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TheOrator.Press Art News & Reviews Page. ‘Turner Decoded’ A Sky Arts Original Written & Presented By Dr. Nicholas & Erica Wilkinson Who Claim To Reveal Undiscovered Codes In Paintings By The Turner Prize Namesake – J.M.W Turner. Arguably Not Totally Persuasive But A Great Insight Into The Art of Intrigue And Mystery-Making! September 2023
Nick Wilkinson Travels To The Grand Canal In Venice As He Reveals His Grand Theory To Art Experts Including The Italian Historian Francesco Da Mosto Whose Own Numerous Documentaries (Which We’ve Watched Over The Years) Are Captivating And Include Exploring His Own Venetian Family History. His Love of Italy, History And People, Together With His Charisma, Idiosyncracies, Unique Delivery, Attention To Detail, And Expert Knowledge Make Him Endearing, Engaging And Persuasive Make Him A Hard Act To Follow.
Whether or Not Wilkinson Pulls It Off In The Persuasion Department Is For Each Viewer To Decide. Some Experts Are Convinced. Some Not So Much. But Da Mosto Does Give Him Credence Which Is High Praise Indeed. Their Examination of The Works of Caneletti And Casanova Bring Wonderful Italian Flavour. And It’s Always Great To See The Italian Professor.
Depending on Your POV This Is A ‘How To’ Or ‘How Not To’ Art Documentary. But To Be Fair Wilkinson And His Wife Deserve High Marks For Effort At Least. But The Delivery May Need Work And Also The Claim of Uniqueness May Be Open To Question. Having Been Introduced To Turner After Watching The Play ‘Rockets And Blue Lights’ By British Caribbean Playwrit Winsome Pinnock (Which Features His Twin 1840s Paintings ‘Rockets & Blue Lights’ And ‘The Slave Ship’) We Have Been Interested In Him Ever Since. There Is A Scene In The Mike Leigh Film ‘The Many Colours of Mr Turner’ (Starring Timothy Spall) In Which His Penchant For Adding Tiny Secret Details In His Paintings Is Highlighted. This Indicated His Tendancy For Doing This Has Long Since Been Known. Also Wilkionson Uses What Appear To Be Computer Generated White Outllines (Rather Reminiscent of Chalk Outlines At A Murder Scene) Which Do Create A Sense of Seemingly Drawing Things In (Which Brings To Mind A Mobile Phone Filter). Despite The Fancy Technology The Human Touch With A Descriptive Narravite And Some Strong Lighting Simply Describing What’s In The Painting Might Have Paradoxicall Been More Convincing.
There Is A Mysterious Figure We Have Seen In A Particular Painting (The Slave Ship: 1840 – Which Is The Twin Painting of Rockets And Blue Lights of The Same Year. See Below). We’d Be Interested To Know The Wilkinson Viewpoint As To Exactly What It Is. Should We Ever Get It. We’ll Come Back To You With An Update. Meantime His Explantion of Pareidolia And The Pareidolic And The Exploration The Psychological Power of The Mind (With Dr Persaud) Is Most Very Interesting.
It’s A Great Debut Documentary For The Particular Production Company. A Great Watch. A Great Opportunity To Learn About Art History With A Major Splash of Maestro Mystery. Whether Or Not It’s Persuasive – That’s A Seperate Question – And Like The Wilkinsons Themselves, We’ll Leave That To The Experts. But For A Lay Audience Who Like Art, Including Us, It’s Worth The Watch.
Sky Arts TV: September 2023 (90 Minutes). Sky Arts On Demand Service Is NowTV@NowTVWith Some Documentaries Also @BBCSelect. This Is The First Documentary ByCastleEntertainment Ltd.
Turner Bears His Soul: He Reportedly Saw The Steam Age As “The Golden Goose of The Future Bringing Great Wealth”
He Was The Nation’s Greatest Landscape Artist But There’s More To Him.
There’s Another Layer There.
He Was A Cryptic Artist.
Nicholas Wilikinson, Writer And Presenter of ‘Decoding Turner: The Hidden World of Britain’s Greatest Painter (Sky Arts)
Nicholas Wilkinson Invites Various Art Experts To Consider His Theory That JMW Turner Painted Different Coded Messages With Different Meanings Into His Art Works.He Claims Such Coded Messages Have Never Been Discovered Before.
Nick Has A Doctorate In Physical Chemistry, Working On A Molecular Level, And This Requires Three Dimensional Visualization.
And That IsHow This Relates To His Work On Turner.
Sometimes Nick Has Been Obsessed.They’ll Be Screens With An Image of Turner On.They’ll Be An IPad With An Image of Turner On. Then He’ll Be Sitting With His iPhone With An Image of Turner.
Erica Wilikinson, Writer And Presenter of ‘Decoding Turner: The Hidden World of Britain’s Greatest Painter (Sky Arts)
The Experts: “It’s This Amazing Kind of Moment of…, of De-Coding”
The Wilkinsons Consult With At Least 7 Art Experts.
Some Agree With Him. Some Don’t.
Some Agree With Him On Some Things – But Not On Others.
(One Believes She Sees Genitalia In Turner’s Work As Presented To Her By The Would-Be-Decoder, Which Is Not Exactly The Symbolism He Believed He’d Uncovered When He Presented His Theory To Her).
Nonetheless The Documentary Does Highlight The Fact That 18th Century Artist Gainsborough Did Actually Include Genitalia In His Work (And In One Particular Case This Was After A Disagreement With A Couple of Wealthy Patrons. It Seems He Used An Arty Way of The Era To Secretly Say ‘F’-You’ Through His Art).
So Hard Core or Softer Messaging Has Been Engaged Inserted Into Artistic Works For Centuries. The Question Is Have The Wilkinson’s Really Found New Hidden Meaning In Turner’s Works Previously Unseen Sufficient To Be Called ‘A Code’. Or As With So Much Art, Is It Simply A Matter of Subjective Sightings And Interpretations – As Available To Any And Everyone?
Gainsborough & The Artistic Insertion of Genitalia In The Mr & Mrs Andrews Painting. Saintly Shoulders & Countess Howe
Turner Was Known To Be Ahead of His Time: Here He’s Compared To Einstein
In Victorian England The Job of The Artists Was To Paint Myself, My Wife, My Horse, My Dog, My Country Estate, Maybe Paint A Bit of Mythology.
The Idea That You’d Paint The Meaning of The Universe, Because That’s Turner’s Subect, He Is Actually Taking On The Meaning of The Universe, Is Pushing To The Point That Einstein [Renowned Scientist] Reaches Considerably Later.
Namely The Idea That Somehow, In Light, In The Perception of Light, The Secrets of The Universe Lay Encoded.
Art Expert & Historian Andrew Graham Dixon. Turner Decoded. Sky Arts TV. 2023.
The Dr. Describes The Titles of Turner’s Paintings As Complicated, Cryptic, Anamorphic (Distorted Imagary), Paradolic (Animated Imagary) And Anthropomorphic (Imagary Attributed With Human Elements Despite Not Being Human. Or Imagary Involving A Combination of Multiple Elements Reduced To A Single Image). He Says He Saw This So Called ‘Turner Code’ Emerge After Buying A Turner Painting And Then Analysing Thirty or Forty More.
The Fighting Temeraire: Was Nelson’s Old Battleship As Painted By Turner Coded With Symbolic Meaning And Comporable To The Screaming Pope By Francis Bacon?
Whilst Artists Have, For Centuries, Been Multi-Dimensional, Not All Turner Titles Appear So Complex And In Some Instances It Does Rather Seem Like There’s An Over Complicting of Things For The Sake of Making Them Fit Into A Curious Self-Contrived Theory Based On Limited Evidence (Despite There Being Many Turner Paintings In The World Available For Analysis).
Art Expert & Historian Elsa James On The Fighting Temeraire: “It’s Visible & Invisible”
In One Of His More Persuasive Moments Nick Points Out The Presence of A Skull (Beyond Topographical Form), With A High Collar Coat, A Hat, And A Cockade (Emblem of The French Revolution).
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