Fashionable Frames, Shadows And Paintings With Holes in...

Artist and Blue Head

 c.1965, 

Acrylic on board

 122 x 106.5 cm

So I phoned the Marlborough and told them I was now running the estate. We were all very relieved and decided to have a show. It was actually that simple. Maybe there were lots of machinations behind the scenes but I didn't see any. I was wearing the most incredible pink trousers the day I sat down with the directors. They came up with a date, we discussed the rough content and that was that. At least initially. I hadn't considered THE FRAMES. My dad used to be obsessed with frames. As a kid we'd go to exhibitions all the time whether my brother and I liked it or not (not, usually) and dad would talk about the frames even more than the picture itself, the pictures within seeming relatively incidental. And I thought this was normal. Mind you, to take great or interesting art as a given, as part of the normal fabric of life was a gift. And growing up paying attention to how works are presented is really great training on many levels, although I'm not exactly sure what for. Other than framing. But the aesthetics, colour, tone, hue, lighting of and indeed cost of the frames all come into play. Flat works can become sculptural depending on the frame. Frames are everything.

I wanted to be involved in the choosing of the frames and the Marlborough very kindly agreed for me to be at the meeting with Simon Beaugie who had done dad's frames years ago when he was alive. I felt really strongly that I wanted to stand up for my dad's concerns /passions/irritating yet somehow admirable obsession with frames. Everyone who knew him would sigh and run their fingers through their hair when you mentioned the word 'frames' in the same sentence as dad. The meeting took place in a small and seemingly airless beige room in the basement of the Marlborough gallery. Lots of paintings were stacked up and others laid out, all potentially to be exhibited. Present were myself, one of the directors, Mary Miller, Will Wright, who seemed to be a spokesperson for John Erle-Drax, Simon and two of my dad's friends, Bill and Sheila. The latter two were pretty silent but were there for moral support. Boy, it was bloody stressful. We had costs vs aesthetics and fashion as the primary opposing forces. They were, not unsurprisingly, strong forces. I stood my ground and I left feeling proud but like my head had gone through a mangle.

One of the most interesting (and less painful) discussions was about the above picture. It has several holes bashed into the board, something my dad did periodically to his pictures and other things around the house in general. It was typical of him. He had a foul temper. When I was older, I would open packets of bacon by stabbing it vertically with a sharp kitchen knife and ripping it quite violently along each side, fast and with speed. That's how we opened things in the Kiff household. (Milk or orange cartons were opened with similar vigorous aggression and enthusiasm and as such never poured straight, edges always jagged) As I grew up it became pretty clear this wasn't usual or indeed necessary. I still do it though. Old habits etc.

Anyway, the thickness, width and depth and also type and quality of wood used for the frame was up for debate. Would the wood be washed with a colour or not? And if so, which wash and for which pictures? And which wood? What would the mount be like? We spent hours deciding on various combinations. Much discussion ensued. Simon had a bag full of lumps of wood with washes. Holding these up against the paintings we gradually got an idea of what worked. We kept some pictures in the show purely because they'd already been framed and you saw how cost inevitably dictated contents of a show. Yet these old ones were, by today's fashion considered too thick and clunky. And I could see this. My fight was to not include things just because of the cost. I was battling with my pride, my naivity and my aesthetic integrity. 

But now we had the back of the board to consider. The colour of the mount board was as important. How how far in front of the mount board should the painting be placed? How much shadow would there be? And how did this alter the painting itself? We were effectively adding another colour to the painting. And that's before we considered the lighting. And so we segued into discussing what the painting was actually about. All totally fascinating. Riveting in fact.