tate modern

Today was a bit grey out so we decided to take in the Tate Modern (another of the many free museums), Museum of International Modern and Contemporary Art.  The modern content ranges from huge sculptural instalations, video art, to paintings and even live art. It really challenges what you think of as art. From the tube we walked across Millenium Bridge which is a foot bridge designed by Norman Foster spanning the Thames.  The Tate Modern is the brick and glass building straight ahead on the other side of the bridge (with the brick chimney)

Looking back across the bridge from where we came is the dome of St. Pauls Cathedral!

 The Tate Modern is in an old power station which was reclaimed in the early 1990's to be the new home for London's modern art after the collection out grew the old location.  The large space that used to house the power turbines has been transformed to be the main entrance and a location for the display of LARGE art pieces.  

The first piece of art we came across was located in the main hall and at first glance, I must admit we kind of scoffed at it, until we read more about it.  It was part of the Unilever Series by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.  There was a sign posted by the museum that explained that Ai's current whereabouts are not known. It stated that in early April Ai was arrested by the Chinese government for undisclosed reasons and they are yet to report where he is to the public or his family.  It also stated that the Tate hopes Ai is released soon.  Obviously his arrest appears to be political and likely due to Ai's free thinking and world experience (apparently he tweeted an opinion that may not have sat well with the government).  We thought it was amazing that the Tate would publicly post this information and in doing so take a position on the issue.  It's commendable.  If you want to read more about Ai and his recent arrest we found information on wikipedia.  Back to the art.....

This is our first glimp of the art.  It extends from here, all the way to the far end of the gallery space (see the people far away down the side).  So what is it....

 

Sunflower Seeds (yah, scroll back up and look at how big the area is again) by Ai Weiwei

  

One of my first thoughts was that you could feed a small country with all these wasted seeds, but they aren't real sunflower seeds.  In total the exhibit contains approximately one hundred million (100,000,000!) hand pressed and hand painted porcelain sunflower seeds!  Ai commissioned the seeds to be hand made by a small village in China where porcelain goods have been made for thousands of years.  I said "made BY a small village" because it took 1600 individuals to mine the materials, create the porcelain, press the seed shape and paint the appearance all by hand, which apparently included virtually everyone in the city.  The city is Jingdezhen in China and this art installation helped employ the majority of the city who are otherwise devastatingly poor. In addition to the art itself, there was also a video room where Ai describes how the sunflower seeds were made and his vision behind them. There was also a computer area where you could send tweets to Ai with your thoughts and feelings about his exhibit. Our feelings towards the exhibit drastically changed once we understood the complete thought and history behind the installation, which is what the artist wanted.   

Carter is an art critic.  I didn't care for this one.

 This was nice; Monet.

 None of us really liked this one.  Nice swirls, which represented violent acts of impulse. 

 Its hard to see the scale of this one, but the bronze item in the back was about 20' tall and was meant to represent lightening. 

???

 Picasso.

 There was a playground int he museum so we recharged the kids with some very welcomed play time. 

Mark Rothko, much more interesting in real life than the thousands of prints you see everywhere.

 Lichtenstein, titled Whaam!

This piece is by Jose Carlos Martinat.  Every 5 seconds or so a piece of paper pops out from the top of the building.  Each piece of paper has something written on it (in spanish) that has been taken off the internet regarding reported brutalism.  See below for more info.

video art

 We had to take this picture so Averie would let us leave!  She wanted to sit and talk about the "horsy's" forever!  Artist unknown.

 Jenn liked this one.  Apparently I preferred to stare at the white wall.  Anyway, this is "The Kiss" by Rubens.  Very cool to see.  One of many pieces in the gallery that Jenn and I both studied about in art history classes.

 The world biggest multi-plug.  It didn't go unnoticed that it was for a north american appliance.  The photo provides no sense of scale; the piece is suspended around 25' off the ground and is about the size of a car engine.

 Andy Warhol self portraits.  Good hair day.

Bad hair day.

 This piece was pretty cool.  The vertical lines are lines of digital text constantly moving from bottom to top.  The text is not repetitive, it is a bunch of random thoughts like "people who hurt others are stupid".  Anyway, the cool part is due to the light in the room and the contrast between the colour of the text and the colour of the pixels around the text, as you are reading the words suddenly your brain switches from seeing the letters to seeing the "negative space" and you literally can't read the text anymore (all you see is pixelated shapes).  Sorry, but there really isn't any better way to explain it (come visit, we'll take you there).

 After being enlightened we were hungry so we went to the top floor of the museum and had some lunch.  The restaurant has a great view of the Thames.

 We weren't VIP enough to get on the glass, but we were close!

 Another view of the Thames, Millenium Bridge and St. Pauls.

 The goodyear blimp provided some entertainment for the kids; watch out for that dome!

 Carter was feeling inspired by the day and did some of his own art.  He didn't even want to eat he was so focused.

On our way back to the Tube we saw this "boat" on the Thames.  It looked like a giant greenhouse floating down the river.  We thought it looked very odd. Turns out it's a floating restaurant.

 Mike