ABSTRACT
‘The Follies of Youth’ was catalysed in 2013, following a visit by the Pavilion team to Temple Newsam, a Tudor-Jacobean house, originally built between 1500 and 1520, with grounds landscaped by Capability Brown during the 1760s. The encounter of Bailey and ‘The Follies’ with Brown, however, was a reversal of Lord Coventry’s experience. Drawing on the thin trace of Brown’s impact, as well her own artistic interests in the geology of the land, artist Ruth Lyons was inspired to reflect on the way in which Brown’s design sought to exploit and control the land, while appearing natural and untouched. The work reflects on Brown’s modernity and its relation to what Crouch describes as the shift from courtesy to a system of rules about social class status without moral impetus. Stauvers points out that Brown’s signature was to efface his own authorship, ‘for, once his parklands reached maturity, his designs were mistaken for works of nature.
