MOVING all the pictures in our house is a task I relish. We have accumulated a motley collection of 26 photos, prints and paintings, some of them my own efforts. At the start of our latest move I unhooked the pictures from the walls in every room of our three-bedroom home and lined them up on the floor in one room.
It took an hour to hang them all up again – but in different places. Each picture was relocated to a position away from where it had been hanging for the previous six months or so.
What was the point? Putting familiar pictures in new positions makes people notice them more. They see them afresh, and pause to enjoy them.
If you find yourself taking your art for granted, an every-room rehang could put the pep back in your pictures. An inter-room shuffle will allow you to see them in a new light, and not just literally.
Once you’ve got all your pics off their hooks, there is one rule I urge you to follow when putting them back: Do not put any on the hook it occupied before.
All other rules about where to hang pictures can be ignored, along with preconceptions about which of your pictures should go where. Forget conventions about what sort of thing belongs over the fireplace or in your bedroom or facing the front door. Think surprises.
Don’t remove any hooks or nails and don’t put any new ones in. Make do with your existing hooks and nails and don’t hesitate to put a small picture where a big picture has been before, and vice versa.
What can be done for pictures on hooks can also of course be done for posters held up by Blutack. And the same goes for ornaments, and for photos in tabletop frames – all come alive when rearranged and given a new place.
The professionals do this. If curators routinely rearrange the pictures in art galleries there must be something to it.
Galleries invariably have more pictures than they have space to hang, with the surplus assigned to their reserve collection unseen in the basement or a warehouse. I am in the same position, with more pictures than I think my walls can attractively bear. My reserve collection of about 10 pictures is in a cupboard.
Unfortunately, a reserve collection brings the dissatisfaction of being unable to display everything at once. However, a surplus of pictures does bring delight at each move, when favourites exiled to the dark cupboard are welcomed back to the light.
Allowing yourself a reserve brings freedom to carry on acquiring works regardless of wall space, whether by buying art, by making art, or by rescuing art from a skip. Now you can treat yourself to spontaneous picture purchases in charity shops, at auctions or, on holiday, in Cornish souvenir shops.
Once a home is built construction may cease, yet a house is never really finished. I believe that dwellings should evolve as their occupants change. Moving pictures is part of that. It helps keep life interesting. People don’t realise houses and flats get bored after a few years. If your home could talk, it would thank you for shuffling your pictures.
Some people are bored with their home. They would find that moving pictures around is a lot quicker way of getting a new environment than moving house. Cheaper too. Costs nothing. Undercuts redecorating too.
Unless you live alone, your idea of where pictures should hang is likely to differ from the ideas of others. To head off a household argument, remind the opposition that no picture move is irreversible. Tell them: “Let’s try it for a week.” By week’s end they will be enjoying at least some elements of your novel layout. Before you know it, your brilliant re-arrange has been in place six months. Everyone loves it. Time for another move.
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