Back in December I remember I posted an item about “slow food” and its more recent adaptation by the BBC to include “slow radio”. I mentioned at the end the idea of “slow art”, by which I had in mind the need to allow one’s work as an artist to develop slowly. The emergence of a good picture might well require quite a long time to take place. To my amazement this morning I heard the BBC broadcast an item on “slow art”.
In fact, I was possibly less prophetic than I at first believed, and certainly would not have benefitted from having copyrighted the term. They meant something rather different, although nevertheless interesting and important.
The radon discussion centred on something I have also observed in this blog some time ago, namely, the superficial attention that is given to art works by people visiting galleries. The estimate given by the interviewee of the time for which an item in a gallery normally holds the attention of a viewer is about 30 seconds. Actually, I think that this might be generous, because I have observed that quite a large proportion of gallery visitors never (or rarely) actually break their stride as they walk around the place. The discussion revolved around a plea that we should all slow down when visiting galleries, and permit ourselves to interrogate each item a little more carefully. The place to begin, of course, is the question we could pose to ourselves as to why the artist set out to paint this particular image. Then, were we expected to respond in a particular way? How has the effect been achieved? And so on. “Slow art”, in their view, meant allowing ourselves time to actually look at the things we encounter in galleries, and not my original plea, that painters should permit ourselves time to allow ideas to develop properly.
I do like this idea of “slow art” as art allowed time to register with us as viewers. This afternoon, however, I was made to ask myself just how far I am prepared to go with this. Today was the opening of the biennial Bradford Open, and I went along with my wife and a friend to see how it shaped up. I did try to put into practice the advice given by the BBC programme, but it was not always easy. I was very happy to spend time looking at the work of a local artist Mahmood Manning. He is a convert to Islam who has taken to working with traditional Islamic motifs. The interesting difference is that this tradition usually produces work that explores regular patterns. Mahmood’s innovation, however, is to introduce irregularity and development into his patterns, to great effect. You are never sure that you have actually cracked the code, and apart from anything else my mind boggles at the thought that he cannot work with a regular grid or matrix. I need to go back again to spend plenty of time with his work. Just what is going on? Knowing Mahmood also, I wonder about the theological implications of what he is doing.
It is not invariably the case, however, that time spent looking at work is worthwhile, and I regret to say that there are some artists whose work doesn’t actually repay any additional time you spend looking at it. Of course, the message of the “slow art” idea is that you can’t be sure of that until you have actually given it time.