Is Tate Britain's A Picture of Britain an exhibition about British landscape or about paint charts, I thought, as I found myself becoming increasingly obsessed by the colours that had been chosen to paint the walls in the various rooms, each of which indicated a different geographical area. They were as follows:
- The north: granite-like grey-black; coaly; smoky. - The south-east: pearly grey - think dawn over the white cliffs of Dover. - The Highlands: heathery, peaty purple. The heart of England: a warm chestnut autumn glow. Very Forest of Arden. - The flatlands (Suffolk and Norfolk): Palest blue, like a big cloud-scudded sky. - The "mystical west" (as the show has it): twilit dark blue, ready for the witching hour on Glastonbury Tor.
The fact that all this made much more impression on me than the work in the exhibition was, I feel, not a good thing. Are exhibitions getting overdesigned, or have I seen too many TV makeover shows?
