Journeyman: London - The Tate Modern

An American Tribute to the British People by Louise Nevelson 1960-4

The visit to the Tate Modern Museum of Modern Art produced many reactions in my family, mostly positive and all in a spirit of good fun. The piece pictured above was my favorite for some reason that I can’t exactly explain. The artist worked on it for four years, altering the design and placement of objects as she found them. The work is described as cathedral-like in its construction, and its royal bearing won favor in the country to which the tribute was intended. The piece is approximately 14 feet long and ten feet high, and I stood staring at it for quite a while until I realized that I was enjoying myself. Deveny is our creative, free-spirited child, and she was looking forward to this visit especially after suffering the stuffiness of the National Gallery the day before. We determined that this day was hers and that she could tour the Tate any way she liked.

We decided that we needed a more relaxed pace for the day, so we started with a simple breakfast of bread with butter and jam and yogurt and used the carbs to walk the half mile to the community library where we were granted yet another library card—we never get tired of this. The wifi was good and strong, so the kids got out the laptops and started school while Deena and I spent some time in the desktop area where we checked into our next flight and printed boarding passes. This is usually not an easy process since most library computers are several years behind the latest Google updates, and the airline websites can be tricky to navigate. With the help of the friendly librarian, we got it done and spent the rest of the morning reading and writing while the kids finished up their lessons for the day. A quick stop at the neighborhood market yielded lunch, and we enjoyed homemade pita sandwiches stuffed with chicken, hummus, and lettuce at the flat before striking out for the Tate Modern.

The local news scene is buzzing with the current London Heat Wave, and for the past two days it’s been fairly warm as in upper 80s warm, not upper 90s and swampy warm like we’re used to in North Carolina. Still, the heat makes for sweaty walking, and we’ve determined that our daily walking totals are between three and five miles. Through a combination of walking and tube travel, we arrived on the banks of the muddy Thames river and beheld the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral looking over the Millennium Bridge. This pedestrian bridge celebrates all the achievements of mankind during the last century, and it was our gateway to the Tate Modern, a vast, austere building housing some of the funkiest forms of expression known to mankind.

Joseph on the Thames

When I think of modern art, the image of purple painted cat toys strung on a pole comes to mind, but I was pleasantly surprised with the variety and beauty of the pieces we saw during our two-hour visit. Deveny led the way as we traversed the many levels of the museum, and the look of sheer delight on her face was a joy to see as she was clearly in her element. While there were many um…interesting pieces by artists I’ve never heard of, there were also works by Monet, Picasso, Dali, Degas, Warhol, and many more. Modern art encompasses a wide range of mediums, techniques, and expressions, and we had an incredibly enjoyable visit talking about everything we saw. Of course we had a bit of fun too, taking pictures of each other contemplating the water fountain and the toilet signs, laughing hysterically all the while. While I love the classic expressions of painting and sculpture like we saw at the National Gallery, our visit to the Tate Modern opened my eyes to the fact a that painting need not have been crafted by a 16th century Italian dude or include a big nekkid renaissance butt draped with tulle to make it valid as art.