The Tate Modern

[UnquietDad]

Was in London for work this week and managed a quick pop to the Tate.

Liked a lot of the dadaist and surrealist stuff, but come on, some of it, esp. the minimalism is really taking the piss.

I mean, this, FFS It may be a cliche but my 5-year-old DS really could have done it.

They're filling in "the Crack" right now so the Turbine Hall is empty. I wanted to ask if the filling-in was itself an act of art.

I also had a really HORRID blueberry muffin which was the texture of sandpaper and fell apart on the plate in nasty little bits. I was thinking of giving it free to Nicholas Serota and entitling it "Hunger". It was a profound exploration, I thought, of the interface between the eating and the eaten, and invited the observer to reflect on the fundamental dichotomies and hypocrisies of the affluent world's attitude to waste.

oh interesting i love the tate modern

i was shocked it was rothko you picked out tho

for disapproval

Oh, one of many I could have picked...

Do you like Rothko? I thought they were pants.

I wanted to buy a Tee shirt that said 'I went to the tate Modern to look at Doris' Crack' but oddly enough they didn't sell them

We couldn't find anywhere to sit and eat when we went there, so we took out custom elsewhere

I watched a row of people standing with their faces to the wall on the mezzanine floor when I went there in January. I think it was meant to be some sort of human art installation. My dd thought it was hilarious - I told her they were playing Granny's Footsteps and wouldn't suddenly turn around!

*would

I love the idea of a totally empty room in which there is NOTHING being presented as art. The ultimate modernist, minimalist con-trick. You could sell it as "an exploration of the interface between observer and observed... the audience itself is the art..."

I wish I hadn't missed the slides they had there last year . I forget how that one was justified explained now.

Message withdrawn

I found the Tate modern quite baffling and just didn't 'get' it.
Liked the room that had all the rred big paintings in it.

I could show examples of what my children have painted though. They just wouldn't get exhibited in a gallery because they don't have the same connections, or ability to pontificate poncily.

It is all a bit poncy isn't it?

I loved m y visit to Tate Modern - I had coffee in the member's room courtesy of my agent and spent most of my time in the fabulous shop - the collection of illustrated children's books is fab fab fab...also examined Doris's crack of course

I love rothko - I cannot believe that is the one you picked out - the dark room with the rothko is so emotive and does that art thing of touching your soul a bit - really.

I know some of it is crap, but please - not the rothko.

(I thought the crack was due to some kind of structural damage when I first saw it! )

oh welcome to the dark side UD

Yes, but I thought the Rothko stuff was all in the presentation - the dark room and the way the pictures were hung - it was all style and no substance. I mean LOOK at them FFS.

yes but the think is that he did it - you could say of pollock or gilbert and george that anyone could have done it - but the fact is they didn;t.

yes, I agree there BBBee - it's that fact that the artist did the piece

I think people always have this riposte to the "anyone could have done it" accusation and it slightly misses the point. If anyone with less of a standing or less "noticeable" for whatever reason had painted those scraggy blocks of colour - me,for instance, or a 5-year-old child - they'd have been laughed at or ignored.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is a lot to enjoy and be challenged by in contemporary art, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of poncy bollocks too.

I lost count of the number of installations where the notes made it clear that neither the curator nor the artist had a bloody clue what the piece was supposed to be "doing" or "saying". Most of the time all they could come up with was that it was "exploring the relationship" between X and Y or something equally nebulous. How? Why? To what end? if soemthing explores a relationship I expect it to come to some conclusions. Leaving everything to the observer is lazy.

I think UQD is being disingenuous, he is actually Brian Sewell trolling

rothko i s a painter where there is a ctually quite a lot of content to his work

he is very painterly did you not get anything from that

it is conceptual though - it challenges the notion of what art actually is - is it skill? is it ideas? is it challenging barriers?

"Thet's EP-solutely out-reeeagous"

(and it is done to make people have converstaions like this!)

i think TATE Modern is a rubbish experience as cultural experiences go

Too big, too busy, not friendly, overpriced and the work is generally not very well presented.

But Rothko rocks