Retrospective: Looking At Art

What should you be doing in an art gallery, other than visiting the toilets, the bookshop and the little cafe (assuming it comes complete with these features)? I first started visiting galleries in my late teens and then, and ever since, I've never been entirely comfortable with my behaviour in these hallowed halls, never quite sure I'm doing the right thing, whatever that is. Now I'm old enough not to be all that bothered by the question (not having any great concern at all with right things as far as art is concerned), but visiting numerous galleries with Fifi and Fafa in hand did make me wonder ever so slightly if I were a good role model on their premises.

The problem is that as far as I can see there's just too much art to look at. This is true even of small galleries, but when it comes to places like the Louvre and Tate Modern the excess is so overwhelming that I find myself wondering whether I'm seriously expected to do anything close to justice to their contents. So what do you leave out? And what do you do regarding the stuff you are going to seriously look at? Give it one, two minutes? Stand up close? Pull back? Look at details?

What I have discovered recently is that I can absolutely lose myself in a painting or sculpture or even one of those installation thingies if I choose to. Choosing to depends on the piece in question having some kind of basic 'pull' for me. But if it has, and time is available, I can immerse myself for minutes at a time in a kind of meditative reverie. For some reason this gives me the feeling I am responding appropriately, but the process has little connection with any kind of intellectualised evaluation. In fact, it feels entirely and satisfyingly primitive. I suppose staring in this manner, which is what it amounts to, might make me appear formidably artistic, but equally I might just appear terribly short-sighted.

Another technique we adopted as a group - me, Noi and the kids - was to wander for a few minutes round a room and then vote for what we liked best. Childish, but it helped to focus the mind. The remarkable thing was how often two, three or four of us were in agreement and sort of knew which pieces the others would choose. It was also remarkable how often it was the more abstract 'modern' pieces which garnered the votes. I grew up at a time when 'ordinary' people still needed convincing that techniques other than basic realism were worthy of note (at least, that's what the papers said.) Yet the girls do not have the slightest difficulty in responding to 'puzzling' material. Fafa, for example, turned out to be an Andy Warhol fan. I don't recall them asking once what anything meant. Rather fortunate for me, as I don't think I'd have been able to answer.