The Fifth Way

It’s week five of the Seven Ways of Thinking About Art course at the Tate Modern and I catch the tail end of the class. Some of the work of Mark Rothko is being discussed in the dimly-lit Rothko Room, which is ideal for contemplative appreciation, while Giacometti’s impossibly slender Bronzes stand to attention in the brighter Material Gestures room.


Giacometti’s sculptures are like a group of saplings emerging from a plinth and provide a counter point to the huge swathes of subdued colour - red, maroon and black - which sweep across Rothko’s canvases. Taking R. G. Collingwood’s views on aesthetics with his attendant ideas of Art as Craft, including Magical and Amusement, and Art as Expression, as a starting point, the class explored Collingwood’s ideas in relation to these works. Later, over a drink, I discover that one of the students is a friend's mother and my world shrinks again. She has been applying what she has learnt on the course when she visits exhibitions with friends and I encourage her to share these experiences via the blog. While we are chatting a colleague in the class joins us and presents her with the name of a book about the poet TS Eliot which he thinks she may be interested in. He also recommends further reading which I hope he'll post as a comment.