South Bank Sunday.
Today I stood in front of Eve and sought the 'absolute emotion' that Barnett Newman hoped to share!
The Tate Modern is re-hanging its collection, and moving away from its original display format linked to the Academy genres of Landscape/Matter/ Environment, StillLife/Object/RealLife, History/Memory/Society, and Nude/Action/Body, and looks like it's moving towards chronology and isms. Only two of the new galleries are open as I write, and completion of the remaining exhibit areas is scheduled for May.
On arrival our first encounter was with Embankment the display of white boxes by Rachel Whiteread in the massive Turbine Hall. This installation seems to invoke feelings of size and fun as children ran and played between the structures, and lots of camera bearing couples looked to discover new views of each other between and around the towering boxes, creating their own art images!
The first of the re-named galleries that we visited was Material Gestures, and it was there that we were immediately confronted with Barnett Newman's Adam and Eve side by side and much larger that I had envisaged. Opposite the paintings but beautifully complementing the expressive ideas of Newman, was Anish Kapoor's Ishi's Light. I captured my thoughts and information in these few hasty notes taken at the time!! Kapoor's sculpture was like walking into a concave pod, it was very disorientating as you were lost in it, it seemed to go on forever, like stepping into an eternal space, and you physically felt it, but was it a physical experience of an emotion? This piece seems to explain Newman's objectives for Eve and Adam which were hung opposite the 'sculpture'. I'd written that, then saw these notes on the wall: 'extends Newman's metaphor into real space. Like Newman, Kapoor's work generates an immense experience which elicits powerful physical and psychological responses'.
We also enjoyed viewing works by Rothko, Pollock, Miro, Matisse, Monet, Dubuffet and was interested to learn that the expression 'mobiles' was used by Marcel Duchamp in explaining the moveable hanging sculptures of Alexander Calder.
Before leaving Material Gestures, a great find was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Bathers at Moritzburg 1909/10 reworked 1926) a work from the Course Book 2 Art of the Avant-Gardes. He was a member of the Brucke group in Dresden.
The other gallery which is open for viewing is entitled Poetry and Dream, which has a heavy focus on Surrealism. From the wall : Surrealism and Beyond. For the poets and artists of the Surrealist movement, dreams stood for all aspects of the world repressed by rationalism and convention.
The most exciting discovery here was Duchamp's Box-in-a-Valise (1941). Very interesting notes accompanied this item. 'Marcel Duchamp was a significant influence on Dada and Surrealism. He was renown for his irony and intellectualism as well as his distanced deadpan treatment of eroticism. He was careful to limit his creative output, warning that artists should not repeat themselves. However, he also issued multiple versions of his work'. 'Duchamp saw Box-in-a-Valise as a "portable museum" containing miniature versions and reproductions of many of his earlier works. Its title refers to the fact that many of these have been signed by Duchamp's female alter-ego Rrose Sélavy. The box unfolds like an intricate puzzle, revealing the thematic links between works created over more than three decades. The number of objects in the box was sixty-nine, an erotically suggestive number'.
The distinction between the concentration on form and the isolationist stance of the modernists and the mixed media and 'expanded field' of the postmodernists, really came alive with video's, installations, collage, natural materials etc. We left elated and excited feeling that today we had seen Tate Modern with a new view thanks to AA318!!!
After a visit to Pizza Express we strolled along the South Bank crossing the Thames to visit Covent Garden and the Tea House before making our way back to the car via The Strand, Fleet Street, Ludgate Circus and St. Paul's. I love visiting London with 'him indoors' cos I know that I won't get lost!!! :-)
The Tate Modern is re-hanging its collection, and moving away from its original display format linked to the Academy genres of Landscape/Matter/ Environment, StillLife/Object/RealLife, History/Memory/Society, and Nude/Action/Body, and looks like it's moving towards chronology and isms. Only two of the new galleries are open as I write, and completion of the remaining exhibit areas is scheduled for May.
On arrival our first encounter was with Embankment the display of white boxes by Rachel Whiteread in the massive Turbine Hall. This installation seems to invoke feelings of size and fun as children ran and played between the structures, and lots of camera bearing couples looked to discover new views of each other between and around the towering boxes, creating their own art images!
The first of the re-named galleries that we visited was Material Gestures, and it was there that we were immediately confronted with Barnett Newman's Adam and Eve side by side and much larger that I had envisaged. Opposite the paintings but beautifully complementing the expressive ideas of Newman, was Anish Kapoor's Ishi's Light. I captured my thoughts and information in these few hasty notes taken at the time!! Kapoor's sculpture was like walking into a concave pod, it was very disorientating as you were lost in it, it seemed to go on forever, like stepping into an eternal space, and you physically felt it, but was it a physical experience of an emotion? This piece seems to explain Newman's objectives for Eve and Adam which were hung opposite the 'sculpture'. I'd written that, then saw these notes on the wall: 'extends Newman's metaphor into real space. Like Newman, Kapoor's work generates an immense experience which elicits powerful physical and psychological responses'.
We also enjoyed viewing works by Rothko, Pollock, Miro, Matisse, Monet, Dubuffet and was interested to learn that the expression 'mobiles' was used by Marcel Duchamp in explaining the moveable hanging sculptures of Alexander Calder.
Before leaving Material Gestures, a great find was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Bathers at Moritzburg 1909/10 reworked 1926) a work from the Course Book 2 Art of the Avant-Gardes. He was a member of the Brucke group in Dresden.
The other gallery which is open for viewing is entitled Poetry and Dream, which has a heavy focus on Surrealism. From the wall : Surrealism and Beyond. For the poets and artists of the Surrealist movement, dreams stood for all aspects of the world repressed by rationalism and convention.
The most exciting discovery here was Duchamp's Box-in-a-Valise (1941). Very interesting notes accompanied this item. 'Marcel Duchamp was a significant influence on Dada and Surrealism. He was renown for his irony and intellectualism as well as his distanced deadpan treatment of eroticism. He was careful to limit his creative output, warning that artists should not repeat themselves. However, he also issued multiple versions of his work'. 'Duchamp saw Box-in-a-Valise as a "portable museum" containing miniature versions and reproductions of many of his earlier works. Its title refers to the fact that many of these have been signed by Duchamp's female alter-ego Rrose Sélavy. The box unfolds like an intricate puzzle, revealing the thematic links between works created over more than three decades. The number of objects in the box was sixty-nine, an erotically suggestive number'.
The distinction between the concentration on form and the isolationist stance of the modernists and the mixed media and 'expanded field' of the postmodernists, really came alive with video's, installations, collage, natural materials etc. We left elated and excited feeling that today we had seen Tate Modern with a new view thanks to AA318!!!
After a visit to Pizza Express we strolled along the South Bank crossing the Thames to visit Covent Garden and the Tea House before making our way back to the car via The Strand, Fleet Street, Ludgate Circus and St. Paul's. I love visiting London with 'him indoors' cos I know that I won't get lost!!! :-)
2 Comments:
What a lovely day that sounds, & my! aren't you writing intellectually these days? ;-)
What a wonderful description of your day at the Tate Modern. You sound so knowledgeable! :] Can't wait to see all these weird and wonderful artworksin real life that we're experiencing through our coursebooks.
The rest of your day sounded good too.
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