How to hang art so you see it
After my friend’s dad died she distributed all his prints amongst her friends. These are two of his and they remind me of her. Just now she’s on a 3 year retreat so it’s good to remember her from time to time.
I’m seeing my ‘things’ in a new light since moving them from England to Sweden. The shape of the dining chairs, the colour of the cushions, remembering why I loved certain pictures. It’s more than seeing them in a new light. I’m literally seeing them again. They’d become invisible.
You know how it is when you first hang a new picture, every time you walk into the room, it pops out. Hello, here I am! It’s very alive... at least for a while. Then gradually it disappears into the wall it’s hanging on.
There are many reasons to surround ourselves with art. Things carry beauty, like my precious ‘six fresh eggs’ egg box, an archetypal egg box, the sambhogakaya of egg boxes! Or art can carry meaning, like Sophie Wake’s ‘Wanting’ painting (both below).
To no longer see the picture hanging on your wall seems especially tragic. After all, it’s only there to be seen. Unlike the fridge or the duvet. How can we find a way of continuing to see the art we have in our homes?
The ironing pile is to the right, just out of the frame. I can filter it out in real life too.
Ignorance (ignoring things) is bliss
Our ability to ignore things is a blessing and a curse. We humans have an amazing ability not to see things. And this is handy when it’s me ignoring the ironing pile for yet another evening. If we saw everything all the time, it would be exhausting.
“As a psychonaut acquaintance put it to me, “If it were possible to temporarily experience another persons mental state, my guess is that it would feel more like a psychedelic state than a normal state, because of its massive disparity with whatever mental state is habitual with you.””
Our own world, on the other hand, is so familiar to us that we hardly notice it!
Becoming a see-it-all
But for Buddhists, this act of ‘seeing’ is of vital importance, both as a sensory experience and as the perfect metaphor for insight (in sight). Look at the terms we use; seeing into the nature of reality, seeing things as they really are. In my name, ‘darshini’ means ‘she who sees’.
‘Look’ at how often you use the seeing metaphor.
As Andrew Holecek says, the Buddha wasn’t so much a ‘know it all’ as a ‘see it all’.
6 Fresh Eggs
Seeing before knowing
Seeing and knowing are two aspects of experience, but Holecek seems to say that seeing is primary. Soetsu Yanagi, in The Beauty of Everyday Things, agrees.
Seeing is connected with the world of concrete things; knowing with the abstract. Simply put, the one concerns ‘things", the other ‘circumstances’.
We see the egg box as a thing. We come into direct and immediate contact with it. Its beauty is part of the object. Perhaps we intuit that beauty, perhaps not. Probably not. We’re not expecting to find beauty in an eggbox!
When we go to a gallery we’re primed to find beauty. We know the artist, and how much the paintings are worth. What we ‘know’ about a thing interferes with our seeing it.
The ideal would be a fusion of the two, knowledge and intuition. Yet in order to grasp the essential nature of an object, what is needed most of all is penetrating insight, that is, intuition. This is why ‘seeing’ is of paramount importance. Ultimately, the mystery of beauty can only be resolved by proceeding from seeing to learning. The reverse path is not only extraordinarily long but exceedingly convoluted.
The ability to see and the ability to know are, in part, innate talents.
The former, in particular, is something one is born with, it cannot be wilfully created. The latter is also, in part, and innate gift, but it can be improved through study… The ability to see, on the other hand, is wholly innate.
Egg box, making me smile in the kitchen, next to the fridge’s random art display.
We know how to know about things. Through books, documentaries and good old Google. But if seeing is wholly innate, is there no way to develop it?
Soetsu Yanagi thinks there is. Here’s a summary of his advice:
Do not judge. Do not let critical thoughts come to mind. Do not make the object a subject of intellectual consideration. You should first adopt an accepting attitude. Don’t push yourself to the forefront, but lend an ear for what the object has to say. This passive stance is extremely important. It can be likened to a mirror that passively reflects whatever is before it. Just as a polished mirror reflects a clear image, your mind is best clear of all extraneous thoughts.
When the faculty of knowing is employed initially, the faculty of seeing becomes constricted and constrained. You need to free yourself from these constraints. Without this freedom, we cannot hope to see the essential nature of the object.… It means to allow the object to exercise its own innate freedom. Before we begin to express our thoughts, we first have to listen to what the object has to say.
How to hang art so that you see it?
The minimalist approach - Hang one thing and change it regularly.
This is the way of the ancient Chinese. Paintings and texts were on scrolls. They could be rolled up and stored away. There would be a special alcove where you could hang your chosen scroll. After a while, you’d change it and a new theme would appear.
Within the tokonomo, or alcove, a perfectly balanced and austerely simple flower arrangement lies beneath a kakejiku, or hanging scroll – the flowers, reflecting the sentiment of the kakejiku. The sentiments in the scroll in turn will be a literary allusion to the theme of the meeting, and the guests will savour the meaning of the script, and the pattern that the bold black ink makes against the pale background.
Andrew Juniper, Wabi-sabi, p40
To have changeable art you could use the hangers in the picture at the top of this post. You can keep lots of images in one simple cardboard tube and change them with the seasons.
Or put up a special picture shelf (below). I especially like this as you can also display book or album covers, as well as other bits and pieces.
Wanting image by Sophie Wake. Bicycle by Anna Palmqvist (see links at the bottom of the page)
The maximalist approach - Hang many things and allow one to pop out.
The artist Tal R goes for a whole other approach, what he calls ‘the forest of artworks’. You hang lots of art together and each day something new pops out at you.
I think the optimal way to live with art is the old Chinese way. In China, they would have paintings and writing on scrolls. And you’d roll them out, hang them for a while, look at them, put them back. They always stay fresh, they always stay aggressive. With paintings you have up all the time, they become like friends. They comfort you. You keep looking at them. They look back on you. But I think the perfect way is similar to books and music – you don’t have the same record running all the time. If you did, you would also stop listening.
In our house, I have almost none of my own work, only other people’s. And I put up so many that we have a tendency to forget them. Then suddenly, one day walking in the forest of artworks, you remember, ‘oh, this one’, you sit there for a while, and then you can forget it again.
Tal R - Artist - Apartmento Magazine, issue 31, p58
All of this holds true for the shrines we meditate in front of, but I’ll save that theme for another day!
I’ve started a photo thread on Substack so we can share how we hang art in our own spaces. Sign up below and see you there!
From the digital notebook:
Hidden in Plain Sight - How wabi-sabi beauty can be a metaphor for insight.
Inspiration from:
Soetsu Yanagi (1889 - 1961) The Beauty of Everyday Things
Mentioned artists:
Sophie Wake (Wanting image)
Anna Palmqvist (Bicycle seat)
