Don't Go To Canuckistan; ó Rick Steves Blows: Tate Modern Museum (London)

3/21/12

Tate Modern Museum (London)

Visited the Tate Modern along the Thames River. The building was once a factory of sorts and very immense within just as one would expect of a “working building” where ventilation and production were core. And, owing to that vast spaciousness, it’s impressive to walk through; not at all like a jam packed museum feel with wall-to-wall glass casings and paintings and roped-off artifacts. But that’s about as impressive as it got for me; that and the souvenir shop which, surprisingly, actually has many reasonably priced and discounted goodies. I went back twice just for the gift shop!

modern art pieces are what I would classify as crap for rich dummies

What didn’t lure me back were the modern art pieces. Most of it is what I would classify as crap for rich dummies. What do you offer to the man who has everything money can buy? A cock-and-bull story that no one in his right mind would buy! Hence exclusivity. Barring the canonized masters – Dali, Picasso, Lichtenstein, and even Pollock – I am greatly turned off by modern art, which, to me, smacks of a smart alecky affront where the story/explanation behind the piece counts for more than the art piece, per se. It’s not just a rock I found on my neighbor’s ranch but the rock which caught my attention when I decided to become a father and, thus, its potential energy is, in reality, active because it inspired me to enact my kinetic energy of reproduction; motion propelled by immobility!

(Gag!) Give that man a shovel.

There is actually a mirror taking up space in a gallery. Unlike the mirrors in the bathrooms this, otherwise, ordinary looking glass is glued to a canvas. And what goes onto canvases? Why, art of course – and boxers. This mirror was even naked of a frame. I’ve seen more creative works in a craft shop but because those things are actual and not symbolic they fail to impress rich dummies and qualify as art.