Thoughts From The Tate Britain : 14/7/18

By Lucy Harbron - 16:15


"There's something calming about galleries that goes beyond clean painted walls and soft silence. It's nice to just wander, falling into groups with strangers unspeaking, standing around, and feeling everyone thinking to themselves or sharing intellect quietly, casually with a friend. It's one of my favourite places to eavesdrop, intercepting thoughts, considerations beyond gossip, two old people: the woman speaking confidently of the brush strokes of Lucien Fraud, the man rolls reminiscent off his tongue with effortless ease like it drips. But other than that, quiet; appreciating things with no need for validation. I think mainly there's so much comfort in a crowd admiring the product of struggle. I stood with five others in front of the work of Frances Bacon, work that is so full of pain and anguish and emotions that I can't name and many will never experience, but we're all admiring the outcome of that, a testiment to the survival. Maybe that's even why we like it so much, or respect it enough to hang it here, pick lighting to best suit, and pay thousands to preserve it, we all want this proof of survival of pain, of hardship becoming something worthwhile thats physical and understandable beyond an ungraspable sense of growing strength within. It's strangely intimate really, to go around with people you've never met and have no desire to speak to, accidentally observing at the same pace, strangely intimate to share in the witnessing of human resilience and the merit of it, leading to the creation of this, in front of us, the painting you pause at the longest, walk closer to look for evidence of the artist, for reassurance, they felt this, they made this, and it was a blessing in the end."

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