7 May 2010 77 Million Paintings

We didn’t stay for all 77 million. Brian Eno is the Artistic Director of the Brighton Festival this year and there are Eno installations and shows throughout the month-long festival. Sam and I took in some of the 77 Million Paintings this afternoon. What made it particularly work for me is that Fabrica is in a converted church, which made the constantly mutating diamond of paintings look like a commentary on medieval stained glass windows. Yes, I’m one of those people who likes to find meaning–even story–in art. I can’t help it.

There were also a number of people who appeared to be napping through the display and that seemed like a commentary on church too.

It was a mesmerizing bit of show, all in all. At first Sam whispered to me loudly, “Nothing’s changing!” But I told her to keep watching and in the time that it took me to hiss those words to her the colors and drawings had morphed into something else. But the mutations are practically imperceptible, and for a while I was hung up on watching a single panel and trying to note the exact moment that it started to become something else. It was impossible, like trying to pinpoint the exact moment of falling asleep.

And then my daughter would wake me up: “Mom, it looks like a butterfly now!” “Mom, look it has eyes!”

Then it would change again and I’d hardly even notice how.

“Mom, the scribbles are becoming red now. It looks like someone made a mess with spaghetti!”

You know what? It totally did. I laughed. And then I figured the churchgoers had had enough of Sam’s whispered commentary and we came back out into the regular light of day, which probably also changes 77 million times and we never even notice how.