Light And Dark Over The City Of London
I was in the Members Room of the Tate Modern and took these two pictures.
I’ve talked before about the views from this room here. I must take a few more!
A Preview Of The New Tate Britain
I went to the Members Preview of the upgraded Tate Britain. I have called it the New Britain deliberately!
These pictures don’t do the new building of the art justice.
It was also an absolute pleasure to wander round some galleries and examine the paintings and sculpture virtually alone.
But then that pleasure, is one you get from being a member of the Tate. I also found myself in a similar situation at the British Museum at a Members Party.
Art Under Attack
I went to this exhibition at the Tate on Thursday night.
It was the private view for members and the best bit about the exhibition was that you could see all the exhibits well, as there wasn’t many people there.
Or perhaps a lot of members had read the review of the exhibition in the Telegraph. It opens with this paragraph.
When some bright spark at Tate Britain came up with the idea of doing a show about the history of Iconoclasm in this country why wasn’t the plan strangled at birth?
And finishes with this.
This show may have been tripe, but as a nation, we can’t afford not to support the arts.
I didn’t think a lot to it either, but then I’m no expert and I went alone. However, I did leave with the impression, that the lady folded in Allen Jones‘s work called Chair, had an unlikely resemblance to the late Princess Diana. But then she was only eight, at the time the work of art was created.
Endless Stair
Endless Stair is according to its publicity, a striking sculpture composed of 15 Escher-like interlocking staircases. For more about M C Escher look here.
The structure was certainly attracting attention by the Tate Modern.
Note the picture from the Millennium Bridge which shows it in front of the Tate Modern at the right.
Chagall At The Tate Liverpool
I’d gone to the Tate Liverpool to see the Chagall exhibition.
Chagall At The Tate Liverpool
I found it very enlightening and it showed me how little I know about art and especially artists like Marc Chagall. But don’t take my word for it, that it is good, read this report from the Telegraph. It starts like this.
Forty years ago, Marc Chagall was one of the uncontested masters of modern art. Living out his old age on the Cote d’Azur, immersed in his magic-realist memories of the old Russian-Jewish world, Chagall seemed fully the equal – well, almost the equal – of his sometime Riviera neighbours Picasso and Matisse.
Since then his critical stock has inexorably declined. He’s come to be seen as a whimsical fellow-traveller of Modernism who produced an overabundance of self-consciously poetic and rather sugary images. His trademark flying postmen, mooning lovers and bearded violinists have come to seem questionable in their sincerity, never mind their artistic quality.
This exhibition, the largest Chagall show in Britain for 15 years, gives us the chance to look again at this long derided figure and decide whether he should be reinstated as a major 20th- century figure or left quietly in his corner.
I think that it is definitely a must-see exhibition and unless you saw it in Zurich earlier, you’ll have to travel to Liverpool. Someone said to me, that they’ll catch the exhibition when it comes to London. It won’t and it’ll probably be many years before an exhibition of this scope is mounted again.
So go and decide, where you think Chagall should be placed in the history of art. i liked the exhibition a lot, and his work to me, is almost a progression of the various styles of art through the twentieth century. Just like any great artist, Chagall seemed to be a complex person, who the more you look at his work, the more you see in it.
A Station With Twin Clocks
Is Liverpool Lime Street station, one of the few where you are greeted two large clocks?
But then Liverpool loves its big clocks and seems to have more than most cities.
I went to the Second City today, to see two unique exhibitions; the revealing of the floor in St. George’s Hall and the Marc Chagall exhibition at the Tate Liverpool.
The Expansion Of Tate Modern
The Tate Modern is being expanded as Wikipedia says here.
A bridge is being built across turbine hall to connect the new extension to the current galleries.
Three Reasons To Join The Tate
Obviously, if you join the Tate as I have, you get various advantages with the entry to exhibitions, but there are other less obvious ones.
In the Tate Modern, you get to use a Member’s Room with good views over the river.
The View From Tate Modern
This picture probably shows the Barbican and St. Paul’s better than the one I showed in the gallery. The Member’s Room also serves a mean cup of tea.
A Two Pound Pot Of Tea
At a mean price, I should say too, as I got two cups from the pot for just two pounds.
There are also two viewing galleries off the Member’s Room.
The Shard From Tate Modern
I only explored the South-facing one, which sadly is overlooked by the dreaded Shard.
Even if you’re not a member, the Tate has several cafes and restaurants and none seem to be small.
The Bold Millennium Bridge
The Millennium Bridge was not without controversy and many still call it the wobbly bridge.
But my walk shows how good the concept is and it was right to build a bridge there in the first place.
If you’re going to the Tate Modern, then in my view, it should be approached over the bridge.
It might be sensible too, to go back across using the new Blackfriars station, which is a bridge as well.
Or you could do as I did later and take the RV1 hydrogen-powered bus route to Covent Garden.
Through St. Paul’s To The Tate Modern
I went for a walk this morning, starting on the North side of St. Paul’s Cathedral and then over the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern.
I’d actually never been in the gardens of the cathedral before, which connect the two sides of the building. As it was fairly early, it would have been a pleasant place to sit around for thirty minutes or so.
There’s more on the blue trees here.
The Anonymous Widower 