Tate Modern is now 10 years old and after having been to the gallery a number of times I am beginning to understand and like it.Perhaps the best way I can express it is that it is like Turkey stuffing at Christmas in the fact that it is something I am beginning to appreciate the more I try it,(bizarre simile I know but I could not think of anything better).
My relationship with the gallery surrounds it’s structure, in the fact that it has always been a little unclear to me, and I thought that it was based on some artistic metaphor which only the few were allowed to understand and enter. A little like a very exclusive art movement that was letting you observe what they did but didn’t want to tell you all the secrets. However, after closer inspection there is a really clever sense of structure which really fits into the whole of the gallery, the structure of the building and what the collections are trying to achieve.
The first thing that definetely hits you is the sheer vasteness of the Turbine Hall, the space is overwhelming and something Tate Modern’s curators have used to startling effect with such installations as Olaffur Eliason’s,’The Weather Project,’ or Anish Kapoor’s, ‘Marsyas’. The effect allowing visitors to appreciate modern art on a huge scale.
As a nation it has taken us some time to come to grips with modern art and this also reflects in the Tate’s attitude to buying modern art during the 20th century. As such when the Tate Modern opened it had gaps in the collection that other countries such as France did not have. Tate Modern has therefore developed a much more transient approach to it’s modern collection as it acquires and moves its pieces according to the themes it decides to show. This in itself is a very modern approach to showing art and has moved away from the traditional chronological approach that most gallerys adopt.
The main themes of the gallery therefore look like this,
- Level 3 – Material Gestures
This focuses on abstraction, expressionism and abstract expressionism featuring work by Claude Monet, Anish Kapoor, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Tacita Dean.
Level 3 – Poetry and Dream
The displays in this wing are devoted to surrealism and works exploring themes and techniques closely associated with the surrealists.
- Level 5 – Energy and Process
This focuses on Arte Povera with work by artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, Kasimir Malevich, Ana , Mario Merz and Jenny Holzer.
- Level 5 – States of Flux
This focuses on Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism and Pop Art. containing work by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichenstein, Andy Warhol, and photographer Eugene Atget.
The success of Tate Modern is a simple process of seeing how many people have gone through the doors over the 10 year period and the visitor numbers of 5 million a year have shown Tate Modern to be the most popular modern art gallery in the world. There is a real sense that the British have finally got the whole process of modern art and like most things we have had to catch up on, like cookery for instance, we are now competing at the top of the world.
Twenty or even ten years ago we were a nation who scorned modernity. I admit to this myself and still sometimes adopt Tom Stoppard’s observation,
“Skill without imagination is craftmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”
However, having said this, Charles Saatchi, the YBA’s (Young British Artists movement) and Tate Modern has brought the nation kicking and screaming into the twenty first century and we are a nation who can now embrace modern art into our pysche and culture.
Happy Birthday Tate Modern.
Letters from Brittanica 
