Eleanor MacFarlane: 500 Years of British Art

I was fortunate recently in my reviewing to attend the press preview of the rehang of work at Tate Britain. There was a talk and walk through with curators - so privileged!
This is the review, but as always there is more to say:

http://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2013/05/13/500-years-of-british-art-at-tate-britain-exhibition-review/

It was pertinent to see and consider this in the light of the recent group crit about the history of art, and James Elkins' rejigging of those ideas:

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/group-seminar-student-led.html

I thought is was especially interesting that Tate Britain have gone this way since their counterparts at Tate Modern seem to be going increasingly the other way. I was at TM recently to see a show, and felt very put off by all the other parts, and the mediated titles. Everything is themed, and I really felt all the pleasure of discovery was bullied out.

TB have spent three years on planning the rehang, and eight months actually rearranging. Of course, everything there is still highly curated and chosen, but they have built in more of a feeling of randomness and happenstance, and allowed us as viewers to make connections. As said in the review, they have loosened the grip of art movements, and are showing work by chronological order, showing the diversity of concurrent art which has always existed.

Then, as now, many artists have not been part of some great brotherhood. The TB rehang shows up how galleries usually display art as if what artists serve is art history, rather than art, or their ideas, or artistic expression. Being a chapter or a footnote in art history has been the criteria of worth, but let us look at our own practices' in that light. What do we serve - a hope that someone somewhere will see something in our work that could be slotted in to the prevailing narrative of art history, or something much more immediate and personal, and driven from within.

Art education is very much about contextualising practice in the light of art history - after all, there is so very much of it, it is the history of ideas in a complex society. But we practice art, mainly, not merely by commenting upon the great debate, but by following inner vision and the impulse towards personal meaning. So often artists, writers, musicians, who are a little out of step, who have a highly personal voice or an individual obsession, can become marginalised in the grand sweep up of art historical contextualising.

And yes, so often those artists will be women. Even in this century, with all the undeniable advances in our society, and the possibilities and advances in womens' lives, it is still a struggle to combine children and work, family and artwork. Or rather, these things do happen, but it is hard to make it fit with the way the rest of the world works.

I want to see that art, hear that music, read those books. I want to make that art, write that music, write those books. It's not about being in the history books, it's about having a creative life.