Readers respond to an article in which Isabel Brooks described feeling overwhelmed by the number of artworks on displayOf course Isabel Brooks is right, and it is very easy to get indigestion when visiting a large gallery (The hill I will die on: Let me tell you the one big problem with art galleries. There’s too much art, 30 May). No one attending a banquet of hundreds of delicious dishes would attempt to sample them all. Self-discipline is needed in both cases. In Britain we must count ourselves lucky that access to our major galleries is free, so there is no discouragement to going often, but for a shorter time. Special exhibitions of a particular artist or group, where works are brought together from around the world, are of course different – there the comparison of an artist’s development through his or her life justifies a longer focus on all the works.Having said that, I would agree that the most satisfying galleries are the smaller ones – for example the Frick Collection in New York or the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. But even at the latter, when we took our nine-year-old granddaughter there, we invited her to look at just one painting, Rembrandt’s Girl at a Window. She subsequently drew her version of it and there is no doubt that that wonderful little painting will now be in her visual memory for life.
Peregrine Bryant
London Continue reading...
