Keith Arnatt, from Pictures from a Rubbish Tip, 1988-89
That rubbish can be beautiful isn’t such a surprise, I suppose. We’ve all left things to go bad and noticed how lovely that white furry mold can be. (Or is that just me? It’s entirely possible I’ve just outed myself as something of a slattern.) But though decay can be rather lovely, most of us would draw the line at heading to a rubbish tip in search of the sublime. But Keith Arnatt did just that, with extraordinary results. The series Pictures from a Rubbish Tip, made by photographing on a local dump, seems to me to have a great deal in common with the sublime in painting.
