Art

Blood on Paper
Until Jun 29
This event has finished
V&A, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
Rating:
Damien Hirst, 'I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now'. Published by Booth-Clibborn Editions, 1997. National Art Library, V&A Collection. Photo Nigel Young. © Damien Hirst and Booth-Clibborn Editio
By Francis Gooding

Posted: Fri Apr 25
Reading a book is most often a private experience, something which the individual does quietly and alone. Art, by contrast, has something intrinsically public about it: wherever a painting might find itself – whether in a public collection or a private house – it is always directed outward, towards multiple viewers and all potential audiences. Art rarely asks to be seen in the restricted and personal way in which we read a book.

The artist’s book, the subject of this excellent show, extends the writer’s privilege of private communication – silent moments alone with the reader – to the artist, whose lot is usually to speak with a public voice through works that cannot be touched. So the most fascinating things here are those which beg to be held, pored over, have their pages turned: books, like Matisse’s gorgeous ‘Jazz’ (pictured ), which you will wish to see more of than is possible here, and whose sumptuous materials invite the touch. Others, some of them barely books at all as we understand the term, would nevertheless require opening for their contents to be revealed: Damien Hirst’s huge cabinets of hidden prints and objects, or Francis Bacon’s sprawling ‘Detritus’, a suitcase full of loose cuttings and photos. Where the pieces are self-consciously art objects the resemblance of object to book becomes merely formal. But most of the exhibits in the show provide tantalising glimpses of secrets and the promise of a personal revelation, if only you could get your hands on them.