Not content with new electronic resources or plain old books, Almelo Public Library in the Netherlands has recently begun lending people to counter public stereotypes. Library users can borrow a gypsy, a Muslim, a gay or a little person and take them away for an hour to question them in a way they might never dare in a random meeting. The scheme has proved so popular that there has been consideration given to extending it to rare or maligned occupational groups. Ever wondered what a coroner does? Would a parking attendant liven up your dinner party?

To read Justin Paton’s book is a bit like borrowing him for an hour. It is part of the Ginger series, commissioned by Wellington publisher and feminist Mary Varnham so that she could read about the things she is interested in, and reasoned other Kiwis could be too: rugby, astronomy, pop music, racing, wine, fishing, reading, cricket, birds.

The mostly male writers are all charming, well-educated companions for a short encounter with a specialist subject, helping the reader on the road to self-sufficiency en route to the Basin Reserve, the bottle shop or in this case, the art gallery.

Winner of the Lifestyle category in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards for 2006, How to Look at a Painting has been reprinted 4 times and is in over 50 public libraries in New Zealand. I have read it three times and have owned and given away 5 copies, dispensing each one like medicine to cure the fear factor amongst art neophytes. Avoiding the methodologies of art history and art theory assiduously, it is a perfectly formed example of its library classification: Painting Appreciation.

It starts gently with nana’s flower paintings, and checks off fourteen chapters, whisking past Caravaggio, Chardin and McCahon like stations on the main trunk line to end up at the beginning with a paint-laden brush about to connect with canvas. Something this simple must have been devilishly difficult to do, and many reviewers have praised Paton’s easy and engaging writing style. Landfall, however, reproaches him (gently) for reinforcing antiintellectualism with his eschewal of the terminology of critical theory while The Book Show on Australia’s ABC wanted more guidance on sorting wheat from chaff, worrying that instructing the masses to just go out and see more painting implied that no effort was required to work out what it is all about.

What insights could this book offer to a public art gallery or museum? It argues that paintings exist to be looked at, and like a take-home Muslim, can yield insights with personal interaction. Having recently cultivated exhibition design and interpretation as branches of the profession, it seems a pity to suggest pruning, but Paton advocates staging the occasional surprise encounter with a naked painting, unencumbered by acoustiguides, extended labels or gel covered lights. Reviewing this book two years after publication, I am reminded how our institutions have been shaped, not just by collections, but by the people who work in them. For eight years, Paton has been Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, but has now left to become Senior Curator at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Inevitably, this is how the author looked at painting from Dunedin in 2005 – notwithstanding a trip or two overseas – and that could all change in the future. 

PDF

Te Ara - Journal of Museums Aotearoa; Volume 32; Issue 1 & 2; December 2007

HOW TO LOOK AT A PAINTING
Justin Paton, 2005
Paperback 128 pages
ISBN 0958253889
RRP $24.95
Reviewed by Linda Tyler