Tate Modern

After our tour at the Globe, the group visited the Tate Modern for a few hours.  Once again my assumptions about finding food did not work out as I planned.  I thought for sure there would be several cafes and other grab and go food at the museum.  Every other museum I've visited has such options, but no.  The Tate had a moderately fancy sit and eat restaurant (with a fabulous view of the river and St Pauls from 6 stories up).  Some of the group chose to wait 20 mins for a seat, others wandered elsewhere.

Delaney and I eventually made our way to the exhibits.  I've never been much of a modern art person, but I thought it would be good for her to get a taste of modern art to make her own decision about it.  Overall, she was not impressed.  She got quite indignant about one particular artist whose works largesly consisted of drawing squares (interpreted as TV frames) on various mediums.  The artist that sewed a lot of burlap bags together and piled them up also did not impress her.

She was also not impressed with the chrome car bumpers and giant twine balls of human hair (collected from a holy site in India where pilgrims shave their heads as part of a ritual).

There were a couple of works that we both liked and one that was really intriguing.   We both liked the bright geometric patterns.  The tower is made entirely of stacked radios, new and very old, that are all tuned to different stations from around the world.  The volumes are set so that you really cannot effectively listen to any one of them at all.  It is very accurately called the Tower of Babel.

By Robert Delaunay 1934.

The workmanship on this piece was also interesting.  It is made up of hundreds of small squares of fabric (?) held together with small bits of copper wire (4 links connecting each piece to its neighbors).

Closer up view of the pieces.

We also saw the famous urinal that was declared "art".  Delaney voted 'no' it was not art.