Colour and Vision: Through the Eyes of Nature
Natural History Museum, London SW7 (020-7942 5725, www.nhm.ac.uk). Until 6 November
Until about 565 million years ago, vision simply didn’t exist, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. Living organisms were “simple, gelatinous creatures lying in layers of mud”, and with no predators around, there was no cause to be able to see. But over the next 500,000 years – “a blink of a proverbial eye in evolutionary terms” – animals began to develop eyesight, as carnivores evolved. This “intriguing” new show at the Natural History Museum presents this evolutionary jump as a kind of “primeval arms race”, charting the development of eyesight and reminding us that “everything about our vision has been formed for practical reasons”. The show brings together more than 350 objects from the museum’s collection to cover millions of years of life on Earth, relying heavily on “extraordinarily poignant” taxidermy exhibits. It presents the “inherently complex” story of vision as “lucidly and succinctly” as one could hope for.
The show is “chock full of beauty”, said Louise Schwartzkoff in Time Out. From fossils of sightless prehistoric creatures to stuffed hummingbirds and preserved cinnabar moths, it is a “visual feast”. Even display jars containing bisected animal eyes have a “gruesome aesthetic appeal”. Most impressive of all is an interactive display that allows visitors to see the world as it would look through the eyes of a snail (“black, white and blurry”), a dragonfly (“psychedelic”) and a bulldog (“as it does to humans, but less colourful”). By encouraging us to see through different eyes, the exhibition “reveals the world in all its many-hued magnificence”.
“All this beauty is desperate stuff, of course,” said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. As observed by Charles Darwin (whose preserved pet octopus is included here), creatures develop their “fabulous colour and vision” not to glorify God’s creation, but to gain evolutionary advantage in the struggle for existence. It is only humans that perceive beauty in vision and try to capture it through art. The show acknowledges this with two contemporary artworks that bookend its displays. It begins with a light installation by Liz West that “delights” in the human visionary spectrum, and ends with a work by colour-blind artist Neil Harbisson. The latter uses a special device to “hear” colour, and suggests that one day all humans may develop the same capacity. This is a “groundbreaking” exhibition, said Philippa Stockley in the London Evening Standard. To really appreciate it you must read the wall texts, but it’s worth it – “this show will change how you see forever”.
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen, 1929 (Vintage £8.99). The story takes place among the AngloIrish gentry in 1920. I read it first when I was a teenager and didn’t know anything about Irish history and politics; I loved it because every sentence was so perceptive and exciting. And it’s fabulously funny about class.
Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation
in Ireland by Roy Foster, 2014 (Penguin £10.99). While I was revisiting Bowen’s novel recently, I was also reading Foster’s fascinating history of the generation of passionate and idealistic young Irish men and women who were behind the Easter Rising of April 1916. The two books complement each other to perfection. Foster is brilliant on how moods and ideas interact in history with events.
The Knox Brothers by Penelope Fitzgerald, 1977 (Fourth Estate £10.99). I love Fitzgerald’s novels, but she’s also a great biographer. With the penetration and imagination of a novelist – and such subtle sympathy for hidden damage – she tells the story of her own family. Her father was the editor of Punch; her brilliant uncles were philanthropists and translators and code-breakers. A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin, 2015 (Picador £8.99). When Lucia Berlin died in 2004, her work was known only to a few discerning fans; now everyone’s discovering these marvellous stories, exquisite scraps torn from a crazy headstrong life in 1960s America and Mexico.
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce, 1958 (Oxford University Press £6.99). I often revisit my favourite children’s books, and this one is a classic. A wonderfully grown-up book, it taught me so much about the passing of time, and how we inhabit the forms left behind by the past.