Looking at weeds in a whole new light

For this month’s art appreciation column, Suffolk-based artist, educator and presenter Grace Adam looks at the much-maligned weed

I’ve been battling with weeds. I always feel guilty yanking them out of the ground, and we all know that our decisions about unwanted weeds v wanted flowers is to some extent fashion driven.

Large Piece of Turf 1503. Albrecht Dürer

In 1495, the artist Albrecht Dürer returned from his journeyman years moving around Europe. During his Wanderschaft he gained experience and could then become a member of the Painters Guild of Nuremberg. Travelling for five or six years, Dürer learned his trade. It’s wonderful to think of all those painters, masons and goldsmiths roaming around exchanging ideas and techniques. Dürer’s watercolour The Large Piece of Turf was painted eight years after returning from his travels. The plants and grasses suggest he probably observed and painted in May. A seemingly random assortment contrasts with his rigorous attention to each detail. We the viewers are lying on our bellies in the meadow looking though the tall grasses. The artist’s meticulous study or pictorial construction of a chunk of turf served as research for grander works, and at the time was quite radical. In keeping with new Renaissance values and investigations he inspects the beauty of a mundane part of the real world. Writing about his ideas, he contemplates where beauty is. “Nature holds the beautiful, for the artist who has the insight to extract it. Thus, beauty lies even in humble, perhaps ugly things, and the ideal, which bypasses or improves on nature, may not be truly beautiful in the end.” Meanwhile over in Italy his contemporary Michelangelo was putting the finishing touches to his David. We tend to think of Renaissance art in relation to the body, but humble weeds were up for a change in status too.

The Nourishment series. Shepherd’s Purse. Michael Landy 2003

Contemporary British artist Michael Landy explores consumerism, the commodification of art, value and ownership. In 2003 he created twelve small meticulous etchings The Nourishment series. Shepherd’s Purse, seen here, takes its name from the shape of its distinctive seed pods. It can grow despite neglect and amongst the detritus we humans produce-thriving in adversity. He talks about the “marvellous optimism” of urban weeds. Interestingly, the artist created these after his famous/infamous Break Down (2001), in which he fully catalogued all 7227 of his possessions and then systematically, publicly destroyed them in an old C&A store on Oxford Street.

Peasant burning weeds 1883. Vincent Van Gogh

A lone figure bends over a small fire in the gathering gloom. Into the fire he casts weeds. Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo to tell him that he had been working on the painting and was pleased that ‘it conveys more of the vastness of the plain and the gathering dusk’ than previous attempts. The heath and moorland captivated the artist, and a series of dark paintings seek to capture the Autumn mood. This is a work from 1883. Van Gogh had only just learned how to use oils and was feeling his way as a painter, so it might not look like the Van Gogh we think we know. His fascination with the night continued; think Starry Night. A few years later, in a letter to Theo he wrote ‘It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day’.

In art, weeds can be symbols of resistance and resilience. They can illustrate vulnerability or stand in for ‘non-believers’. Specifically, Burdock, (one half of that delicious drink) crept into paintings by Gainsborough, Stubbs and Joseph Wright of Derby. Sometimes painters use weeds as prop; not symbolic, but a fabulous way to fill a corner-being architectural and blousy. Next time you tug and twist an unwanted weed out, think of Dürer lavishing care and wonder on them. I’ll try.

Visit Grace Adam Artist. Knap, Grace Adam’s solo exhibition at Mandell’s Gallery, Norwich, finishes on Saturday August 31, 2024.