Q. My husband has fallen in love with ‘the country’ and retired to Exmoor while I maintain a presence in our Notting Hill residence for work. The problem is he has left his London study, carved from half our ground-floor sitting room, in its traditional disordered condition as if he has only popped out to buy milk — drifts of detritus, newspapers and plastic bags on every surface. I would like to Marie Kondo the study but I don’t dare tidy it as he will accuse me of throwing away even more things he has in fact lost himself. It is also a terrible waste to have half our available reception space reduced to a Tracey Emin-style installation. Your solution please?
— R.J., London W11
A. Think Francis Bacon rather than Marie Kondo. When the artist died in 1992, all 7,000 items in his famously chaotic studio in Reece Mews, SW7, were painstakingly photographed and logged, and faithfully reassembled for posterity in Dublin City Art Gallery.
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