NPG one year on

Exactly one year ago today I made a visit to the National Portrait Gallery in London. Business currently takes me frequently to Leicester Square, where the nearby NPG makes a delightful stopover. I sometimes allow myself an hour or so there, in quest of inspiration. Seldom do I not find it in one way, shape or form.

Rosetta II was one of the paintings included in a recent exhibition of work by Jenny Saville. Unlike many of Saville's portraits, the gaze is not directed to the viewer, perhaps because the sitter is a young woman with profound blindness.

My visit on November 25, 2024, was one such visit. I had planned to spend some time in 'Poets corner,' as I have dubbed it, in an attempt to write something about one of my favourite authors, Mary Shelley, whose portrait hangs there. My peaceful contemplation of her image was, however, disturbed by another visitor and so I decided to go contemplate elsewhere in the museum.

Here is the resulting flash fiction, inspired by the portrait of a bare-knuckle fighter.

Just what is it that inspires us when we look at portraits? Or for that matter when we look up at any art? My view is that, first and foremost, we benefit from something that has nothing to do with art, as such. The clue is in the phrase I just used...

Looking up at Art

When we look at a painting hanging on a wall we tend to straighten up, look up, raise our eyes and our heads to concentrate, if only briefly, on something that has caught our interest. Same as if we had seen a tree, the moon in the sky, a bird fluttering by, an attractive tall building or perhaps even another person we find attractive. Lifting our heads and our eyes also lifts our spirits. It encourages us to open our chest and take a deeper breath. This in turn allows us to ingest a greater volume of air and therefore of energy-giving oxygen. Our eyes absorb more light, muscles and tendons flex. These things in turn boost endorphins and other hormones. The whole result is a massive boost to our life energy, a positive and health giving boost. A boost to our mood, motivation and affirmation of life generally.

Poets corner... see what I mean?

What about the art?

Paintings can be particularly inspiring because they are entirely dependent on the imagination. In order to create a painting, an artist must deploy a huge measure of imagination, in addition to using their skill with a paintbrush and knowledge of technique. Seeing a painting, also exercises our imagination. When you look at a painting, you are looking at the splodges of pigment on paper or other media. What you see is splodges of paint. The rest is all imagined, whether a portrait, a landscape or something more obscure. Indeed, the whole of our visual capability is the product of imagination, as the brain processes the visual clues from the electromagnetic radiation absorbed by light sensitive cells in our eyes. Seeing a painting of a tree, a representation of an object from nature, exercises our imagination even further than seeing a tree would. The higher, creative, functions of our brain must work harder to resolve those paint splodges into an image we can recognise. How much more inspiring would it then be to go look at an abstract work by Pollock, Rothko, or af Klint?

Here is a Drabble that I wrote in 20 minutes on my iPhone, while viewing an exhibition of works by Piet Mondrian and Hilma af Klint, whose portraits are shown in this picture.

On the subject of abstraction, a lot of people I speak to about art will say things like "I don't like modern art" or that they can't see anything in abstract paintings or they think that a messy bed can't be a work of art and that it's all a sham. When I work as a volunteer visitor host at Tate Britain in London, I am sometimes asked for directions to Tate's extensive collection of works by JMW Turner. A popular artist among many but one whose works were described by some of his contemporaries as 'paint flung upon a canvas,' as work 'misleading the taste,' and 'a strange jumble thrown higgledy-piggledy together.' One critic reviewing Snow-Storm, Avalanche and Inundation suggested that calling it a picture "would be an abuse of language."

If you ever get the chance to visit Tate's permanent Turner collection you will also have the chance to see these paintings alongside several by Constable, another artist vilified in his day for his modernistic pretensions and absurd, unnatural approach to painting the natural world. Once you have seen and contemplated the connection between these artists you might be surprised to note the inclusion of a painting by Mark Rothko in a gallery with several of Turner's late works. Yet if you do see this painting and compare it to the Turners hanging near by, you will perhaps appreciate more the meaning of modern art, having seen 250 years of its history all in one place.

Here is another Drabble I wrote, this time about an imaginary meeting of Turner and Rothko, not surprisingly inspired by the very gallery where you will see them both

Another thing some people often say to me is that they are not interested in art or don't want to visit an art exhibition because they don't understand art. In both cases what they say is untrue. How can I possibly know what other people are interested in or want? When anyone goes to another person's house, they will notice family photographs on the shelves and any pictures that are displayed on the walls. Of course they will also look at the pictures in their own homes, will look at paintings and photographs in books, magazines and, of course on social media. We are all intensely interested in pictures and the pictures we notice are the ones that determine our survival. Really? Yes, really. When we see a portrait it reminds us how important people are to our survival. We need people to team up with to find food and shelter, we need people to help produce future generations of our species. We see a landscape, we wonder if this is somewhere it would be safe to live, with no fear of predators or other anxieties.

Art is life, nothing more or less. Paintings represent everything we hold important. Abstract art doubly so because it makes us think about it more, if we think about it at all. Not liking a painting, painter or genre doesn't take away from its importance. Just as much as people we don't like having as much right to exist as those we do like. Among group of people you don't like you could well find your future life partner, if you don't already have one. Or they might be the one person who finds a cure for cancer, or stops a war. Just imagine a few years ago, the idea that President Trump would be the one person to bring about a peace agreement in the Middle East. Hank Kissinger move over.

Back to the question of art. Do you look at art, do you like looking at art, do you find it inspiring? I would suggest that the answer to these questions must surely be yes.