After Matisse?

Because it looked ridiculously colourful, and because I remain a colour junky inspite of appreciating the more subtle tones as well, I made the slightly extra effort to pop into the Holburne, Bath, to see the NIcholas Rena exhibition After Matisse. 

The exhibition blurb describes it as an intervention.  Alright, so I'm not sure what constitutes an intervention, but I've always thought of it as some kind of subversion of the existing exhibits.  As I said, the Holburne is a (very) slight extra effort, being, from where I usually park, in the exact opposite direction to everything else I choose to visit.  I don't, therefore, go in there quite as often as I might, but I keep an eye on what's on - it would be silly to miss must-see stuff for the sake of a change of direction.  And I'm pretty sure that previous 'interventions' there have followed that pattern, of being installed in and amongst things as they already were, sometimes implying (but presumably no more than that!) a certain level of disruption and destruction.

This time, though, the long dining table, normally insanely weighed down with fancy china, heavy silver cutlery, intricate glassware and just about everything else the Georgian(?) crockery cupboard has tucked into its nethermost corners, had been completely cleared to show off this collection of pots.

And I just wasn't convinced.  I mean they're nice enough - moulded clay, fired, refined, and finished off I think with emulsion and wax - but.  But.  They didn't amount to enough, somehow.  Pleasant lines, colourful, um, that's it.  Yes, alright, the shape is faintly reminiscent of Lucy Rie (the potter is mentioned), and Matisse used a lot of colour when he wanted to, but I wanted something more than this.  I imagine they might have looked a lot more interesting looming out of the usual crazy dinner setting - something uncomfortable, faintly alien.  But maybe the museum tried that and it didn't work.  Maybe the show came with certain conditions to be met.  Or maybe I missed other pots scattered hither and yon - it was a short visit.  Whatever, my overall impression was that I couldn't truly see the point.

Moving away from the visiting exhibition, one thing at the Holburne has always made me smile - the teasly way visitors are dissuaded from sitting on the exhibited chairs.