Tribute: Incident in the Long gallery Painting

As a trained art historian, I used to a lot of time in country houses; alone, in dimly lit side rooms, staring for hours on end at inventories and other probate documents in the hope of identifying lost paintings or items of furniture. In such circumstances the interiors take on a very different atmosphere than when they are populated by heritage conscious members of the public and their footsore children. And on a rainy, spring afternoon, these empty suites of rooms, hung with gilt framed portraits once again become intimate, private spaces built to exhibit wealth and exercise power. Eroticism is seldom anything else but the discrete exercise and exchange of power. Here dominance is the privilege of sight and submission is the consent to be momentaily blind. As the viewer, we cannot consent to blindness and thus we are excluded from the game. We can watch but we cannot, as in most of my picures, play.