poliphilo

May. 14th, 2015

"The trouble with photography," says David Hockney. "Is it's so flat". I've been thinking that over for the past few days- and it really came home to me yesterday when we were at Hampton Court and I was taking pictures in the gardens. After a while I gave up. What I was trying to capture was the scale of the place- of the distance from A to B and the immense volume and depth of the empty air above and around- and it soon became clear that I was getting none of it. With photography you're arranging flat shapes on a flat surface. It's very like doing collage

I mean, look at this. Standing in that space was thrilling, but the picture is just dull, dull, dull...

The Great Gate

Anne Boleyn's Tower

Fountain Court (architect: Christopher Wren)

We overlook tapestry. We don't think of it as art. Even in Hampton Court- where they really should know better- they put candelabra in front of it so you can't see the pictures properly. They wouldn't do that to their Rembrandt- or one of their Caravaggio's- but tapestry- it's just wallpaper, innit!

These are details from a pair of tapestries in the Great Watching Chamber at Hampton Court. They belonged to Henry VIII and probably to Cardinal Wolsey before him (I have a soft spot for Wolsey.) I spent a long time trying to work out the iconography and I think one of them represents the Triumph of the Virtues (fierce women with swords) and the other the Apotheosis of The Three Graces. There were no notes to hand to help me (there should have been) and I've not been able to find anything online either- so this is just an educated guess. I think they're tremendous. Just look at the faces. These are real people, beautifully observed, wonderfully alive. And to think it's all been done not with paint but on a loom!