Now to the good stuff! The last time I was in London the Tate Modern had not yet opened. This museum visit was to be the highlight of my trip - in terms of art viewing. It certainly lived up to the hype and I had a magnificent time roaming its galleries.
Todd at From the Floor recently visited the Tate Modern and made two observations. 1) The installation isn't so great. 2) The hanging of an Olitski across from a Monet Water-lilies painting was fascinating. I have to agree on both accounts. Specifically the Olitski/Monet installation. When I walked into the gallery, my head turned from right to left to right to left, as if watching a tennis match. I kept saying to myself, "Olitski? Monet! Monet? Olitski!" This juxtaposition almost totally made up for the faults of the other installations.
Instead of doing a broad museum review or discussing the works that clearly are standouts (that's too easy and not very interesting, I think), I want to identify the works that were surprises for me. Meaning, the artists may have fantastic reputations and continuously make brilliant work, but for whatever reason, a certain work of art struck me. It was almost as if a light went off in my head. Consider it a revelation of sorts to see these works:
Bruce Nauman - Raw Materials
A lot can be read about this installation all over the Internet. Nauman is the current artist who was given the daunting task of installing work in the massive, and I mean MASSIVE, Turbine Hall. Nauman's response? Practically nothing. More accurately, Nauman's installation is sound. And it is incredible. Walk into the Hall and the first thing you hear is a gurgling, mumbling ambient sound. I was concerned at first that this was going to be like a lot of the prevelant art videos today which use gurgling ambient sound as if it is cool. Quickly though, I found that Nauman's installation was perhaps the best one I've ever experienced.
The Hall is filled with 16 pairs of speakers, evenly spaced lengthwise. The speakers are discriminately hung on the side walls, pointing to the corresponding speaker across the hall, some 80 feet away. Each of the 16 pairs of speakers plays a different sound piece. The volume levels are low so that you don't hear a mess of sound. The best way to experience the piece is to stand in the middle of the hall and walk, slowly, to the other end. When you step into the line of a pair of speakers, miraculously the sound becomes clear and it's as if you're surrounded by the piece. The voices engulf you and you don't hear anything else. The other sounds disappear. When you are ready to move on, about 15-20 feet later you step into the line of another pair of speakers playing a different piece.
The discussions about the piece I've seen thus far focus on sound, installation, and other modernist stuff. While true, the thing that struck me about Raw Materials was imagining a blind person walking into the space. As they walk through the line of sound by each of the 16 pairs of speakers, it must feel as if you've entered a new, isolated room. The massive Turbine Hall has essentially been cut into 16 invisible galleries. And that is very cool!
While sound art in and of itself rarely interests me, like video art, the manipulation of space is most profound. I can't help but laugh at Sosnowska's approach at the Serpentine versus Nauman's Turbine Hall installation. Sosnowska is playing t-ball while Nauman is a Major League all-star.
Raoul Dufy - The Wheatfield - 1929
Over the years I haven't spent much time with Dufy's work. And it came as a surprise to me that I like this piece. Those who have read this site for a while know that I am fascinated by depth. And what struck me about The Wheatfield were the layers of line and color. A pretty simple landscape, it is invigorated with life by layering the line on top of the color. It's a nice picture.
Yves Klein - IKB 79 - 1959
Perhaps Klein is considered a bit of a lightweight since I haven't seen many, if any, of his works. Two things struck me about this painting. 1) The depth and richness of the color. In my mind, the painting took on more life than a block of color. 2) The obsessive pursuit of Klein to produce the perfect blue. Some painters obsess over the figure, Klein obsessed over blue. Some might think the pursuit of the figure is more noble but for me the pursuit of a perfect color is distinguished.
Ellsworth Kelly - Mediterranee - 1952
This Kelly was unlike any I've seen, though not a huge departure from his more typical fare. A large piece, it was composed of several rectangular panels arranged in a tight grid. Measuring about 5' tall and 12' wide, the panels of blue, green, yellow, etc, were at different heights, producing a topography of color. Kelly is a master of color balance and the effect of the elevated panels made for a vibrating experience. Again, the piece was all about depth for me, and I've long been interested in elevation of panels as a means of enhancing the depth of a piece. Kelly was all over that 50 years ago. He did it quite well!
Frank Stella - Moby Dick Series of Prints - 1991
The Tate was showing two prints from the series, The Captain Ahabad Starbuck and The Fossil Whale. These large scale prints were also new to me. Incredibly detailed and colorful, these are the types of works that you could spend hours studying and constantly find new things to notice. Beautiful, complex, colorful... I found myself saying, "Wow, Frank. You're pretty darn good!"
Sean Scully - Coyote - 2000
This piece was the biggest surprise. I did not come to the Tate expecting to walk out having my favorite piece be a Scully. Every Scully I've seen as felt bland. I don't enjoy his color palette and his compositions sometimes feel forced. But Coyote is different. The colors are warm and soft. The composition was perfect. It felt like a daydream. Not many works of art can soothe you but this one made me sleepy and ready for a nap. That was a good thing. I wish I had been able to find an image of this piece, but since I couldn't, you'll have to take my word on it. This work was perfect, a masterpiece.
Sam Taylor-Wood - Still Life - 2001
Guilty pleasures! Taylor-Wood's photography leaves a lot to be desired for some people. I've liked her work, but it has never knocked my socks off. This piece was a video, just about four minutes long, of a bowl of fruit. It was timelapsed in such a way that over the course of the four minutes, the bowl of fruit moves from fresh to rotten (very rotten!). The changes are almost imperceptible but as you watch the video, mold grows and and the fruit falls apart. The clear crowd favorite, I found this piece to be hilarious. The bowl of fruit is the typical still life subject matter. Lit like an Old Master painting, Taylor-Wood first pokes fun at the notion of the still life by photographing the scene. But she doesn't stop there. She makes a video of the still life. Whereas Old Masters would only paint perfectly ripe fruit (idealizing it, perhaps?), this artist finds beauty in decay. I saw this as a possible statement that still lifes are tired as a genre and it's time for them to go away. A stretch perhaps, but I've grown tired of stale still life paintings. Still Life was a fun piece and always had dozens of people intently watching it unfold.
Pol Bury - 3069 White Dots on Oval Ground - 1966
Last but not least, Bury's piece was one that plays tricks on the eye. As I said earlier about Kelly's painting that vibrated, Bury's sculpture (?) did the same thing, literally. An oval background of wood has been penetrated by thin wires holding white dots on the end - 3069 of them presumably. When you push a button mounted on the gallery wall, a brilliant dance is set in motion. One wire at a time intermittently twitches. This causes the white dots to vibrate ever so slightly. You never know which dot is going to move when, so while you're looking over the piece, out of the corner of your eye you see movement. You go look there to see the dot coming to rest. Only your eye can't rest as another dot twitches. The piece is alive but it's very difficult to find its pulse. In a room full of corny OpArt, this piece was the standout.
Tate Modern instantly jumped into my top 3 list of art museums. In two weeks I'll visit the new MoMA and I'm anxious to see how the two museums compare. It'll be fun, that's for sure.
Hopefully tomorrow I can wrap up my London reviews with a post about the Saatchi. Fingers are crossed.
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