Being Beta

Exercises in the higher banter with One of 26. Elsewhere called 'poet of adland'. By a whipple-squeezer. Find out why being beta is the new alpha: betarish at googlemail dot com

Friday, June 16, 2006

Capsule: on the Tate Modern rehangs

To Bankside and a fairly good depth dive into the Idea and Object and States of Flux areas, prompted the following thoughts:

1. Degas wouldn't be able to produce the Little Dancer Aged 14 now. He'd be labelled a perve. Which raises a question: what art is being lost by the limits of behaviour that contemporary society now decree?

2. Video art is still problematic to watch and engage with in a gallery context. For one the ergonomics of watching do not lend themselves to sustained periods of sitting or standing still, especially when you don't know what you are getting or for how long you might be needed. Differing qualities of film stock, colour saturation, even the number of screens varying, means that you don't really have a fixed point of reference, which is unsettling. Added to that the impulse to get round and see much more during your trip, and it's no wonder that people (I would wager) spend no longer than an average of 5 minutes watching an average piece of film or video. I scribbled down on the map that someone needs to invent a 'ginema', a place where video art can be watched, in levels of comfort and purpose similar to that of a cinema. Or how else is anyone else meant to get this 'ism'?

That belief did not change despite watching 'Driftwood', an excellent piece by Oliver Payne and Nick Relph, which drew a lot on Iain Sinclair as inspiration for its satrical perambulation around (un)expected London.

3. The panjandurums at Tate have now decided that we as punters are now worthy of getting a chronology of modern art, if not a collection arranged in that way. The timeline is now available on the landings of the third and fifth floors. Previously unheard of or unexpected isms and movements in the history of modern art include:

Vienna secession
Les Nabis
The Photo-secession
Orphism
Suprematism
New Objectivity
Group f/64 (and why has no one founded a Group Ixus yet?)
Spatialism (which appears to be a movement of one artist, Lucio Fontana)
Happenings
Hard Edge Painting
Neo-Concrete Group
Vienna Actionism
Düsseldorf School of Photography.

The isms appear to stop in about 1985, with neo-expressionism being the last one.

1 Comments:

Blogger SandDollarDoves said...

mmm the Tate, somewhere I would much like to go back to. We have a larger Little Dancer by Degas in the museum of fine arts in Boston, quite a piece, and I think you are very correct about "art being lost by the limits of behavior in contemporary society. I wish I had museums at my fingertips for the rainy days of summer. I don't get the video art at all. We have installations in the new art building at my school, none however have made the slightest impression on me whatsoever. ::shrug:: Maybe I'm just not cultured enough. =)

1:48 am  

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