User Reviews

I thought this was pretty good. I didnt know much about Turner and to be honest whilst I wasn't sure what to believe, and it is only a theory they are positing, it did really turn me on to Turner's art. I'd only ever really associated him with turbulent skies, so I really enjoyed the dissection of the paintings and got a much better feel for the artist as they were examining a good range of his paintings. I could see Napoleon in the ship but some of the suggestions seemed to be stretching to me. Good though, and I enjoyed listening to the experts that they had enlisted to test the theories out. I had heard about the phallus in Gainsborough's 'Mr and Mrs Andrews' as my mate Charlie kept going on about it (I didn't actually believe him til now!) so I guess it does happen quite a lot in art, so whilst I'm still on the fence, I'm slightly looking over into the 'decoding' camp. I know a bit more than I did before so that's a 'win' in my book!

I love Turner. But not enough to imagine random shapes in his paintings and make up a lot of nonsense about them. Why someone thought this was worthy of a TV show, I really have no idea. Still, you get to see some nice paintings.

There are some sensible peope in this too and, at least, the show is honest enough to let them disagree and not see the weird shapes. That said, the people that seemingly "see" things need have a word with themselves. There would be much better use of sensible art people of they had just done a straight show about how amazing Turner is. Reflective of how hungry we apparently are for codes, signs and nonsense.

Sadly I didn't enjoy this documentary, partly because I was in it and my contribution was disappointing, but mostly because it didn't really nail the idea that there are hidden images to be found in some of JMW Turner's work. Many comments that I've seen subsequently to "Decoding Turner" being first broadcast on Sky Arts reveal that the viewers were mostly unconvinced. My opinion is that too much time was spent on the less obvious "hidden" images and not enough on those which are much easier to see. The historical contexts of the Napoleonic Wars and the mysterious Rosetta stone (which was on the point of being decoded at the time) also required a lot more time than they were given.