MY MUSEOLOGY

[Digital media consistently use images from Twombly's Untitled/ Bacchus series as illustrative content to accompany stories about the money dispute with the Twombly Foundation. They put me in mind of the violent sea (an unsurprising association if one considers the artist's Hero and Leandro inter alia), turned red like that horrific scene in Lord of the Flies following the fall of Piggy, or photographs I think I remember of unreal-red, carmine seas, dyed with the blood of whale-hunting. Additions to the dispute story have been in the press today, and so I think the world's emphasising value .] Courtauld's Picasso exhibition is tiny, comprised of two rooms or a vestibule and a room in which are hung 19 or so paintings. The arrangement is systematic and logical, although I must confess to having been influenced by the large-print booklet of the painting labels, which I always pick up because I feel awkward standing too long trying to read and consider what they say wh...

We always perceive the infinitude of a moment, but we cannot capture it, which made this exhibition seem appetising. Naturally, to say this contradicts some important thinking on perception -- the name Merleau-Ponty looms forth -- and so what I mean exceeds the literal. Being present for a moment, part of its simultaneity, is partially to absorb it and to experience its energy or presentness: this is to be present to the moment in its infinitude, not to apprehend the impossible totality of it. Infinite is infinite. This exhibition claims to explore this complex between the presentness of a performed moment and its representation. And so, when we look at the David Hockney , the jarring of stillness and action creates the overall energy of the piece. The instant after the dive is artistically (gesturally, figuratively) captured upon the canvas. This painting of an action after the performance of it aligns perfectly with the ethos of the exhibition, and, of course,  A Bigger Splash ...

Writing without a brief is liberating, but I wonder if it's not also indulgent.  By 'Auto-Impression' I meant a sketch of my reactions to the Ladder of Escape , seeing it a second time round.  But the value of that is questionable: if I want readers to derive something other than my opinions from this blog, it has to be my opinions framed within intentions .  To this end, I shall write about the growing sense of liberation one can discern in the Miró exhibition's paintings. The precision of the architectural depiction in Mont-roig, the Church and the Village and The Farm became startlingly apparent to me today.  Having woken up to this, I think I started to find Miró's attention to detail and meticulousness more prominent, especially with regard to the Constellations series, but the pastel drawings and 'neons' on copper are also treated with an artistic exactitude of some force.  If one considers The Ladder of Escape (1940), the way the figures' eye...

The BBC recently showed a programme on The Freud Museum in its Behind the Scenes at the Museum series.  The Freud Museum in Hampstead has employed a new director to increase the number of visitors, and as part of her reimagining of the institution she would like to make some of the display notices less dense and more accessible to those who have very little or no knowledge of Freud and the history of psychoanalysis. It wasn't the approach that caught my attention as much as the response of another member of staff, who claimed that people don't want things to be simple and that in the end it is complexity that fascinates.  My difficulty here is that I would be pro-simplification if it would increase museum participation and in the process extend general access to the subjects of Freud and psychoanalysis.  Although ultimately people may seek complexity, isn't it only after a process of having gained knowledge in some form or another, usually starting off simply, that the...

Are museums always or necessarily spaces of commemoration?  Just a thought that went through my mind as I walked past the Florence Nightingale Museum today.