rooms are allocated to the ceramics collection, a highlight of the collection. 

When it comes to ceramics, you feel the curators breathe a sigh of relief. I didn’t see any pots with arrows stuck in them, and you would think that for the most part ceramics are sufficiently abstract for them to cause no offence. There was a quiet, contemplative feel about the ceramics galleries that is welcome; one wall, the Wall of Women, was dedicated to female artists. The almost homely feel was greatly helped by the lovely display of the Anthony Shaw collection, over 1,000 pieces, displayed in what feels like a domestic environment, with rugs, a fireplace and mantelpiece. The individual works are not captioned, although with a bit of detective work you can find out who did what. Overall, there is a warm feeling to the space. 

York Art Gallery is distinctive for its collection of contemporary ceramics, which, they say, is unequalled in the UK. It’s certainly one of the most imaginative presentations, something like Kettle’s Yard for porcelain. 

As for the paintings, you feel the gallery curators are almost embarrassed by their collection. As a gesture, they invited local gay people to select paintings from the collection and to add their comments alongside. 

Many of the captions seem to be determined to read things into the picture that do not seem warranted by the work itself. For example, one gay commentator claims that Anna Hudson’s The Visitor “is representing her own reality as a queer individual … the figure’s obscured facial features suggest a struggle with identity”. Well, it may be, but Sickert, Hudson’s contemporary, painted many figures with obscured faces, and we don’t immediately jump to similar conclusions about them. 

My final example of imaginative over-readings of a painting things is Composition, by John Banting. This work is a kind of still-life: a depiction of a classical bearded head (stated to be Greek in the caption, but could equally be Roman), a couple of mussel shells, plus a blackboard with an upturned squiggle. Out of this the commentator suggests “Does Banting long for Greece and its queer, starlit beaches?” Difficult to imagine, from the work in front of us. 

Of course, the main thing is that galleries are visited. There was a healthy number of people visiting the gallery on the Saturday afternoon when we were there, and they represented a wide range of ages – both a good sign. There was a tiny but inviting café, and a shop selling very interesting ceramics. All in all, a satisfying experience. Even though I never worked out why the medieval painter should focus on St Barbara was being whipped, I did enjoy Grayson Perry’s Melanie: a lovely, rounded figure, full of joie de vivre. 

Do we care what William Blake means?

 

Blake, Newton (1795) (Tate)

What are we to make of William Blake? The author of some of the most famous lines of English poetry; the creator of some of the best-known images in art (Newton, Glad Day). Yet his work seems to many like a locked chest of mystical texts full of cryptic allusions, which literary specialists attempt laboriously to elucidate and to decipher (Northrop Frye spent ten years writing his 462-page book on William Blake, and his book is still regarded as one of the essential books on the artist and poet).

Do we all need to spend years trying to make sense of Blake’s visions? The current exhibition at the Fitzwilliam, Blake’s Universe (2024), tries to present Blake in his contemporary setting. The curators make it clear that they struggle to understand much of his writing and allusions, so they are by no means full Blake believers. Their approach seems to be as follows.

Blake, for them, was just one of many European artists and thinkers who saw history in chiliastic terms, and who attempted to reconcile (or to reintroduce) Christianity with history, often in a mystical fashion. Blake might have been mad, in other words, but so were plenty of others around the time of the French Revolution.

The problems start with the best-known images: what do they mean? For me, and perhaps for many other contemporary viewers, Blake’s art at its best conveys a dynamism and power that are unique for the art of his day. His Newton (1795), not in the exhibition, is an example: it is the basis of the popular image of the scientist. For me, there is something wonderfully vital and alive in the image of Newton carrying out his scientific experiments. Yet for Blake, this image of Newton represented, according to the introduction to the catalogue by Esther Chadwick, “a narrow concern with … ‘Vegetative and Generative Nature’ (the material world) … as opposed to imaginative inner vision (connected with faith in Christ, ‘regeneration’, and eternal life”). That sounds pretty negative to me. Presumably Blake wanted us to condemn Newton; yet Eduardo Paolozzi, creating a work of public art at the entrance to the British Library, replicates Blake’s figure, but now as a sculpture celebrating the way Newton changed the way we see the world. 

Eduardo Paolozzi, Newton (1995) British Library, London

When I look at this work, I don’t believe we are expected to condemn Newton every time we enter the British Library, but to feel somewhat in awe of him. I don’t imagine the Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, at the University of Cambridge, were delivering a rebuke to Newton for his narrow attitudes when they accepted Paolozzi’s donation of the model for his sculpture. I can think of few examples of an artist’s meaning being diametrically reversed in this way.

This switch from negative to positive is, I think, rather telling. At this exhibition, I looked at the famous images by Blake, yet as far as I could see, I may well have been reading Blake, like Paolozzi, in the opposite way to that intended. The images are powerful and attention-grabbing, but what exactly do they mean? Do we know what they mean, and are we bothered when they turn out to mean something very different to what we think they signify?

Blake, Europe: a Prophecy, Frontispiece (1794)

One of the other most famous images by Blake, the frontispiece to his Prophecy Europe, seems to be similarly misinterpreted. Again, there is a pair of dividers. According to the curators “Urizen [Blake’s name for the Creator] is seen with a pair of dividers, his head beneath the line of his shoulders, emphasising his cramped, inward-looking materialistic vision.”

For me, this image represents one of the most successful responses to the  challenge of how to express creativity, an almost impossible task for artists to convey. I think it is a thrilling image. I’d like to ask visitors to the exhibition what they think of it, and if they agree with the curators’ view (and with Blake’s view). Do we like Blake for the pictures, without worrying too much about what he meant? Perhaps, if this is true, Blake can take his rightful place in a museum of art, which is, after all, a collection of great images celebrating outmoded ideas no longer taken seriously.