Where we don’t look

Judd Flogdell came on A Genius Tour last Saturday and devised an ‘unlearning’ experiment for herself to do afterwards (see post on The Benefits of Unlearning). She reports on the results:

I’m calling this my Behind the Picture experiment.

I chose the Thomas Lawrence print on my living room wall. After having reversed it and contemplated it for a while, I realise the picture has turned its back on me!

The turning has revealed slowly decaying masking tape (not so aesthetic) from around 1981 when I bought this picture in a Dundee flea market.

Oh, how it set the memories flooding back! And it triggers ideas for doing this to different pictures in my house and those of my friends.

As well as appreciating the work of the framer, it can help me focus on content of the picture I have obscured from sight.

Next I will need to consider how long it will remain like that, and how we don’t appreciate things ‘til they’re not there.

This is wonderful, Judd. Thank you for the inspiration. We’re also relieved to hear you didn’t try it at the David Hockney show at the Royal Academy, despite temptation.

Image: Judd is part of an art historical lineage that goes back at least as far as Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts’ The Reverse of a Framed Painting, 1670. [via]