After Pater

This is the most recent iteration of a series of works based around this quotation, described in more detail in a blog on this website titled Long, or longer, after Walter Pater.

To recap briefly: the original version dated from the early 1990s, as an A4 artwork for inclusion in a fund-raising group exhibition at Cairn Gallery, Nailsworth. I used a photo of a hedgerow borrowed from British Moths and their Haunts by L. Hugh Newman, captioned with a rewriting of the quote from Walter Pater: “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”.

In 1995, to tie in with the publication of my An A-Z of Bird Song, Harry Gilonis published a card at his Form Books imprint carrying the Pater misquote printed letterpress in a single line, on a stock of card with flecks of colour suggestive of birds’ egg markings, in four colourways: grey, olive, cream and white.

Two years later, Ian Hamilton Finlay published a set of four cards, on grey, olive, cream and emerald, titled Birdsong, with my Pater misquote in a single line across the front, and on the back of each the rider “in a variety of colours”, together with an acknowledgement to my original.

In 2018, David Bellingham published through his WAX366 imprint a card with the legend “All art constantly aspires to the condition of conversation”, with on the verso the provenance of the original quote, ascribed to Walter Pater, 1877; my variation, 1995; and “All art constantly aspires to the condition of birdsong in a variety of colours”, Ian Hamilton Finlay, 1997.

For this most recent variation, I took a photo of a section of fence that I used to drive past every day on the B4380 at Atcham, near Shrewsbury, where it forms part of the boundary of Attingham Park.