 |
| Four female subjects; one woman artist |
A mad dash around Tate Britain yesterday left me agreeing with the
various critics who have come out in support of the new rehang. The building does indeed feel lighter, cleaner and more spacious, and the artworks feel more like national treasures as a result. There's something peculiar going on in the central hall involving rather alarming groaning noises but I'll have to go back and investigate as time was short.
The rehang has been praised as reactionary, but while there is an old-fashioned feel to the whole thing - no info panels, hooray! - I'm not sure this is right. I started off my tour with the spirit of John Berger at my side, lamenting the excessive numbers of rich men in fancy clothes - not to mention that terrible painting of the
blushing maid with the melon, surely a candidate for a long spell in Tate Storage.
Things became more interesting as the 19th century opened up. How fun to see such different pictures next to each other; how great to have a
Constable oil sketch opposite
a finished painting, so you can look back and forth and wonder which gave him greater pleasure or shows his truest feelings. The mid-Victorian room is,
as others have pointed out, a bit of a nightmare, with some much-loved pictures hung so high you'd need to hire a cherry picker to look at them properly.
Tate's highly-qualified curatorial team may have got off lightly in terms of label-writing, but they've still given us a carefully edited version of British art history. We're clearly meant to pay more attention to Nevinson and Gertler, for instance, than to some of the Pre-Raphaelites. And we're asked - without actually being asked - to look again at the role of women in art. It's unfortunate that not all the work is the artist's best, with Frances Hodgkins for one represented by a very odd picture, but there are some lovely moments where the juxtaposition of different pieces encourages a bit of independent thought.
My favourite of these is shown above: three classic visions of women as seen by men, and one self-portrait. We have a lovely girl playing
Eve, leaving Eden in disgrace, and
a woman sitting meaningfully before a mirror (in which the artist is reflected), and a naked woman looking modest
in a black hat - all, incidentally, beautiful and sensitive representations. Above them, gazing out over the gallery, is
Gwen John. She isn't symbolising anything. She is neither beautiful nor ashamed. She is a serious person endeavouring perhaps to understand something of her life and condition through self-scrutiny. It isn't at all clear what she has learnt.
