10.5920/shibusa.05 73 Chapter Five Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens

Developing a new series of works can often germinating. Untitled #11 comprises bold, present a ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma whereby sweeping networks of scribbled, visceral lines which it is not clear whether it is the tools – informal irregular ‘grids’ that suggest natural selected that will steer a work’s development structures, for example a spider’s web. This or whether an imagined concept will suggest irregular ‘membrane’ carves through and the choice of tools. One of the most graphic across other more solid and coherent shapes examples of how a tool might change – and forms within the work. It appears, dramatically – an artist’s practice is the therefore, that the quintessential component – relationship of Jackson Pollock with a stick: the trigger – that would jettison these existing qualities into a new and very dramatic Sometimes I use a brush but often prefer methodology was the taking up of the stick as using a stick. Sometimes I pour the paint the conveyor of viscous paint, via the element straight out of the can. I like to use a of air and marked by Pollock’s personal dripping fluid paint. I also use sand, rhythm of time, creating the action paintings broken glass, pebbles, string, nails, or for which he is renowned. As Pollock stated, other foreign matter.1 ‘A method of painting is a natural growth out of a need. I want to express my feelings rather In film footage of Pollock taken by Hans than illustrate them’.2 Namuth in the 1950s, he can be seen hovering A great shift takes place at the moment over his large floor-based canvases like a bee when Pollock departs from the artistic over a flower. Neither hand, brush nor stick conventions of transformation techniques; makes direct contact with the canvas, but where drawing (pattern and line) is ‘freed from the rhythmic relationship between painter the function of bounding shape … thereby and the terrain of the large canvas performs a creating a new kind of space’.3 Philip Leider powerful, magnetic choreography. Physically discusses Pollock’s process in relation to how separate, the dynamic resides in the space it influenced artists such as Stella (although between them. Seconds lapse before paint hits through substantially different methodologies): the canvas – the point at which an arm concludes its arc, the moment when the stick You could visualize the picture being made is withdrawn. – there were just no secrets. It was amazing Full Fathom Five (1947, oil on canvas how much energy was freed by this with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes bluntness, this honesty, this complete and matches) seems to signal Pollock’s obviousness of the process by which the breakthrough into action painting, although picture was made.4 Free Form (1946, oil on canvas) with its liquid splatters, and even earlier engravings such as In these ‘all-over’ paintings, line is Untitled #11 (1944–5) suggest that a new no longer outline: ‘It did not mark contours route of expression through physical gesture or define edges’ states art critic Robert and articulation was already in place albeit Hughes.5 Pollock was conscious about 10.5920/shibusa.05

Extracting Beauty Shibusa Extracting 74 getting away from conventions of drawing and applying paint to canvas. The likelihood that painting, describing how his paintings had no hardened, damaged and distorted brushes may beginning and no end and that ‘they have a life refuse ‘take up’ of a reasonable ‘load’ of paint of their own’. would seem a negative trait, yet, in reality, the Pollock’s relationship with stick, paint result was a series of lines yielded through the and canvas frees itself from historical and unforgiving nature of hardened brush hairs theoretical boundaries. His paintings place that forced separation of paint into a series of him as man in a moment of time – like a parallel lines of uneven width. The same was dancing shaman with his rattle, he steps out true of not loading the brush at all but of the rational and distanced observer-maker allowing it to plough its way through a role of artist into a world where the physical, painted surface. The effect of ‘cutting through’ demonstrative, atavistic life force dances to its and dispersing paint into parallel lines nods in own rhythm. the direction of linear katagami stencil formats. Moreover, while traversing the On their short flight to the canvas, the painting, occasional nodules of built-up paint skeins and spatters of paint acquired a collect and drop along these lines. Again, this singular grace. The paint laid itself in arcs is reminiscent of the strange cut effects made and loops, as tight as the curve of a trout- by stencil artisans, which, through an overall cast. What Pollock’s hand did not know, linear pattern, may introduce optical contrast the laws of fluid motion made up for.6 through circular ‘blobs’ left uncut. Adkins states that although the sounds In Chapter 1 Adkins introduced the wrought from the broken piano were of value, fundamental models on which our work these initial forays in distorted piano sounds developed: directed him, ultimately, towards the clarinet, which, he determined ‘acts as the grey research of Japanese objects (kimonos, that ties the different colours together’, katagami stencils, dysfunctional tools and he characterises the three registers of the and instruments); instrument into (lower) purple, (mid) green philosophy (shibui); and (high) yellow. process (the skills of repetition and Two aspects emerge from this. First, that rehearsal of the artisan and colour it is unlikely Adkins would have ultimately perceptions and use). selected the clarinet for this series of works had he not identified earlier with the broken Each of these three models offered, piano and perceived qualities in it that led him individually, a vast array of possibilities to think about those of the clarinet. At the and approaches. same time, my experimentation with what may be considered redundant brushes – Objects seemingly useless objects – created a general awareness of what traits they were still able to Two surprising areas of commonality in offer and led to their reassignment as ‘useful’ our research revealed themselves: first, a tools. This, in turn led to looking at other shared yet unplanned decision to experiment seemingly useless objects; for example, a piece with broken or damaged objects; and second, of plastic from some discarded computer a coincidence of colour attribution. In terms packaging that had comb-like qualities. By of the former, Adkins had acquired a piano manufacturing clones of this object, each with with substantial damage, and in the winter varying arrangements of ‘teeth’, it changed the months of 2010 plucked and preserved its way paint was applied to canvas – the process tremulous euphonics. At the same time, of drawing slowed down. I spent many hours dysfunctional and damaged brushes were put pulling brushes and combs across surfaces, to use in my painting studio, to investigate through a range of different paint mediums quintessential qualities they might reveal when of varying consistency and viscosity. 10.5920/shibusa.05 5Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens 75

Figure 5.2 Dickens, Shibusa series – The Offing, 2011, oil on canvas, 41 × 46 cm. © Pip Dickens 10.5920/shibusa.05 Extracting Beauty Shibusa Extracting 76 1 4

5 2

6 3

Figure 5.3 Dickens, Shibusa series – Composition #2, 2011, 51.5 × 66 cm: sequential development of the painting (left column) 1, 2 and 3, (right column) 4, 5 and detail from the finished work. © Pip Dickens

Whether, ultimately, a dysfunctional brush pulling these tools across the ground of the was used for a particular painting or not, the painting were periods of calm and quiet value was in the slowing down of time and exploration – often mesmeric. It would be easy reappraising (and appreciating) what can be to make comparisons with the repeated raking done with very little. The results were forays of sand and stone in the Japanese rock (zen) into works whose linear qualities are garden, although in fact the comparison has extraordinarily subtle, barely perceptible been made in hindsight. (see Figures 5.2 and 5.3). Days spent slowly 10.5920/shibusa.05

The second, exciting, coincidence was which is quiet and subdued’.7 Shibusa, as Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens 77 in colour palette. Adkins described that it Adkins summarises, is a balance of simplicity suggested itself when considering the different and complexity. registers of the clarinet (purple, green, yellow, As a philosophy, shibusa is really quite and most importantly ‘greyness’). Quite complex because it may even include the more independently, my new experimental paintings exotic and decorative. This is most clearly were evolving using a very limited palette of described by Takie Sugiyama Lebra: greys, Indian yellow (and other yellows), dark, translucent purple and purple-blacks, allowing Japanese words expressing esthetic a variety of resultant tones between them – properties are typically diffuse and lilacs, pinks, lemon, warm greys, and so on undefinable. Shibui is an example. (see Figure 5.1). Kawakita tries to define it in terms of The complementary values of purple mutual opposites: shibui can refer to jimi, and yellow are well known, but in these ‘plain, quiet, restrained and introvert’, new works there is a concentration on but does not exclude its opposite, hade, qualities of saturation, tonal values and ‘gay, showy’. Further, shibui is a gradation. Transparency and contrasts of combination of iki, ‘stylish, urbane, opacity negotiate, through hard and soft polished, sophisticated’, and its opposite, edges, to find points at which interplay of yabo, ‘awkward, naïve, uncouth, rustically light and shadow start and finish – not a artless’.8 horizon but more an ‘offing’. The intention was to produce heightened visual experience Michiaki Kawakita uses the example of a presented in the space of the picture plane baseball player to express the philosophy: to reveal values innate within, say, a bright colourful translucency, or a subtle shift of a In baseball, neither the spectacular home- grey towards a barely perceived yet present run batter nor the brilliant infielder can hue. Paintings that embed such subtleties may really become valuable players unless they flirt with our visual perception – for thinking acquire this shibui quality. Unless the we perceive a colour is quite distinct from the spectacular and the brilliant include in colour actually being there. themselves this element of the shibui, the In addition to unconventional tools, I technique can never really be called mature. experimented with equally strange and exotic The ever-available ability to go concisely Japanese brushes, traditionally used in yuzen and simply to the heart of what is required and katagami stencil dyeing. Some of these … the pursuit of high efficiency, shorn of brushes, made from the fine hair of deer and excessive individual technique, neither fixed in place in strange constructions of flashy nor yet dull … It is in such qualities circular bamboo, are packed (at one end) with that one finds the shibui.9 fine particles of sand in order to keep the hairs separate, such is their fineness. These large For the baseball player, then, it is neither brushes are round in shape, with a subtle about the courage and energy of youth, domed head – not unlike powder puffs of nor is it exclusively about mature and skilful old. Others are smaller – tiny, in fact: the judgement. Shibusa is an aesthetic that bristles tightly packed and uniformly pervades Japanese society as a whole, not just blunt-ended, allowing seamless blushing in culture and art. However small the task, and gradating techniques. whatever the activity, it may reveal itself in the task or object produced. For example, Philosophy: shibui/shibusa mundane and everyday tasks that Westerners might undertake in a hasty or distracted Jiro Harada describes the philosophy of manner are little pieces of poetry in the hands shibusa as the ‘skilful blending of restraint of the Japanese. An elaborately folded yet and spontaneity’, adding that this is a ‘quality practical paper wrapping of a cheap item 10.5920/shibusa.05

Extracting Beauty Shibusa Extracting 78 bought at a Kyoto market stall would not look the eyebrows also a device to make the out of place in a Mayfair boutique. Perhaps white face stand out? What fascinates me the most obvious and well-known example is most of all, however, is that green, the tea ceremony – the elevation of the iridescent lipstick, so rarely used today even mundane to a highly ritualistic art form, but by Kyoto geisha. One can guess nothing of one that gives a clue to why shibui is innate its power unless one imagines it in the low, within Japanese society. The Japanese think of unsteady light of a candle. The woman of the group first and the individual second; thus old was made to hide the red of her mouth doing things well benefits everybody. It is under green-black lipstick, to put suggested by Hayao Kawai, the Japanese shimmering ornaments in her hair; and so Jungian psychologist, that the Japanese ego is the last trace of colour was taken from her a ‘dynamic interplay between intuition and rich skin. I know of nothing whiter than the sensation, whereas that for Westerners is built face of a young girl in the wavering shadow upon the dynamic interrelation between of a lantern, her teeth now and then as she thought and emotion’.10 smiles shining in lacquered black through Natural phenomena also play a huge role in lips like elfin fires.12 Japanese life – appreciating cherry blossoms, moon gazing and the Japanese garden are but And also: three examples that show a strong interaction and affinity with nature. Junichiro Tanizaki’s The man of today, long used to electric In Praise of Shadows is a brief yet rich and light, has forgotten that such a darkness illuminating, personal reflection on Japanese existed. It must have been simple for aesthetics of light and shadow, observed in a spectres to appear in the ‘visible darkness’, range of social contexts – space, women, food where always something seemed to be and objects. This book has been highly flickering and shimmering, a darkness that influential in my recent works and has on occasion held great terrors … this was resurfaced yet again during this project for a the darkness in which ghosts and monsters variety of reasons. On the subject of music, for were active, and indeed was not the woman example, Tanizaki writes: who lived in it, behind thick curtains, behind layer after layer of screens and Japanese music is above all a music of doors – was she not of a kind with them? reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded, The darkness wrapped her round tenfold, or amplified by a loudspeaker, the greater twenty-fold, it filled the collar, the sleeves part of its charm is lost. In conversation, of her kimono, the folds of her skirts, too, we prefer the soft voice, the wherever a hollow invited. Further yet: understatement. Most important of might it not have been the reverse, might all are the pauses.11 not the darkness have emerged from her mouth and those black teeth, from the In addition, Tanizaki discusses at great black of her hair, like the thread from the length the importance of light in rooms and great earth spider?13 the distinction of the play of light on Japanese skin compared with Western skin (a The works of contemporary Japanese philosophy intrinsic to yuzen artist Yunosuke painter Fuyuko Matsui are based on in-depth Kawabe’s practice, which is discussed in research into self-psychoanalysis, resulting Chapter 7). Tanizaki’s elegiac observations in disturbing yet anatomically beautiful reveal the dramatic relationship between a works that are both metaphoric contrasts of flickering candle and ever-present shadows as darkness, light and shadow. These contracts he reminisces on the spectre-like character of permeate her painting methodology, fusing women in interior spaces: traditional Japanese systems and structures in a contemporary yet very surreal context. I have spoken of the practice of [women] blackening the teeth, but was not shaving 10.5920/shibusa.05 9Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens 79

Figure 5.4 Fuyuko Matsui, Light Indentations Mingle and Run in All Directions, 2008, powdered mineral pigments on silk, 190 × 78 cm. Published by Éditions Treville, © Fuyuko Matsui 10.5920/shibusa.05

Extracting Beauty Shibusa Extracting 80 Many of her works evoke the ghostly whiteness Figures, real and imaginary, materialise and of skin pallor alluded to by Tanizaki – a dematerialise through it. Truths are hidden ghostly white-faced figure seems decapitated and identities appear to change. Space and by a ‘floating world’ of black hair; a yuzen-like time is disorientated. treatment blushing darkly and poisonous like Thus the idea of shibusa, the reflections fog, choking the head from which it emanates. on light and shadow by Tanizaki, and the This can be seen specifically in her work examples of painter Fuyuko Matsui, all entitled Light Indentations Mingle and Run emphasise the notion of ‘shadow lands’ – in All Directions (see Figure 5.4). places between lightness and darkness, of Fuyuko’s use of blurring effect seems fit for quietness, of melodramatic shading and purpose in these deeply psychological works. blurring. Moreover, given their penumbral Perhaps it acknowledges a dream-like state – qualities, they also assert the importance an internal vision – or perhaps the of the colour grey for these new works. physiological truth that movement is essential to seeing clearly. Ann Marie Seward Barry About grey explains how our eyes are always moving: recording and absorbing data in short jerks In the Shibusa series of works, references of called ‘saccades’.14 She writes: blurring and shadow evolve from darker realms contained within earlier series of works Even when we fixate on an object, into ‘lighter’ forms. Blending and gradation of our eyes are subject to ‘drift’ and ‘flicker’ paint create quiet spatial transitions against movements and a superimposed tremor. which entities that traverse across it are If the eye is temporarily fixed under thrown dramatically into sharp focus, like experimental conditions, as the eye of the particles of dust passing in front of the eye in ox in Descartes’ experiment, the retinal a half-lit room (see Figure 5.5). The aim is image fades.15 towards the sensorial rather than the drama of my previous works, (Film Forensic paintings – We do not, however, see things in a blur, see Figure 5.6; Space Race; Elephant Man because through constant movement and (Cloud Drawings) and Femme Fatale series brain activity what we receive is in fact a of drawings. In these earlier works a sense of ‘stable mental configuration’.16 Nonetheless, disaster, danger or extinction pervaded, both the blurring of images within an artistic through the subject matter and the use of context can produce interesting optical effects, phenomenological entities such as fog, cloud, or visual ‘gear shifts’, that mark a change in blurring and evaporation. the psychodrama of the picture. For the The inclusion of greys in recent works – the blurring of an image signals a reduction of colour of limbo, neither darkness nor light, clarity in what is being presented. It is as if and so a floating colour – also aligns with the artist is pulling down a veil between the some aspects of shibui and, perhaps, ideas audience and the subject matter, suggesting a about restraint and also reflection. Tanizaki’s subtle transition of something just out of focus memories of childhood are a paradox of light but perceptible, and thus it has to do with and shadow – a compelling dramatic greyness control by the artist over the viewer. Haziness when reminiscing on how women dressed in and confusion are both physically and those days (1890 Tokyo): psychologically experienced. Such phenomena have been used as literary For a woman of the past did indeed exist and visual devices (in painting, photography only from the collar up and the sleeves out; and film) to blur the edges between a world of the rest of her remained hidden in darkness light – that of scientific clarity and reason – … Most of her life was spent in the twilight and the darker realm of the mystical and of a single house, her body shrouded day psychological. For example, fog confuses, and night in gloom, her face the only sign conceals and distorts; vision is impaired. of her existence. Though the men dressed 10.5920/shibusa.05 1Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens 81

Figure 5.5 Dickens, Shibusa series – Composition #7, 2011, oil on canvas, 66.5 × 66 cm. © Pip Dickens

Figure 5.6 Dickens, Film Forensic series – Hikari to Kage (Light and Shadow), 2009–10, oil on canvas, 152.5 × 152.5 cm. © Pip Dickens 10.5920/shibusa.05 Extracting Beauty Shibusa Extracting 82

Figure 5.7 Thompson, Head in Hand, 2007–9, oil on panel, 110 × 70 cm. © Estelle Thompson 10.5920/shibusa.05

more colourfully than they do today, the lyrical exchanges. These qualities exist both Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens 83 women dressed more sombrely … their when standing in close proximity to the clothing was in effect no more than a part surface of the works and at a distance, yet they of the darkness, the transition between are experienced in different ways. The blended darkness and face … the Tokyo Chinese Vermillion panel appears to articulate, townswoman still lived in a dusky house … as if it were made of card bending outwards at when they went out it was often in a gray the centre to catch the light. The upper grey is kimono with a small, modest pattern.17 more akin to architectural, polished aluminium sheets, blended by light and surface-scratched, Grey is often perceived as neutral, dead, yet is curiously lightweight and exudes the old and unemotional, yet it is a colour mix shimmer of a summer’s day by the sea. The that can produce endless tones and hues. equatorial line in the centre of the painting, It can be warm, cool, hard or soft. Grey acts though precisely engineered and exacting, like a ‘switch’, illuminating the quality of somehow emits a contradictory haziness. brighter colours placed in its vicinity. It is The resultant series of works is a successful probably the most useful of all colours, paradigm shift between the convention of hard because it is comprised of many. It is a colour edges in abstract painting and a softness that of transition – a facilitator. articulates – the antithesis. The panels appear Recent works by British painter Estelle contained in their own ‘atmospheres’ of Thompson utilise grey and its relationship colour, calling to mind a natural landscape and with other colours to astonishing effect. The the joy of colour expressed – not a traditional works Thompson exhibited at Purdy Hicks solidity of even-handedness and sameness, but Gallery in October–November 2009 were the endless tonal and chromatic capabilities of substantial objects constructed from MDF and colour. The use of blurring here is less about paint. The picture plane is divided horizontally concealing or restricting vision but rather and vertically to produce rectangular sections revealing what colour is. of independent colour fields. Such compositions The abraded surface of shimmering silver are not new in abstract painting, but in shows traces of a human presence, like a Thompsons’ works the mind of an illusionist is skater on ice, coursing over the surface again at work. The grey (silver in fact) sections have and again, testing space and boundaries. So, a bright burnished, metallic quality – their too, the cosmetic ‘blushes’ of pink and other surface showing signs of abrasion-like brushed colours are used in this series to ‘breathe’ aluminium. This is not a mixed grey, rather, in unregulated temperature and rhythm. silver pigment combined with wax. The Ultimately these works redefine colour field painting Head in Hand (see Figure 5.7) painting. They are at once hard and comprises a silver upper panel and a lower demarcated in composition, yet simultaneously panel divided vertically, producing two atmospheric, changeable and meteoric. coloured panels: to the left a Cobalt Violet, Their compartmentalised atmosphere recalls the other a modulated Chinese Vermillion of individual characteristics of planets: for soft gradation that is at its most intense at the example, silver Mercury or pink Mars. Even top and bottom – the middle section ‘bleeds’ a work such as Untitled (see Figure 5.8) into the lightest pinks of a young rose. contradicts the physical hardness of its nature, The overall impression is one of quiet which is very evident in the weight of the activity – the secret life of colours – with each MDF structure and the exacting hard-edge panel creating its own atmosphere through composition. Untitled is comprised of three weight, brilliance and saturation. The panels sections – an upper, grey section, and two are rigidly demarcated yet actively conversing lower panels: one black, the other a pale duck- with one other – quietly ‘on the move’ within egg blue. Despite the hardness, the black, grey their own boundaries. Though the sections of and blue utterly defy gravity. The overall the painting are hard and exacting, their impression of these paintings is celebratory – confluence creates exciting contrasts and a lightness of being that is alchemical. 10.5920/shibusa.05

Extracting Beauty Shibusa Extracting 84 They are a homage to colour’s brilliance, with painting en plein air that dictated location a transmutative, spectral flexibility that defies due to the qualities of light. constraints or boundaries. Crouch’s investigation is an expansive and The colour grey also has its supporters in fascinating topic and fills in much needed gaps literature – much time and many lines have in the context of visual art and historical been dedicated to its qualities and context attitudes to landscape painting in general. It within fiction. The novelist Thomas Hardy has probably always been the case that artists took great care with colour use in general, painting outside have sought spots away from both in terms of description and symbolism. the crowds and the general interfering He was a great admirer of the painter J.M.W. curiosity of tourists, and Crouch distinguishes Turner, and went so far as to mention him in between holiday crowds and artists’ ideas of his novel Far From the Madding Crowd, when ‘the perfect location’. However, Crouch also attempting to describe, precisely, the colour of discusses the shift from ‘grey’ light conditions the coat of Gabriel’s old sheep dog:18 (stable) to ‘sunny’ conditions (fluctuating), which became most notable towards the end marked in random splotches approximating of the nineteenth century. Locations such as in colour to white and slaty grey: but the the Netherlands, Brittany, Cornwall and north grey, after years of sun and rain, had been Germany were rural and coastal regions that scorched and washed out … leaving them offered a stability of light – a general greyness reddish brown, as if the blue component of – that was sought after by artists, as opposed the grey had faded, like the indigo from the to locations where sun and clouds fluctuated same kind of colour in Turner’s pictures. In in unpredictable binary form. This makes substance it had originally been hair, but sense when one considers painters with their long contact with sheep seemed to be paraphernalia travelling to their chosen turning it by degrees into wool of a poor location and settling down to make their work quality and staple.19 – not only sketches, but paintings that might be worked on for many days. Thus the Evelyn Hardy, Hardy’s biographer, also requirement for constancy is evident. suggests that Tess of the D’Urbervilles However, in the late 1890s there was a contains his most atmospheric depiction of dramatic shift towards the colourful landscape contrasts between light and darkness. In this and, as a result, palette. Many artists used to novel, Hardy compares the strange limbo of (and trained) in working with a grey, even, twilight and its counterpart, daybreak: light, ventured south. Crouch makes use of a variety of notations by artists turning their The grey half-tones of daybreak are not the attention away from grey, even, light toward grey half-tones of the day’s close, though experimentation with colour and luminosity: the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning light seems Around 1900, ‘grey’ increasingly started to active, darkness passive; in the twilight of disappear from painters’ palettes and evening it is the darkness which is active critics’ words of praise. The painter Paul and crescent, and the light which is the Signac condemned the tone outright in drowsy reverse.20 1898, adopting Delacroix’s diary note ‘The enemy of all painting is grey!’ as his battle The relationship between grey (and its cry … Five years later, the German art critic demise as a palette ‘standard’ in favour of a and champion of modernism, Julius Meier- brighter, more extensive palette) in European Graefe, disparaged Georges Seurat as ‘grey landscape painting is discussed in great detail and motionless’, compared with the in David Crouch’s Visual Culture and ‘luminosity of Signac’s atmospheric Tourism.21 Crouch examines parallels and pictures’. The tide had definitely turned. distinctions in social perception of the ideal After 1900, the grey paradigm increasingly vacation locations and also conventions of made way for the new sunny paradigm, which exemplified the generic south.22 10.5920/shibusa.05 5Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens 85

Figure 5.8 Thompson, Untitled, 2009, oil on panel, 50 × 40 cm. © Estelle Thompson 10.5920/shibusa.05

Extracting Beauty Shibusa Extracting 86 Crouch also makes the important point In contemporary terms, individual artists that in the mid-nineteenth century trips to the take up and use what they will, unpressured beach (and also inland locations) had been by external dictates. This means, in turn, that about health and hygiene – ‘surf and turf’ grey and greyness, with all its multiplicity of pleasure-beach holidays only became popular mixes, tones and hues, can symbolise and towards the close of the century: embody so much more.

The shift to the more active, sun-seeking Notes and pleasure-oriented beach holiday of the twentieth century began slowly to take 1 National Gallery of Art, Washington, shape around the turn of the century. These podcast, www.nga.gov/feature/ were also the very years when artists shifted pollock/process3qt.shtm 2 Ibid. from the grey to the sunny paradigm.23 3 P. Leider, ‘Literalism and abstraction: Frank Stella’s retrospective at the Modern’ Monet’s en plein air painting The Beach in F. Frascina and J. Harris (eds), Art in at Trouville (1870) is a good example of the Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical ‘health and hygiene’ holiday and the ‘grey Texts, (London: Phaidon Press, 1992), paradigm’ described by Crouch. The work 319–20. is a beach study of two women sitting under 4 Ibid. 5 R. Hughes, The Shock of the New: Art and parasols, bonneted, gowned (foot to neck). the Century of Change (London: Thames One is sewing, the other is taking in the view. & Hudson, 1992) 154. The painting is a study in light and shade – 6 Ibid., 314. not colour. Black, grey, white and shades of 7 J. Harada, A Glimpse of Japanese Ideals blue are the principle colours in the work. (Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka Shinkkai, 1937). Trouville-sur-Mer is in the Basse-Normandie 8 T. Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior region of northwest France – one of those (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ‘grey’ locations Crouch describes. Fast 1976), 20. 9 Lebra’s reference is to M. Kawakita, ‘The forward 20 years to summer 1890 and world of Shibui’, Japan Quarterly 8 Monet is now producing his famous series of (1961), 33–42. en plein air ‘haystack’ paintings – studies of 10 Lebra, Japanese Patterns, 19. light and colour transformation – produced 11 J. Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. in the fields around his home in Giverny, T. Harper and E. Seidensticker (London: Upper Normandy. Despite Upper Normandy Vintage Books, 2001), 17. being one of those ‘grey locations’ identified 12 Ibid., 51. 13 Ibid., 53. by Crouch, a new colour vision has permeated 14 Ann Marie Seward Barry is Associate Monet’s work. The haystack series is an Professor of Communication at Boston explosive, exploration of colour, light, shadow College, MA. and temperature. By 1891 Gauguin was 15 A. Barry, Visual Intelligence: Perception, heading to the ‘anti-tourist’ destination of Image and Manipulation in Visual Tahiti and all its technicolour glory. Communication (Albany: State University The associations of grey versus colour of New York Press, 1997), 32. 16 Ibid., 32. landscape painting with the history of tourism 17 Tanizaki, In Praise, 44. (even if it directed artists away from popular 18 E. Hardy, Thomas Hardy: A Critical tourist locations) may also be seen within the Biography (London: Hogarth Press, 1954), context of other huge changes taking place in 21. the late nineteenth century – transport and 19 T. Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd clock time being two related factors. It is (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1918), 38. particularly useful to reflect upon grey 20 Hardy, Thomas Hardy, 236. historically in the context of having once 21 D. Crouch, Visual Culture and Tourism, ed. N. Lubbren (Oxford: Berg, 2003). been an ‘official’ palette – academically 22 Ibid., 132. and critically applauded – and its temporary 23 Ibid., 134. loss to the celebration of colour in general.