The problem with placing accessibility above quality
Tiffany Jenkins argues plans to place art on billboards throughout the UK degrades the viewing of great paintings.
ANSWER honestly: if you travel on the tube in Glasgow or London, do you read – that is study and contemplate – the poems on the underground; the ones posted up on the inside of the carriage, sandwiched between the adverts for mobile service providers and the subway map?
I have skimmed through many, but cannot recall one line from any, because as my eye flitted across the stanza I was on my way somewhere else, late, distracted, thinking about the day ahead.
Which is why I cannot but groan at the plans for Art Everywhere – the next initiative from our cultural mandarins – where for two weeks in August pictures of selected artworks by British artists will be on display on tens of thousands of billboards up and down the country. It’s a massive poster campaign designed to get us enjoying art. In order to see an image of, say, a John Constable at the bus stop, or a Henry Raeburn in the car park, we, the British public, will have to make a financial donation, which will be matched by the organisers, and the art work will appear.
ANSWER honestly: if you travel on the tube in Glasgow or London, do you read – that is study and contemplate – the poems on the underground; the ones posted up on the inside of the carriage, sandwiched between the adverts for mobile service providers and the subway map?
I have skimmed through many, but cannot recall one line from any, because as my eye flitted across the stanza I was on my way somewhere else, late, distracted, thinking about the day ahead.
Which is why I cannot but groan at the plans for Art Everywhere – the next initiative from our cultural mandarins – where for two weeks in August pictures of selected artworks by British artists will be on display on tens of thousands of billboards up and down the country. It’s a massive poster campaign designed to get us enjoying art. In order to see an image of, say, a John Constable at the bus stop, or a Henry Raeburn in the car park, we, the British public, will have to make a financial donation, which will be matched by the organisers, and the art work will appear.