the BLIND SPOTS we sometimes see
What possible clue might assist looking at Primavera 2001? The theme, perhaps, as a beginning: a thread designed to lead one through the works of art via a linking aspect. Yet how might a theme such as blind spots function when, although derived from the works of art exhibited, not one work seen here under its rubric was made with it, or anything pertaining to it, in mind? The question lingers: How to begin?

To answer I resort to the pages of Sherlock Holmes where one finds, in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional case studies of detection from the 1880s, perhaps the most intriguing blind spots of all: the solution to, or motive behind, a crime. Most compelling, though, is not necessarily the motive or solution once discovered, but Holmes’s method of ‘Deduction and Analysis’. Through following lines of thought, chains of events, threads and the seeking of missing links, one is led to a spot revealed that was previously unseen, although alarmingly it lay clearly before one’s eyes all the while. Holmes’s ‘Art of Observation’, where reality and imagination mix, has Holmes at one time reply to a slightly incredulous client, ‘I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see’.

In commencing with Primavera 2001 let us presume, then, that we have just received an urgent note while reclining upstairs at 221B Baker Street, Holmes’s abode. The lids of Holmes’s eyes lift, his grey eyes sparkle, the question of each new investigation is met: How to begin? With a clue or ‘line of least resistance’, Holmes tells Dr Watson, his trustworthy assistant and chronicler. To find this clue Holmes makes his way to the scene of the crime where, before ascertaining from those present what had happened- for the telling of which might bias his perception, blinding him to clues — he finds for himself his ‘starting-point. The scene of the crime is for us the work of art we are about to look at, where we might find ourselves not only in the role of ‘viewer’ but also that of the imaginary figure of Sherlock Holmes, of ‘investigator’. The work of art is the occurrence we do not yet know: the dark amidst which we stand. How to begin? By following Holmes’s suggestion and finding the ‘line of least resistance’ — which can’t help but be the thought, when looking at a work of art, that first comes to mind.

Before embarking, however, there is one Sherlock scenario that may prove productive in sketching a ground plan for our ‘investigations’. It is found in the case study entitled The Adventure of the Empty House, set in 1894, London. First to be drawn on our plan is the sitting room at 221B Baker Street. In this adventure it is the front window of 221B that calls our attention — as it, indeed, is the shared focal point of all entwined in this most singular plot. Across from it, on the other side of Baker Street stands Camden House, the ‘Empty House’.

Upon dusk, having walked a network of mews and stables to crisscross and disguise their path along the byways of London, Holmes and Watson enter the deserted backyard of the Empty House. From the back door they walk along the pitch-dark hall and enter the square front room with walls draped in dusty shadows. Positioning themselves at the window, they peer into Baker Street and up at the opposite window of 221B where, much to Watson’s surprise, they observe the profile of Holmes, reclining in his armchair, reading:

As my eyes fell upon it, I gave a gasp and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous
screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me.

Previously that afternoon, Holmes had arranged the scene that alarmed Watson so by placing a facsimile of himself made from wax into position, draping the bust with his purple dressing-gown.

The scene’s basic architecture is now in place: the illuminated window of 221B Baker Street with the depiction of Holmes on its screen; the street; and the Empty House across from 221B in which Holmes and Watson wait in the front room. But why this set-up? It is a lure, says Holmes, to catch the most dangerous man in London — who, on that night, has planned to catch Holmes.

Watson and Holmes wait. In the street, huddled in doorways, plain-clothed police also wait for the sign from Holmes of the man they are to catch. The silent hours pass; Holmes’s impatience grows. Then, at last, some action, but not what was planned. Stirring from the back of the Empty House Holmes discerns a footstep and crouches back against the wall, with Watson doing the same. Much to their alarm, the man they expected to see in the street creeps along the pitch-black hall into the room’s darkness and up to the front window, unaware of their presence all the while. He opens the window and looks with gleaming eyes upon his target across at 221B, the ‘brilliant yellow screen in front with the black figure outlined upon its centre’. He uses the window to steady his position, takes aim with his air-gun, fires and hits his target. Then, just as he thinks he has at last got Holmes, Holmes springs from the darkness and with a firm grip and gets him.

Upon our ground plan let us now rephrase the scenario’s basic architecture in terms of art and see how it structures the relationships between the ‘work of art’, the ‘viewer’ and the ‘artist’. Without difficulty, the back-lit depiction of Holmes on the window’s screen at 221B can be seen as a framed painting, the work of art. From this, the one the authorities (or shall we say art establishment) and Holmes are out to catch via the framed ‘set-up’, and the work of art is the ‘viewer’. Yet this viewer is not passive; he/she arrives on the scene loaded with a particular desire: the target or aim of which is the framed depiction of Holmes, an aim based on the presumption that the source of the image, Holmes, resides behind it. Holmes, as he himself intimates, is the ‘artist’. The window’s depiction is his idea. He is also presumed to be, by being its source, the one behind it as its ‘truth’ — the target, the object of the viewer’s aim. But as it turns out Holmes, the aim of the work, is nowhere near his depicted place. In fact, he is found in the same place as the viewer — behind a window facing the work of art, in a room dark and unfurnished.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of the Sherlock scenario is how it makes apparent, when rephrased in terms pertaining to art, the invisible interplay of spatial relations — the scene’s architecture — that coalesce as one’s ‘looking’. For even when the work of art is a monochrome painting with no space depicted behind its surface, it is still presumed the artist’s identity resides behind its surface as its truth, its ‘underlying’ intention — the so called ‘point’ of the work. To reach this truth it is likewise thought one must penetrate the work’s surface with a skill that many, including myself, feel they little have — irrespective of the art encyclopaedias at hand. Yet what the scenario shows in light of this is that the position of the work’s truth is not behind the work, but in the same place as that of the viewer from which the work is observed. And strangely enough, from this position it is not the viewer who reveals the work, but the work — through its lure — that reveals the viewer. But before we lose the thread let us proceed a little further to see how this truth might work.

Significantly, the scenario revolves upon the moment the viewer fires at the target seeking to give it a finality of term, a meaning: Holmes captured. This occurs from within a room that is not one’s own. It has no instant library in which one might turn to the page that tells of Sherlock not really being in the window of 221B, but beside us — ‘so quick, catch him!’. No, to ‘catch’ the drift of the work, its meaning, one must first rest against the window’s structure of one’s looking, aim and shoot with a possible line of thought. And just as I, the viewer, hit my target, my target hits me: it arrests me, disarms me, relieves me momentarily of my weapons.

For this is where the scenario turns — when reality, the real Holmes, steps in. Springing from the room’s darkest corner, Holmes is not only the ‘artist’ who set-up the lure, the work of art, but also the ‘investigator’ observing the ‘viewer’ all along. Upon the arrest a conversation ensues where Holmes explains to the ‘viewer’, the most dangerous man in London set on getting Holmes, how it is that he instead has come to be caught by a lure, the work of art. This conversation becomes the ‘truth’ of the work of art: its missing links, its blind spots revealed.

This, then, is the final twist; for who in reality can give words to this conversation but the viewer — who finds her or himself in a room speaking not only their own, but also the imaginary investigator’s parts. If at this
stage we hesitate, let us hear Holmes say once more:

And yet there should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation. Simply as a mental exercise, without any assertion that it is true, let me indicate a possible line of thought. It is, I admit, mere Imagination; but how often is imagination the Mother of Truth?

It is through the Art of Observation, then, that we might commence our engagement with Primavera 2001, a viewer’s art that rests on the line of thought that first comes to mind. Yet if perhaps we are still unconvinced, consider Holmes’s words to Watson when Watson replied ‘I can see nothing,’ while handing to Holmes the object under inspection. ‘On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences’. Let us not be timid but take the ground plan we have now drawn from The Adventure of the Empty House, and begin.

One final word. Accompanying each artist’s catalogue inclusion is a text I have written from the position of a viewer, rather than that of an art historian locating the work within a broader context. The sentiments
expressed are not necessarily shared by the artist, but are lines of thought I have followed while engaging with the work. They are included as an example of viewing open to contention. They also attempt to locate each work within the schema of our Sherlock scenario, as a means by which I hope to assist the viewer in detecting the blind spots we might sometimes see.

Gail Hastings, July 2001