The Emperor Might Be A Little Chilly

We decided to inflict some more culture on the kids this weekend. Since we had been to Tate Britain Museum a few months back in May, we decided to go to its affiliated museum, the Tate Modern which houses its modern art collection. I don't think I would necessarily call the Frog family art aficionados but we do enjoy a good art museum in short doses (most of us anyway, the others will have to wait until they are 21 and paying their own mortgage before they-get-to-make-the-decisions-for-this-family-thank-you-very-much). Sorry - got distracted.

The Tate Modern is in a former Power Station. It is an interesting building and it is massive inside. We saw many works of art that we recognized, Monet's Water Lillies (yes it is modern, technically most modern art is defined as art from the 1900s on which exhibited some new or radical art style). We also saw some Diego Rivera, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock. Snake especially enjoyed the Jackson Pollock. There were some spectacular pieces.

Admittedly, however, there are certain elements of Modern Art that escape us. It might be we are not evolved enough or smart enough or rich enough to understand the artistic value of some of the exhibits, for example a display of one single florescent light tube (more about that later). And I don't think we are alone. Sometimes I wonder if it is because Modern Art people don't want us to understand. Because if we all really understood it, we would see it for what some of it really is. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy quite a bit of the sculpture and paintings we saw. I couldn't make heads or tails of what the paintings represented. Snake and I looked at one for some time that claimed to be a still of a clarinet on a mantle. Not only could we not find the clarinet, we couldn't even place the mantle. I guess we are just rubes.

So we did what we rubes do best, we mocked the art. We started reading the plaques next to the pieces. You know the ones that tell you the name of the artist, the date the piece was created and some other fun facts. Some of the descriptions are so pretentious that it is impossible not to laugh. For example, we saw one canvas completely painted beige. No other mark on the canvas except for a small tear in the middle of the canvas. It was called "Spatial Concept Waiting". The description? "A anarchic act of violence against nothingness". Uh yeah. Another example - An untitled painting by Clyfford Still (1953). This is it to the right, the mostly blue canvas. Now read the description: "A reassertion of the human context- a gesture of rejection of any authoritarian rational or system of politico-dialectical dogma". Wow. I just thought it looked liked red and yellow spots of paint on a mostly blue canvas. I think the curators of Modern Art do that because we might figure out that there is no "there" there. Sort of like the emperor has no clothes but no one is supposed to say. The more obscure the piece, the more absurd the description. The brown painting with one red stripe supposedly reflected the turmoil of the Jews in World War II Europe and we should be able to feel the "tension within the canvas". The only tension we felt was from stifling the giggling noises rising from our throats.

Oh, right. I was going to tell you about the light tube. There was one section in the museum that held modern art in a genre known as "Ready Made". The definition of ready made art is "a work of art created from an everyday object that bears no trace of modification other than the artist's signature". In this section we saw the fluorescent light tube attached to the side of the wall. For a minute I thought it was maybe the underside of a light box or maybe lighting for some yet-to-be-displayed piece of art. NO! It was the art piece itself, one piece in a series of fluorescent art tube pieces which are really just the light bulbs hung different ways on a wall, some are vertical, some horizontal and some, crazy ones are . . . wait for it. . . diagonal. The artist was quoted as saying the first time he used a single tube was "a moment of personal breakthrough". Hmmm, I have had that kind of breakthrough every 2-3 months when the kitchen lights burn out. My goodness. Other examples of this kind of art, a urinal signed by the artist, a running slide projector projecting a white light on the wall, 3 basketballs in an acrylic box. Please don't write to me about the values of modern art because I hope I am making it clear that I don't have problems with all modern art but the kind of art that pushes the term "art" to its very limits. I am of the opinion if people or organizations pay a fortune for this kind of art, they deserve to have it taken from them.

So I was inspired to create my own ready made art. I studied the definition hard, "a piece of art that is created from an everyday object that bears no other modification other than the artist's (mine) signature." Here is what I came up with:

I am going to sit here and wait for the money to pour in.