Sun, Rain, and the Tate
Trip Start
Jul 06, 2008
1
5
29
Trip End
Aug 04, 2008
London, England, United Kingdom
Friday, July 11, 2008
For the first time today, I walked to the office by myself. Surprisingly, I managed to find it without getting lost or getting hit by a car or tripping (I've tripped everyday so far except yesterday), all though I thought I was lost at a few points. It was quite nerve-wracking.
Got lunch - pizza and fruit - on a rainy Portobello Road and saw my dream car on the walk home.
Later at around 6:30, we headed over the the Tate Modern. We drove through the more touristy bits, and I got to see Buckingham Palace and Big Ben and Parlaiment and the Thames and the London Eye pretty close up. I got no pictures, (a) because it was raining, and (b) I made Nancy promise to take me back when we could actually get out of the car to see it better. Oh, and (c) I still can't get the pics off my camera.The Tate Modern is one incredible buidling. On the outside it has huge, temporary paintings as a tribute to grafitti. Inside is this long, tall, empty hall of metal and concrete. There are two enormous windows at either end. Unfortunately, there was no photoraphy allowed within the exhibits.
Nancy and I got through three of six exhibits. We only had three hous until it closed, so we didn't bother with buying tickets for the special exhibitions ("Street and Studio: An Urban History of Photography", and "Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons"). However, we decided that the photography exhibit looks amazing, so we'll go back to see that and then we can get the regular exhibit that we missed, "Idea and Object" (Minimalism and Conceptual).
The three collections we did get through were "Poetry and Dream" (Surrealism), "Material Gestures" (post-war European and American art - it had this incredible room filled floor-to-ceiling with Soviet propaganda posters), "States of Flux" (Cubism, Futurism, and Vorticism). It was so much better than the comtemporary art museum in Montreal. They're a bit different; the Tate has famous artists like Picasso and Monet and Matisse and Joan Miro and Diego Rivera and so many others. "States of Flux" was probably my favorite section, but I have a HUGE list of all the artists and artwork I liked.
Tate Modern - The "Amazing Art" List
(title, artist)
NOT IN ORDER
- Orpheus (Maquette 2, Version 3), Barbara Hepworth
- Ishi's Light, Anish Kapoor
- The Snail, Henri Matisse
- 30 Pieces of Silver, Cornelia Parker
- Vertical Reflections Blue, Paul Feiler
- Landscape Triptych 1, Fred Williams
- Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Umberto Boccioni
- Large Horse, Raymond Duchamp-Villon
- Mass Writing, Judit Reigl (it's a tiny photo, but so amazing I put it in anyway)
- Untitled, Seydou Keita
There are so many other pieces that I couldn't find any pictures for, such as all of the Russian political posters they had, Gerhard Richter's Cages (1-6), and Piet Mondrian's The Tree A, Maurizo Cattelan's Ave Maria, and so many others. Hopefully, we'll be going back soon for the special exhibit.
