The Tate Modern gallery, built in an old power station, hosts art which is frequently of no aesthetic value whatever, in my opinion, other than to demonstrate the vacuity of much that passes for Modern or post-Modern, art. Apparently, this giant sculpture is to be built:
London’s Tate Modern, the world’s most popular modern art museum, unveiled plans on Tuesday to build a giant glass pyramid-style extension which its creator described as a “pile” of boxes.
Unlike the uniform glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre museum in Paris, the planned extension to the converted power station on the southern bank of the Thames is asymmetric.
The new building, which aims to ease visitor congestion, should be ready in time for the Olympic Games in London in 2012 and will cost around 165 million pounds to complete at current prices.
Makes the heart swell with patriotic pride, does it not? I love the line about the Olympics. Expect more stunts like this, paid for by the taxpayer, as the Games approach. Do not say you were not warned.
While on the subject of the dreadfulness of post-modernism, I can recommend this book.
Since Charles Saachi has demonstrated that he’s got loads of money and abolutely no taste, why is it still considered necessary for the taxpayer to subsidise self-indulgent pretentious bollocks?
Look at the bright side.
At least it probably won’t blow away in the wind and kill people.
I think the artist got the idea when he worked at Tesco.
What to do with all those boxes once you’ve stacked the shelves.
Speaking of post-modernism, couple of good articles by Dalrymple and others at City Journal. I linked in thru Powerline.
I went to the Tate Modern once. I have to say that the only thing that impressed me about the experience was the building itself – Scott’s power station is an architectural masterpiece. The stuff inside on the other hand was mostly junk or tat (some nice Dalis, but that hardly redeems the rest of it). There’s a moral hiding in there somewhere…
I also went to Tate Modern once.
It’s an hour of my life that I will never see again.
Nice building, shame about the contents.
And as for this glass pyramid: the aircon costs are going to be huge.
One wonders if modern artists connive to continue to churn out asthetically-denuded pretentious tat so as not to “blow the gaff” for all that has recently past – “The Emperors’ New Hoodie”, as it were.
Tate Modern. Glowering building, mediocre contents. Decor like a ’70s comp. Better use could be as an independent power station for the tube…now THAT would be useful.
Disregarding post-modernism for a moment, I don’t think the problem with Tate Modern is with modernism per se. The problem is simply that the collection is crap. The museum’s mission is supposedly “Art since 1900”, and although there has been lots of good or great art produced in that time, virtually none of it is in Tate Modern. If you go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, you find room after room of masterpieces. In Tate Modern you don’t.
What is good in Tate Modern is the building itself, which is a really interesting reuse of an old structure. If you like visiting an art museum for the restaurants and cafes and other social meeting spaces, it is as good as an art museum comes, as these generally have a lovely view of the Thames and of London. The former chimney of the power station, the Millenium Bridge, and St Paul’s Cathedral on the other side of the river line up in a quite striking way. And one part of the museum (the Turbine Hall) is simply an enormous enclosed space, which is quite imopressive to walk through. (The museum commissions artists to do things with this space on a temporary basis – usually about six months. These have varied from really good to really awful. Sadly, the one at the moment is bad rather than good).
Besides being a large expenditure of public money, this plan for an extension of the museum looks dreadful. It looks like some Frank Gehry wannabe building that will make an awful mess of the way that will ruin what is good about the present building, which is the way it interacts with the river and other buildings on the south bank.
During the fine weather the other week, the wife and I spent the day in Bath. As civlised and civilising a place as you can find in England (even if it is clogged with tourists).
After a leisurely lunch, we repaired to the Victoria Art Gallery, near Pultney Bridge, where there is an exibition of Rembrandts etchings.
Vanessa and I are both reasonable artists, so we were keen to see the great man’s technique up close.
As you enter a curator hands you a magnifying glass.You will appreciate this, as some of them are only two inches square.
Suffice it to say that close to, the skill and sublety of his penmanship is utterly mindblowing!
It’s on till Sept 3rd, if anyone is in this part of the world in the next month, it’s well worth a look.
Interesting comments about the Tate. So I wasn’t alone in that view. I thought there was something desperately wrong with me – still might be.
There’s quite a lot of good or great art in the Tate Modern. It is just that it is floating in a sea of sententious crap from Serota’s favourite schools of contemporaries – the stuff that is produced for grant-awarding bodies, museums and prizes on the circuit.
That’s why TM is arranged as it is, not just cussedness. An old-fashioned arrangement by artist, school, place orperiod would mean unmanageable crowding in the few sections with things the public enjoys, and the whole rest of the vast edifice as empty as the institutionalised work the museum has been at pains to promote. As things are you’re compelled to walk past a Richard Long to get to a Hockney or vice versa, so the curators can claim each is much visited, and the official taste is cleanly endorsed by visitor numbers.