31 Jan. - 6 Feb. 2002
Issue No.571
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 31 Jan. - 6 Feb. 2002 Issue No.571 |
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Lost in space
Escalators, plexiglass signs, a glass ceiling ten storeys high: you are no one if you don't have an atrium, and you almost certainly haven't been anyone for more than a decade. Even provincial bank managers can boast an atrium now, at least in England, and they dot the skyline of the more pretentious suburban housing estates. So why not museums? They are, after all, post-modernism most essential architectural accessory.
The Tate Modern, a vast exhibition space carved out of a former power station on the south bank of the Thames, has all the essential accessories, and is, indeed, a perfect clotheshorse for prevailing fashions, of which it has willingly fallen victim, and to great acclaim. The fact that it resembles a vast shopping concourse, of the kind most commonly found attached to major air transport hubs, though multiplied in scale, doesn't seem to count a jot. The sheer enormity of the entrance, cut into the heart of the building, seems to have crushed any dissent. Nothing weighs quite so heavy as empty space, and the entrance to the new Tate Modern boasts a great deal of that.
The hullabaloo surrounding the opening, and its startling popularity even, one must suppose, given the attendance figures, among provincial bank managers, has provided the South Bank with something of a coup. Art is where it's at, at least for first world metropolitans, and not just any old art, but the difficult, modern stuff. And why not turn the experience in to something with a high recognition factor, something that can approximate to contemporary retailing? In one of those conceptual twists that lend rather more than a modicum of interest to our times the world's major modern collections have become the new shopping malls. They have acquired the kudos that in times past was the preserve of the smartest department stores.
It is no bad thing that art should now feature as an alternative to the cinema, or the restaurant, or a night at the pub; that it should have established itself as a recreational destination, a place to visit. And if the building is established as the object of desire, rather than its contents, that too need not be bad: an introduction has to be made somewhere, inroads made.
The Mud Bath, David Bomberg, 1914
There is a problem, though, in this particular route, and it is located in the massive entrance hall, that cavernous, empty, and overwhelming ten storey space. The galleries are placed to the north of the entrance, on several floors, the permanent collection arranged thematically rather than chronologically, and punctuated by changing exhibitions.
From empty space to galleries full of objects demanding close scrutiny: a major readjustment is demanded of the spectator. Despite the prejudices that for so long circulated around European modernism, there is very little that is declamatory about the work. Even the most radical ruptures -- think, for instance, of the Analytical Cubism of Braque and Picasso -- tend to take place across small areas: the most difficult works are small scale, intensely painterly, and in this instance largely monochromatic. The deconstruction of the object was effected only through the exercise of intense concentration, which makes for a far from simple viewing experience. With so little overstatement, the artworks tend to get lost amidst the retail packaging. A Kurt Schwitters' collage really wouldn't make much of an impression in a Selfridge window display, and becomes equally invisible in this particular high street.
The hullabaloo surrounding the Tate Modern has tended to overshadow the far quieter renovations that have been going on at the gallery's former home, at Millbank on the other side of the River Thames. Yet the refurbishment of the original Tate, which now showcases the British component of the collection, if it lacks the shock value of the Tate Modern, is just as accomplished, and provides for a far more comfortable viewing experience. Maybe it is reactionary, but I rather like museums to look like museums, and if it can possibly be avoided I will not set foot in a shopping mall.
Here the collection has retained a more or less chronological arrangement of the hanging, although there are occasional, thematic interruptions. One such is the gallery devoted to British artists in the Middle East, a tidy exposition of Orientalist manners including, among other things, David Wilkie's well-known portrait of Mohamed Ali. Amid so much professionalism it came as something of a shock to read, in the information provided about the painting, that Mohamed Ali was the founder of the dynasty "that ruled Egypt until 1959." A momentary double-take, a slight confusion: it is the kind of thing one has come to expect in a Ministry of Culture exhibition, where it would hardly raise an eyebrow amid the misspellings, misattributions and misinformation that pass for catalogue notes. Here, though, such lapses retain the ability to shock, which is as it should be.
While the usual suspects are represented in the selection -- Holman Hunt makes a particularly laconic showing -- there are one or two surprises, not least a beautiful David Bomberg painting of Jerusalem, brilliant yellows, greys and ochres, and an unusual attention to architectural details. That Bomberg's commission was essentially documentary probably accounts for the latter -- the works, for apparently there is a series, were commissioned by a British-based Zionist organisation in the early 1920s, though they were far from happy with the result, as was Bomberg with the commission. Yet he transforms town and landscape both into a moving pastoralism, and one that, given subsequent events, assumes a hallucinatory edge. An extraordinarily beautiful painting of teeming space.
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