London 2018: Contemporary Art - Tate Modern

Inspired by the insight we gained about the economics of the contemporary art market after reading three books by Don Thompson, economist and professor of Branding and Marketing, we planned a tour of London’s contemporary art scene.  From the first two books “The $12 Million Stuffed Shark” and “The Supermodel and the Brillo Box”, we discovered how the value of contemporary art is influenced by branding and back story.  From the third book “The Orange Balloon Dog” we learned about non-taxed freeport warehouses,  tricks auctioneers use to drive up bid values, and the motivations of buyers and sellers.  The planned destinations for our Contemporary Art tour included visits to branded artist Damien Hirst’s Newport Gallery and branded collector Charles Saatchi’s self-named gallery.

The final stop would be to the Tate Modern, Britain’s national gallery of international modern and contemporary art, dealing with works dating from 1900 to the current day.  Open since 2000, the gallery is situated in the former Bankside Power Station, which includes a 35 metre high and 152 metre long turbine hall that was turned into a dramatic entrance and display area, along with a boiler house and several oil tanks that were refitted with gallery spaces.  The unique site makes an interesting setting for the presentation of contemporary art.  There is no admission charge to visit the huge permanent collection and since there was so much to see for free, we did not feel the need to pay for the special exhibits, which included Picasso’s works from 1932 and a photography exhibit dealing with light.

The exhibition spaces in the Tate Modern are spread across two main buildings that are connected on a couple of the floors by long corridors.  The permanent collection is grouped into eight themed areas including an intro to modern art, art’s response to social and political context, artistic processes, types of materials used, the impact of mass media and more.  The largest themed areas with the majority of the works are found in the Natalie Bell Building (formerly the Boiler House) which houses the ticketed special exhibitions on the 3rd floor and large presentation spaces offering “Free Displays” on the second and fourth floors.  The Blavatnik Building, named after Russian born billionaire, owner of Warner Records and major donor Len Blavatnik, consists of ten levels including smaller galleries, a members lounge, as well as a restaurant and observation deck on the top two floors.  Interesting art can be found not just in the galleries, but also in the hallways and stairwells.  American artist Jenny Holzer’s work titled “Inflammatory Essays” (1979-82) covers the walls of one stairwell with pages of provocative political and moral statements printed on multi-coloured paper.  Each essay contains exactly 100 words across 20 lines of text that deliberately come across like the manifesto of a crackpot fanatic.  Martin Creed’s white neon light sculpture (2001) is mounted above the fourth floor concourse of the Natalie Bell Building and ambiguously reads “The Whole World + The Work = The Whole World”.  It has been said that this strange equation speaks to both the inclusiveness and the irrelevance of art?  Found in the concourse of the Blavatnik Building, David Batchelor’s vibrant stacked fluorescent light boxes reflect the artificial colours that are found in a modern city.  It is named “Spectrum of Brick Lane 2” (2007), after a restaurant-lined street in the east end of London.

After a quick cursory glance at the site map, we decided to begin on the second floor of the Natalie Bell Building, working our way up to the fourth floor and then across to the Blavatnik Building.  The natural starting point for us to view the collection of the Tate Modern would have been the section titled “Start Display” which tries to give the viewer a basic introduction into the concepts behind modern and contemporary art including appreciation of format, colours, materials, size of the work and how the works make you feel.  Unfortunately somehow we totally missed these rooms!  It would have been helpful to see some of the works that illustrated the use and interaction of colours and shades including Yves Klein’s signature Blue, Maria Lalic’s Yellow tones, Josef Alber’s squares in various shades of blues and green, and Henri Matisse’s colourful collage of cut-out pieces of painted paper which he called “Snail”.  I settled for looking at the images on Tate Modern’s website and made note that we need to return to this museum on our next visit to see what else we missed.

Instead we started in the area called “Artist & Society”.  The theme of this section provides examples of how artists deal with social, political and historical circumstances, whether conveying an observation, reaction, commentary, protest or other message through their art.  Lebanese artist Marwan Rechmaoui’s “Monument for the Living” (2001-2008) is a scale model of an unfinished office tower in Beirut, Lebanon that was used as a sniper outpost when civil war broke out in 1975.  Now due to its size, it is too difficult and expensive to destroy, leaving a lofty abandoned shell that acts as a memorial to the conflict that was never truly resolved and led to 120,000 fatalities.  In addition to this piece, an entire room was devoted to artists’ reactions to other 20th century civil wars, both as means of protest and to honour and remember the dead.  Most represented were works created in reaction to the Spanish civil war (1936-39).  Particularly poignant was André  Fougeron’s oil painting “Martyred Spain” (1937) which uses the body of a dead horse and a raped woman to represent the innocent victims of the war.  Peter de Francia’s painting (1953) depicts the execution of Greek Communist leader Nikos Beloyannis and three others after the Greek Civil War (1946-49) after they were unjustly accused of spying for the Soviet Union.  Malangatana Ngwenya’s colourful untitled painting (1967) conveys the violence and suffering endured in Mozambique during the War of Independence from Portugal (1964-74) with depictions of almost cartoon-like teeth-wielding monstrous characters entangled and falling over each other.

Jane Alexander’s installation called “African Adventure” (1999-2002) fills an entire room and addresses European interactions with Africa, commenting on colonialism, identity, democracy, apartheid, migration, trade, labour and faith.  There are thirteen part humanoid, part animal creatures, some dressed in suits, overalls or a silk Christening dress, with monkey, bird and dog-like faces.  They are positioned on red earth in reference to infertile soil found in Bushmanland, South Africa, and surrounded by sickles, machetes, boxes of explosives, tractors and agricultural cutting equipment.   Carrie Mae Weems took a series of archival photos of black slaves, mounted them behind red glass and etched commentaries about slavery on top of them.  These photos are bookmarked on either side by mirror images of the wife of a Mangbetu chief (1995).  The first image is labelled “From Here I Saw What Happened…”  while the second photo one completes the sentence with “.. And I Cried”.  Kaveh Golestan photographed sex workers plying their trade within the red light district of Shahr-e No in Tehran, Iran between 1975-1977.  In 1979 during the Iranian revolution, the area was deliberately set ablaze, killing many of the women, making what may be the final photos of these women so much more poignant and sad.  In 1968, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerism protests in Paris led to a series of protest posters sponsored by the activist group Atelier Populaire, including a raised fist with the slogan that translates to “The Struggle Continues”, and an indictment against too much media called “You are being poisoned – television, radio, sheep”.  These posters remind me of the Hope to Nope exhibit that we toured in the Design Museum.

Theaster Gates’ Civil Tapestry 4 (2011) is comprised of vertical strips of fire hoses arranged to look like an abstract painting.  The hoses refer to a peaceful equal rights march by black school children in Alabama in 1963 where police used powerful fire hoses to disperse the crowd, injuring many of the youngsters.  Barthelemy Toguo created a long banner called “Purification” (2012) with human figures painted in watercolour and handwritten sentences from the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, such as “No one shall be subjected to torture…”.  Teresa Margolles created a flag (2009) made of fabric that she covered with blood and soil taken from drug cartel-related murder scenes.  Richard Hamilton’s oil painting “The Citizen” (1991) is based on a 1980 IRA protest in Northern Ireland where paramilitary inmates wore only prison blankets, which bore resemblance to “Christian martyrdom”.

The themed area called “Materials & Objects” explores the different materials that artists use in their works, as well as the techniques they apply to manipulate those materials.  This includes the use or repurposing of “found objects” that challenge the concept of what constitutes as “art”.  The most well-known example in this section was Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” (1917), where he took a common-place urinal and signed it with the pseudonym “R.Mutt”.  The original was lost, so Duchamp had replicas made out of porcelain in 1964.  Titled “Embryology” (1978), Polish artist Magdalna Abakanowicz stuffs sacks with old mattresses, clothing, and rags to created giant cocoon-like shapes that are her representations of biological systems and organic matter.  Prior to reading the description about the work, from far away I thought they looked like potatoes.  South Indian artist Sheela Gowda’s installation “Behold” (2009)  filled a room with four kilometres of hand-knotted rope made of braided human hair which hang from the ceiling, as well as from car bumpers attached to the walls.  In Gowda’s culture, tying short strands of human hair around the bumpers of vehicles is supposed to ward off accidents and bad luck.  In addition to the superstitions, the car parts allude to India’s emerging economy and the increase in popularity of the automobile.  Richard Deacon constructs sculptures from everyday materials and calls himself a “fabricator” instead of a sculptor.  He made a series of numbered works called  “Art For Other People” (1984-87).  The one named “#24” is made from galvanized steel, bronze and PVC plastic while “#14” is comprised of curving bands of brass encompassing foam that is held together with chrome rivets and screws. I think the works were intended to be abstract, but to me, the first one looks like a peanut and the second one reminds me of a mouthguard.  Ukraine artist Louise Nevelson creates large, intricate relief sculptures out of packing crates, old furniture and scrap timber including one called “Black Wall” (1959) which she painted all in black to make it look “more distinguished”.

Several works were made as collages, the technique of cutting and sticking small pieces of different source materials including photographs, newspaper or magazine clippings, posters, wallpaper, or fabric onto a backing such as a blank canvas or a painting, in order to form a new piece of art.  Czech artist Jiri Kolar developed a technique called “prollage” where he interlaces vertical strips from two different images.  In his series which he called “The Flowers of Evil” (1972), he cut out paintings from Italian art books that reflected passages from poems by French writer Charles Baudelaire and merged them with a photographic representation of the writer’s face, which was reprinted in shades of greens and blues.  From afar, you clearly see Baudelaire’s face but as you get closer, will you be able to see the painting behind it. Italian artist Mimmo Rotella created collages from old movie posters and advertisements, making his works like “With a Smile” (1962)  commentaries on post-war consumerism.  American Romare Bearden’s “Pittsburgh Memory”(1964) reflected on the history of Black America and the Civil Rights Movement.

A group of eclectic works provide examples of unique and unusual processes of creation by artists from around the world. Ghana-born El Anatsui stitches together flattened bottle tops with copper wire to create a shimmering metal cloth.  He turned commonplace disposable objects into a piece of abstract art as in the case of “Ink Splash II” (2012) where his careful distribution of colours from his bottle tops create the illusion of spilt ink which leaks onto the floor.   Italian Pinto Gallizio explores the concepts of mass production and capitalist commodification by creating works using mechanized manufacturing techniques.  For his work “Industrial Painting” (1958), paint is applied onto long rolls of canvas using a low-tech mechanical painting machine and then pieces are cut off and sold separately.  American Sam Gilliam spread and dripped acrylic paint onto a canvas and then hung it from a leather string so that each time the “drape painting” called “Simmering” (1970) is hung, it takes a different form.  French artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s series of works called “Shooting Picture” (1961) are created in part through performance art.  A plaster-covered backing encapsulates polythene bags of paint which burst open and create splatters and drips when spectators (such as American artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns) shot at them with guns.  For “Tenkosei Kaosho” (1962), Japanese artist Kazuo Shiraga laid his canvas on the ground and applied layers of paint onto it with his feet while he was clinging to a rope for balance.

Another major area that we came across was called “In the Studio” which turned out to be the most nebulous in terms of intended theme and subject matter, but also contained some of the most well known artists (first names not required) and pieces of Modern Art.  The stated purpose of the collection is to look at the close engagement between an artist’s process of making a work and the viewer’s experience of looking at it.  Included in this area is a version of Degas’ iconic bronze “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” (1922), a cubic bronze sculpture and oil painting of the bust of a woman by Picasso (1909), as well as quintessential works by Modigliani (1918) and Leger (1954).   Works by some lesser known artists appealed to me including Christian Schad’s strange Self-Portrait (1927) where he wears a transparent shirt that reveals his bare chest, suggesting a desire to limit how much of himself he exposes to the viewer.  Behind him lies a reclining female nude with a freggio scar on her face, typical of ones inflicted by Naples men on their lovers as a sign of possession.  A narcissus flower leans towards the artist, referring to the Greek legend of Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection and was turned into a flower by the Gods as punishment for his self-absorption.  Salvador Dali’s surrealist painting “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” (1937) also deals with this myth as it depicts the transformation of Narcissus as a giant hand holding an egg from which the flower is emerging.  This image is doubled and reflected in the water.

One of the most interesting items in this area was the “Lobster Telephone” (1936), also by Salvador Dali, which playfully covers the receiver of a rotary telephone with a rubber lobster, creating a classic surrealist object.  For some reason, Dali associated telephones and lobsters (or food in general) with sex.  Germaine Richier’s “Chess Board, Large Version” (1959) consists of five grotesque hybrid part-human part-animal figures used to represent the typical chess pieces of King, Queen, Knight, Castle and Bishop.  The distorted figures reflected the anxieties and despair of post-war Europe.  Gerhard Richter created paintings by applying paint layers on canvas and then dragging a squeegee across to create the effect of streaks and scrapings.  I was a bit bewildered by the room that paired and compared the waterlily works (1916) of Claude Monet to the abstract rectangular colours found in Mark Rothko’s paintings (1950s).  Rothko himself found a similarity but I couldn’t see it.

One of the rooms in this section was devoted to Kinetic and Optical Effects art made by a range of international artists linked to a group that was founded in Zagreb Croatia.  These artists took ideas from mathematics, colour theory, computer generation and other scientific factors to create what they called “programmed art” that was meant to trigger visual sensations activated by the viewer’s perception of shape and colour.  Made from strips painted aluminum and stainless steel, Venezuelan Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Physicromie No. 113 (1976) changes colour from black to grey and back to black again as you view it from one angle to another.  France’s Jean-Pierre Yvaral’s Ambiguous Structure No.92 (1969) is an abstract painting in acrylic of squares aligned to form a grid.  He used colour tones of blue, light grey-blue, grey, red and orange in a way that created a 3-D effect which makes the image seem to advance and then recede.  Hungarian Victor Vasarely’s Supernovae (1959) illustrated his belief that the illusion of movement in 2-D was a type of physical movement in its own right.  He created layered transparent screens each painted with geometric shapes that appear to move with the viewer.  German artist, poet, and typographer Hansjorg Mayer’s Alphabet Square (1967) uses repetition and superimposition of letters of the alphabet to create his image.  Fellow German Gunther Uecker’s White Field (1964) is made using nails that produce patterns of shadow which respond to light but change in relation to the viewer’s position.  It was fun walking back and forth, trying to see the optical illusions of these works.

The Artist Rooms Collection consists of more than 1,600 works of modern and contemporary art, displayed across the UK in solo exhibitions that showcase the work of one of 40 major artists.  The Tate Modern has a dedicated “Artist Rooms” section on the 4th floor of the Blavatnik Building where it presents rotating exhibitions highlighting the works of an artist from this collection.  The artist featured during our visit was Bruce Nauman, an innovative American artist who works with different mediums and conveys his messages in humorous or absurd ways.  We first encountered Nauman’s colourful neon-light sculptures back home at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where his hilarious “Double Poke In the Eye” (1985) work was on display.  We saw it again at the Tate and still found it amusing as the rotating lights alternately show one of the two figures poking the other in the eye, and occasionally, they both poke at the same time (resulting in the double poke).  Several other neon-light sculptures use clever word-play, puns and anagrams to give different meanings to common words or phrases, forcing the viewer to pay attention and think twice about what they are seeing.  His “Run From Fear – Fun From Rear” (1972) takes two very similar phrases and interchanges two letters in each to create contrasting meanings and emotions. The work “Violins-Violence-Silence” (1981-2) groups words together that sound the same but have very different meanings.  Organized in a triangular structure, as each word lights up on its own, you are led to think about what might connect them.  A small hanging sculpture called “Hand Circle” (1996), made of bronze, silver solder and copper, depicts four casts of Nauman’s own hands, positioned to form a circle representing communication and relationship.  Each hand seems to be making a gesture, whether pointing, extending an open palm or making an OK sign.  For me, even more interesting than the actual sculpture was the shadow that it cast.  “Three Large Animals” (1989) is a larger hanging sculpture consisting of three hybrid animal forms made of aluminum, whose heads and limbs are attached in anatomically incorrect positions to create strange yet familiar creatures.  Nauman’s works of lithograph printing on paper continue the wordplay that he uses in his neon light sculptures.  One piece presents the contradicting yet provocative sentiments of “Help Me” and “Hurt Me” (1975) with the word “DEAD” laid on top.

The Tate Modern’s collection of Contemporary and Modern Art was overwhelming and we did not allocate enough time to see everything.  Although we saw many many works, we also missed a bunch of rooms. We did not even realize there was a 360 degree panoramic view of London that could be seen from the 10th floor of the Blavanik Building and did not have time to take any of the multiple free guided tours that were offered.  We will definitely need to make another visit the next time we are in London.