Journey Log 11: Last Days in London and Final Destination Philadelphia
Marianna and I headed out around 10am and went back to the Dali Universe show so that she could purchase the Dali lithograph, which didn't take long at all.
We hopped the tube to the Tate Modern, which is in an old factory building that looks oddly like Aushwitz. Very imposing, dark and ominous. On the inside, its is very open and spacious. The collection is divided into four separate galleries: Still Life/Object/Real Life, the most impressive work was the screening room for Jan Svankmejer, they were showing his short selection of films called Dimensions of Dialogue. Kevin showed us one of his films in my Theory, Criticism & Aesthetics class last semester called Conspirators of Pleasure. Dimensions of Dialogue was comprised of 3 animated/claymation pieces. The first part was a head devouring everything in sight and expulsing its refuse to make new heads, which keeps eating each other, vomitting, creating and destroying and making more heads. The second film is a clay female and male seated at a table displaying warmth and passion. on the table is a small lump of clay decidely representing a child or possible pregnancy. Each tries to push it away and/or destroy it until the make finally coaxes it towards him and then flicks it at the woman and it sort of absorbs into her. The couple end up destroying each other and tearing themselves to pieces. The third scene is two heads facing each other on a table, sort of mimicing the rock/paper/scissors thing. One spits out a toothbrush and the other toothpaste (shoe::shoelace, bread::butter, pencil::pencil sharpener) Then each reverses and then you would get a show w/ butter or a shoelace and a toothbrush. Each head continues the mimicry until all is destroyed which I believe happens after they get the sequence right again.
Also impressive was Damien Hirsts Pharmacy (which warranted the comment from a passerby "What a waste of space"). Pharmacy is a gallery space created by Hirst's fascination w/ the faith people put in modern medicine and his questioning why people do not invest such faith in art and artists. The shelves resemble a pharmacy full of bottles and packages of every type of medicine from aspirin to vyagra. The room is bright and nauseatingly white conveying the them of a sterile practice. The medications were a symbol of life with only a faint reminder of death visualized by a fly zapper and bowls of honey on stools.
From Landscape/Matter/Environment, the most impressive were Simon Patterson's The Great Bear, which is the map of the London Underground stations with the names of artists, actors and philosophers imposed on it. Yukinori Yanagi's Pacific I remembered from Kaplan's class cause it was in the Venice Bienalle one year consists of numerous plastic panels filled with colored sand in the varying patterns of the flags of different countries. All were connected by plastic tubes, the artist then freed thousands of ants into the sand. The flags were eaten away and the sands were tracked country to country. It is a very fascinating piece and I would like to learn more about the artist and his work.
The maroon and black Rothko Rooms gave me the creeps. Very solemn and sombre. It certainly defined the negative aspects of the sublime. I did not stay in the room long. It was dimly lit and the mood hung low.
As always Anselm Kiefer's work was fairly interesting. His landscpaes are inspired by the aftermath of World War II on Germany.
Next we went to the Nude/Action/Body Gallery which was my favorite by far. Too much to note it all, but some of my highlights were the surrealist works.
Very happily, I discovered a room with some stuff from the Viennese Actionists, Otto Muehl, Gunter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Arnolf Rainer. No Schwarzkolger though =( I was ecstatic that they were showing two videos of the performances of Otto Muehl and Gunter Brus.
Another room was dedicated to Bruce Nauman, whom I have adored since attending his retrospect at the MoMa in 1995/6?. The Double No video was playing (the screen shows an actor dressed as a gnome screamin NO NO NO NO and jumping up and down) Makes me happy!!! I don't particularly care for his neon works as much. I prefer his performance/video stuff. The Violent Dinner Party was alot of fun too. It took up about 12 screens. The actor/actress varied the performance for each screen .
Gina Pane had a whole room which I found surprising. The Life/Death video was playing, which Marianna found mildly distasteful. Two vid screens were set up, on one Pane was lying on the ground with maggots crawling all over her face juxtaposed next to the vid of a birthday cake accompanied by children's voices singing.
History/Memory/Society was kind of boring. Although, I came up with a great idea for a research project that I would never want to do: A comparitive study of the gridwork paintings of Piet Mondrian and African Kente cloth.
And of course, I have to mention Picasso's Weeping Woman. Nods to Jezzzzzzz for piqueing my interestin Dora Maar.
I also liked the stuff by Francis Bacon and the Fashion Photography. We browsed through the museum store and then met up with Tim around 2pm.
We ended up walking along the Thames in search of food. Tim wanted to go to The London Dungeon, which is a mega tourist trap, but overall pretty cool. Well hot actually. The wait in line was long and I had no idea once inside we were going to lose 2-3 hours. It was set up in your basic halloweenish/haunted house fashion, but very well done.The jist of the thing was to take you through the worst of London's history: medieval torture, prisons, witches, mean royal beeeyotches, the plague, Jack the Ripper and the Great London Fire.
At this point,we had to scratch off hitting the galleries that I wanted to hit. So we walked along the river towards The Tower Bridge and The Tower of London. We crossed the Tower Bridge, but were too late to actually go inside the Tower of London.
The return 7/8:
Woke up at 7am, got ready and hopped the tube to Victoria Station to catch the train to Gatwick Airport. The check in went uber smoothly, which just makes the departure fiasco that much more ass. 10 minutes to get the ticket counter, check in the luggage and get boarding passes. Another 10 minutes to get through security and voila we had time for breakfast and to browse through the bevy of duty free shops. We boarded the plane around 11:45, it took off a little late though, we got into Philly around 245pm.
Thats all folks!!! We survived two international flights and Tim's fathers driving....
We hopped the tube to the Tate Modern, which is in an old factory building that looks oddly like Aushwitz. Very imposing, dark and ominous. On the inside, its is very open and spacious. The collection is divided into four separate galleries: Still Life/Object/Real Life, the most impressive work was the screening room for Jan Svankmejer, they were showing his short selection of films called Dimensions of Dialogue. Kevin showed us one of his films in my Theory, Criticism & Aesthetics class last semester called Conspirators of Pleasure. Dimensions of Dialogue was comprised of 3 animated/claymation pieces. The first part was a head devouring everything in sight and expulsing its refuse to make new heads, which keeps eating each other, vomitting, creating and destroying and making more heads. The second film is a clay female and male seated at a table displaying warmth and passion. on the table is a small lump of clay decidely representing a child or possible pregnancy. Each tries to push it away and/or destroy it until the make finally coaxes it towards him and then flicks it at the woman and it sort of absorbs into her. The couple end up destroying each other and tearing themselves to pieces. The third scene is two heads facing each other on a table, sort of mimicing the rock/paper/scissors thing. One spits out a toothbrush and the other toothpaste (shoe::shoelace, bread::butter, pencil::pencil sharpener) Then each reverses and then you would get a show w/ butter or a shoelace and a toothbrush. Each head continues the mimicry until all is destroyed which I believe happens after they get the sequence right again.
Also impressive was Damien Hirsts Pharmacy (which warranted the comment from a passerby "What a waste of space"). Pharmacy is a gallery space created by Hirst's fascination w/ the faith people put in modern medicine and his questioning why people do not invest such faith in art and artists. The shelves resemble a pharmacy full of bottles and packages of every type of medicine from aspirin to vyagra. The room is bright and nauseatingly white conveying the them of a sterile practice. The medications were a symbol of life with only a faint reminder of death visualized by a fly zapper and bowls of honey on stools.
From Landscape/Matter/Environment, the most impressive were Simon Patterson's The Great Bear, which is the map of the London Underground stations with the names of artists, actors and philosophers imposed on it. Yukinori Yanagi's Pacific I remembered from Kaplan's class cause it was in the Venice Bienalle one year consists of numerous plastic panels filled with colored sand in the varying patterns of the flags of different countries. All were connected by plastic tubes, the artist then freed thousands of ants into the sand. The flags were eaten away and the sands were tracked country to country. It is a very fascinating piece and I would like to learn more about the artist and his work.
The maroon and black Rothko Rooms gave me the creeps. Very solemn and sombre. It certainly defined the negative aspects of the sublime. I did not stay in the room long. It was dimly lit and the mood hung low.
As always Anselm Kiefer's work was fairly interesting. His landscpaes are inspired by the aftermath of World War II on Germany.
Next we went to the Nude/Action/Body Gallery which was my favorite by far. Too much to note it all, but some of my highlights were the surrealist works.
Very happily, I discovered a room with some stuff from the Viennese Actionists, Otto Muehl, Gunter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Arnolf Rainer. No Schwarzkolger though =( I was ecstatic that they were showing two videos of the performances of Otto Muehl and Gunter Brus.
Another room was dedicated to Bruce Nauman, whom I have adored since attending his retrospect at the MoMa in 1995/6?. The Double No video was playing (the screen shows an actor dressed as a gnome screamin NO NO NO NO and jumping up and down) Makes me happy!!! I don't particularly care for his neon works as much. I prefer his performance/video stuff. The Violent Dinner Party was alot of fun too. It took up about 12 screens. The actor/actress varied the performance for each screen .
Gina Pane had a whole room which I found surprising. The Life/Death video was playing, which Marianna found mildly distasteful. Two vid screens were set up, on one Pane was lying on the ground with maggots crawling all over her face juxtaposed next to the vid of a birthday cake accompanied by children's voices singing.
History/Memory/Society was kind of boring. Although, I came up with a great idea for a research project that I would never want to do: A comparitive study of the gridwork paintings of Piet Mondrian and African Kente cloth.
And of course, I have to mention Picasso's Weeping Woman. Nods to Jezzzzzzz for piqueing my interestin Dora Maar.
I also liked the stuff by Francis Bacon and the Fashion Photography. We browsed through the museum store and then met up with Tim around 2pm.
We ended up walking along the Thames in search of food. Tim wanted to go to The London Dungeon, which is a mega tourist trap, but overall pretty cool. Well hot actually. The wait in line was long and I had no idea once inside we were going to lose 2-3 hours. It was set up in your basic halloweenish/haunted house fashion, but very well done.The jist of the thing was to take you through the worst of London's history: medieval torture, prisons, witches, mean royal beeeyotches, the plague, Jack the Ripper and the Great London Fire.
At this point,we had to scratch off hitting the galleries that I wanted to hit. So we walked along the river towards The Tower Bridge and The Tower of London. We crossed the Tower Bridge, but were too late to actually go inside the Tower of London.
The return 7/8:
Woke up at 7am, got ready and hopped the tube to Victoria Station to catch the train to Gatwick Airport. The check in went uber smoothly, which just makes the departure fiasco that much more ass. 10 minutes to get the ticket counter, check in the luggage and get boarding passes. Another 10 minutes to get through security and voila we had time for breakfast and to browse through the bevy of duty free shops. We boarded the plane around 11:45, it took off a little late though, we got into Philly around 245pm.
Thats all folks!!! We survived two international flights and Tim's fathers driving....