On taste

I have finally got my latest artwork framed, a photograph of a vase of flowers in the Vanitas tradition by John Phillips. It was almost the last piece on show at 2016’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It pulled me up short just before the exit. At first I thought it was just a vase of flowers. Which of course it is – except that the flowers are dead. All of them. They retain their power and beauty but they are definitely, irrevocably, dead. I always feel a pang of guilt in throwing out dead flowers, though logically I know they were dying even before I bought them. To have such flowers immortalised in a photograph somehow seems a fitting memento mori to all those I have consigned to the bin, along with the various orchids and other plants I have managed to murder, though I am still not convinced that the Flat is not to blame for all these deaths.

My framer did a fantastic job though I suspect he had a heart-sink moment when he saw it, it being black and therefore having a propensity to show every speck of dirt or cat hair in the country. I am inordinately fond of black. Not to wear you understand but in furnishings and wall coverings, and so I forgive it its magnetism for dust. Now, where to put it? I haven’t quite got the hang of one thing in, one thing out. It’s mostly things in. That’s because I have inherited the addition to collecting gene. Both my uncles are avid collectors. I have, I think, managed to get it under a modicum of control in that I only collect paintings…and prints and etchings and ceramics and glass and sculpture…and beautifully designed functional objects. Oh dear. Not everything I have appeals to the Boyfriend. I have been banned from putting Vanitas IV in the bedroom. He says it’s depressing and disturbing, prompting a lecturette on how in fact it’s conversely very life-affirming. Being mindful of death is a good thing. It can get you going on a cold morning; or prompt you belatedly to start a career in textile design.

To allow the Boyfriend to sleep of a night, I have found a spot for it in the hall, alongside a selection of other works, which have most definitely not been (sigh) edited or (deeper sigh) curated. Rather, these are works that I admire; that resonate with me; that give me pleasure; that make me think; that remind me of places that I have been and people I have met; that enrich my surroundings, creating a tapestry of objects, images, colours and textures that make my house my home and tell the story of my life.

Far from being something that might just be referred to an inconsequential fluffing of pillows, the choices of objects, colours, and textures we surround ourselves with can have tremendous power for good or ill. This is why a home doesn’t have to be perfect, fit for a magazine shoot or an Instagram shot, but should speak of, for and to those who live in it. I don’t want to be curated or edited even, or especially, by myself. I prefer to let it all hang. For, as Lord Goring memorably says in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, “Fashion is what one wears oneself.”