The Great Happiness 1965

Curator: Look at this, Cecil Collins's "The Great Happiness," part of the Tate collection. It's a small, almost mystical monochrome print. Editor: It feels like looking into a memory. Pale and diffuse, like happiness is just out of reach. Is it a landscape, or a dreamscape? Curator: Collins was fascinated by the idea of innocence, of the Fool, and I see that here in the simple symbolism and ethereal quality. He tapped into universal archetypes. Editor: The "Fool"? Well, maybe there is some social commentary here, too. Considering when Collins was making work, the world wars, and rising anxieties, it makes sense that he was making art to escape. Curator: Exactly, but maybe happiness, that "great happiness," isn't escapism but a radical act of presence. I feel the artist beckoning me to come a little closer. Editor: Perhaps. And that luminosity, that single spot of light, it’s both hopeful and strangely isolating, but either way, it's stuck in my head now.