Tate Modern and Art

This is going to be a rare art posting.

I like art. I love certain type of art and hate others. I've gone to the National Gallery and Portrait Gallery a fair amount of times by myself. I get lost in the National Gallery and even though I've gone about 5 times, I have yet to see everything. I will spend a fair amount of time looking at paintings. I can not move quickly in the National Gallery because there just so much to see and so many ways to see it. When I go with people I don't usually say much and so people think I don't actually like it. The truth is that I enjoy it so much that I don't really waste time talking about it.

My favourite art period is, of course, the renaissance era. I like early renaissance the most but do enjoy a nice Rembrandt.

I love landscapes so I find a fair amount of Romanticist painting to be quite enjoyable. I do like a good painting about battles. Some of the painting of battle of Waterloo are quite simply the best paintings in the world.

I think impressionism is absolutely stunning and captures the true nature of the subject in a way that wasn't explored before. Now I tend to think that all of the subjects in impressionist painting want to commit sucide so I might be wrong about them actually capturing the true nature of the subject. But then again I could be right and life back then was rather unhappy.

Tate Modern as museum is remarkable. It is a great building and spectacular setting. I believe this is actually truly the only good art in the entire building is actually the building itself. I think the works of art, some of which shouldn't be called a work nor art, are horrible. They are pointless and of absolute no value to anything. I thought the way the the entire art museum was ordered was completely wrong. Art museum should always have some type of chronological order
For some people this will be their first and last time with modern art and they need to understand why these pieces came about. Sure the Tate Modern had some great info cards even though a lot of them starting sounding the same after you read a few. I usually spent more time looking at the little card then actually looking at the piece. I've taken all my guests to the museum, not for the actual work there, but to say they went and see such a remarkable building. I've disliked every minute I've spent in the museum with the exception of a few special exhibits.

I've expressed my views several times to several different people and been called, well an idiot. So it's no wonder that I assume that I was this way, but thankfully, for my sake at least, somebody else does too and he is an art critic. In today Guardian, Jonathan Jones writes that

Tate Modern rejected such "traditional", "hierarchical" and "conservative" histories of modern art - but could offer nothing in their place. The resulting collection displays screamed a chaotic denial of meaning that, in sour moods, I thought might be the most grotesque caricature of modern art since the hostile Degenerate Art exhibit mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937. As with that brutish predecessor, people could go around and laugh at everything without being enabled to understand.

Later he talks about the rehang that is currently occurring which will be open in a few weeks. He thinks the Tate is back on track and finally giving modern art it's due. I'll probably head back there in a few months once all the new rooms open with the new pieces. I hope I have enjoyable experience but most likely I will declare all these pieces to be crap and I could do much better and then beg the person I'm with to go to the National Gallery to look at real pieces of art or better yet get a Guinness. Now that is true art!