content: Works would illustrate the qualities required for the adequate functioning of a relationship with another human, including (but not restricted to) forgiveness, patience, sacrifice, kindness and imagination.
purpose: A corrective to the belief in the spontaneous nature of love. A demonstration of what'working at* relationships might practically involve. A focus on ideals that could guide everyday conduct.
the conflicts of lovl
content: Works would depict the central causes of disputes within relationships, reconciling viewers to everyday complexity and behaviour, encouraging self- acceptance and increased empathy. Sub-themes might include The Stages of the Affair',
The Phases of the Argument' and The Sorrows of Divorce'.
purpose: A reminder of everyday, universal relationship struggles, rather than the catastrophic events (such as divorce or murder) that the media tends to focus on, and to reduce the punishing sense of loneliness and guilt. These works would make us feel less absurd for struggling as we do to keep our relationships going.
3. sexuality
content: Images of sexuality would be related to depictions of other aspects of our humanity, amounting to a demonstration of the possibility of being both fully human
and adequately sexual.
purpose: An alternative to pornography on the one hand, and lingering neo-Christian shame on the other. A prompt towards a more appropriate integration of sex and intelligence, dignity and care.
4- sadness. anxiety
content: Works would lend perspective to the individual ego pressed up too hard and painfully against its own problems. Works would play with scale, restoring a redemptive sense of one's position in the universe, and promoting a calming
sense of awe by focussing on nature,
emphasizing its separateness and indifference to our desires and concerns.
purpose: A corrective to a loss of perspective: a catalyst for calm and stoicism.
resii essness. envy
content: Works would argue for the neglected beauty and fascination of the everyday.
purpose: A rebuttal of the misguided preoccupation with glamour promoted by the media in our commercial societies; an effort to glamourize the maligned ordinary instead.
hope
content: Works would refocus attention on a set of fragile qualities associated with hope: imagination, creativity, calculated naivety, faith and playfulness.
purpose: To exert a pull away from routine, inner deadness, sterility and knowing cynicism.
thf ages of man
content: Following people through their lives, these works would depict us as time- bound creatures, with all the implications therein. Series of works would illuminate distinctive features of different periods of life: for example.The Twelve Sorrows of Adolescence! The Longings of the Middle Period,'The Griefs of Age,' and so on. purpose: To help us overcome the extraordinary difficulties we have in imagining ourselves in any other period of life than the one we happen to be in. They would promote a sense of life as a whole, nevertheless made up of distinct phases.
memento mori
content: These works would be reminders, more or less macabre or direct, of the end.
purpose: Not to render life meaningless, but rather to encourage us to keep in mind our priorities, so easily submerged within our day-to-day concerns.
the pef.asures of work
content: Works would afford the viewer л sense of the creativity, cooperation, ingenuity and beauty of work. purpose: A corrective to the ignorance of the processes of work outside our own given professional spheres, and a demonstration of the benefits that can be found there.
the sorrows of work
content: Works would highlight the dehumanizing effects of labour: the disappearance of human suffering behind numbers: the plunder of the earth for the sake of mediocre ends: the destruction of stillness and calm; and the prevalence of hypocrisy and cruelty. purpose: To evoke a sense of the costs that commercial organizations can impose upon humanity. A corrective to numerical abstraction.
the other
contend Works would depict ways of life that are likely, initially, to threaten or question the viewer's sense of what is normal.
purpose: To re-humanize us in each other's eyes. To provide a backdrop against which political negotiation between apparently opposed factions can occur.
pride
content: Works would zero in on aspects of the community and nation in which legitimate pride can be placed. They would demonstrate a selective idealization of national life, and a responsiveness to objects and scenes in which national traits can be found and celebrated - a road sign, the evening light.
purpose: To correct the tendency towards national depression: to encourage an intelligent kind of collective pride.
List of Works
Jcan Baptiste Rcgnault 1754-1829;. The Origin of
Panning. Dibutades Tracing the Portrait of j Shepherd, 1786 Oil on canvas. 120 x I40 cm 4714 * 554» inches) Мичт National dcs Chateaux dc Versailles er de Trianon. Versailles
Johannes Vfcrmccr (1632-75), Woman in Blue Reading
a Letter. с.1Ш Oil on canvas, 46 J * 39 cm I8*i6 x 15 V» inches Rijksinuscum, Amsterdam
5. John Constable (1776-1837), Study of Cirrus Clouds. c. 1822 Oil on paper. 11.4 x 17.8 cm 44 x 7 inches; Victoria Albert Museum.
ondon
Claude Monet 1840 192ft Ihe Watrr-I.ilу Pond. 1899 Oil on canvas. 88.3 193.1 cm (3444 x 36* >inchcs National Gallery. London
John Vanhrugh (1664-1726) Blenheim Palace, c. 1724 Woodstock. Lnglaiul
Henn Matisse (1869-1954 ,. Dame (III, 1909
Oil on canvas, 259.7 x 390.1 cm I024x 1534* inches: Hermitage Museum. St Petersburg
'Sainte-Chapelle Virgin and Child', before 1279
Ivory. 41 cm height (164 inches! Mus<?c du Louvre. Paris
Henn Fantin-Latour 1836-1904 .
Chrysantlxmums. 1871 Oil on canvas. 35 x 27 cm 134 x 104 inchcs Private collection
Henri Fannn-Latour (1836-1904 .Self Portrait as a Young Man. с. 1860s Oil on canvas. 25 x 21 cm
(94 x 8*4 inchcs). Pris-atc collection
Thomas Hamilton 1784-1858 .The Royal
College of Physicians. 1845 Edinburgh
Antoinc Watteau 1684-1721 .Rendezvous
dc cbasse (Meeting an the Hunt), c. 1717-18 Oil on canvas. 124.5 x 189 cm 49 x 744 inches) Wallace Collection. London
12. George Grosz. 1893 -1959 The Pillars of Society, 1926 Oil on canvas, 200 x 108 cm 78*< x 42V; inchcs Neue Nanonalgalcric. Staatliche Musccn, Berlin
Angelica Kauffmann
1741-1807. The Artist in the Chamcter offksign I irtenmg to die Inspiration of the try. 1782 Oil on canvas. 61 cm 24 inchcs i diameter Kenwood House, London
Richard Serra 1939-). Fernando Pessoa. 2007-8 Weatherproof steel. 900.4 x 300 x 20.3 cm
354Й x 1181* x 8 inches)
Gagosian Gallery, London
Nan Goldin (1953- . Siobhan in My Minor. Berlin. 1992 Silver dye bleach print, 39.4x59 cm
154x234 inches) Matthew Marks Gallery New York
Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840 . Rocky Reef on
tlx Sea Sborr, c. 1825 Oil on canvas, 22 x 31 cm 84 * 124 inches) Staatlichc Kunstlullc. Karlsruhe
Ludwig Mies van dcr Robe 1886 1969,. Farnswonh House, 1951 Piano, Illinois
Catcdral dc Santa
Prisca у San Scbastiin. 1751-8 Taxco. Mexico
Richard Miquc 1728-94; and Hubcn Robert 1733-1808 . The Queen s Hamlet. 1785
Petit Trianon, Versailles. France
Tliomas Jones {1742-1803). A Wall in Naples, c. 1782
Oil on paper laid on canvas. 11.4 x 16 cm 44 x 64 inchcs. National Gallery, London