So on that really windy and rainy day December 23rd, I saw Isabella Blow at Somerset House, then crossed the Embankment bridge - almost loosing my bag that the wind kept trying to drag into the Thames!! - and pushed against the elements all the way to Tate Modern. I defied that weather for Klee and Schendel! Now was it worth it?
No then Yes.
Let me explain!
Tate Modern: 16 October 2013 – 9 March 2014
I started at Paul Klee - Making Visible, much hyped, heard many people boast about this artist I had only seen the name of not his actual work. So Tate Modern exhibitions are very much retrospectives like, all the time, and this fits the mould of beginning with Klee's roots, how he is also a composer, would of loved to of heard his music, and the exhibition goes chronological through his lifetime and work. Even in the little booklet there isn't the usual 'Room 1 blah blah', it is all in a timeline. But I am afraid the exhibition sucked.
There was no rise and fall, no movement, I didn't feel the time change, it all blended into one another with a couple of rocks standing out very few times. The layout was as bland, lifeless and stuck up as the work.
This exhibition was PACKED with people, people looking focused and fascinated at the work and gushing, but what brought it home was when a little girl in a summer dress, bouncing goldilocks running and stomping across the space puffing and panting like her tongue was wagging out like a dog. All this 'sophisticated' work up and this girl couldn't give a shit!! The least Tate could do is make the space interesting to try save the monotonous Klee. I think the fact he was working between the years of war doing abstract landscapes and townscapes is where all his credibility lies. But unlike his contemporaries and fellow members of Der Blaue Reiter Kandinskyand Franz Marc, whose work actually communicate, explore, challenge effectively and are expressive as hell, Klee is a yawn and Tate didn't help him along in how it was presented. This guy taught at Bauhaus? For real? I read that and thought, where Tate? Instead of talking about how influential he is prove it and show examples of that. Gawn. Make that visible cause I cannot see shit in this exhibition.
 |
| Flowers In Glasses, 1925 |
There are pieces I enjoyed mind you, like I came into this totally clueless and open, I ain't a total bitch I swear. I just don't get why the grand white space for galleries is now compulsory because trust me, it didn't make the work seem monumental through scale, they just looked like fillers. Flowers In Glasses stood out, was like the table decoration I would expect in a brothel. Obscene vases jutting out their voids, flowers coming from out of the unknown void radiant but crude.
 |
| Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms, 1920 |
And amongst of the rectangles of colours going through Tate like vomit on London Streets on NYE, this gem of a landscape came up! Called Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms, along the lines and edges of the wonky four-sided shapes are the 'trees', the arrows directing the eye through the mass. There is an element of agression through the nature of the trees and the glossy red finish you see when up close to it, but the small spots of yellow, sunshine coming through, there is hope through the hardship and fear or perhaps a suffocation of life is happening and it is getting heavier, shitting all over the landscape with the rigid structure of it all. The trees are uniformed and marching across the land. I don't know what an at historian will say about this piece but it sums up the mood I imagine was about in 1920 Germany.
 |
| They're Biting, 1920 |
Now, I dunno what the fucking deal is with Klee and fish. But he really loves documenting sealife. I bet his sex life revolves around dressing as mermaids and fishermen. What I was so fond of in his work s that oil transfer method, very similar to what Warhol was doing in his early days of illustration with blotted lines. Too bad the substance and narrative of his watercolours live up to the technique. However in Das Aquarium, fat distorted (I'm guessing tuna) fishes cramped into a polluted space threatened by these spaced out, throbbing red plants, the landscape of the sealife being corrupted but we don't see none of that. Klee makes that visible.
 |
| Das Aquarium, 1927 |
 |
| Omega 5 (Traps), 1927 |
 |
| Gaze of Silence, 1932 |
Looking what I first thought was very Big Brother (now all I can see is a fucking fish head), this landscape is really unsettling. Bigger than most of his other work, the inverted, straight edge land with lighter inverted parts opposite the smooth and soft sky, this burning sun in the centre of it all, but its shine being totally contained. This does make you shut up and stare in silence as it stares at you right back. Nature itself turning industrial and strict. But what does Tate do? Cluster it with everything else taking away its impact. Sigh. Moving on.
 |
| Le Rouge et le Noir, 1938 |
Last thing that stretched out its hand in hulk-like fashion trying to get my attention, a red and black dot looking like Ping Pong walls, but you look it as a whole long enough there is a constant movement and change happening, not working together at all dominating one another through colour, amongst the cracking beige backdrop. It is mind-numbing to focus on and so intense, the red looking slightly blurred at the bottom, as it pushes through the racks leaving a clearer path in comparison to the black.
Literally though, these are the only pieces I got anything from, I bet the book would be more exciting than the exhibition itself because Tate just made it dull as dry humping. I walked away this show thinking 'sophistication is the art word for BULLSHIT' and that abstract colour works must have some hallucinogenic thing coming out of them, can be the only explanation for the joy people get from them. Though I admit the images of Klee's work I put up are indeed great.
Mira Schendel
Tate Modern: 25 September 2013 – 19 January 2014
 |
| Mira Schendel pictured in 1966. Photograph: Clay Perry |
Now, I have even less of a clue who Schendel is, never heard of her before, not seen any of her work, nope no clue. Mind you I don't research the topic before going to the actual exhibition, I always just go open and free. But DAMN. I went from Blow to Low with her initial work made in Sao Paolo with really no means of living, stripped to bare essential utensils and furniture and cramped space (Natureza Morta, 1953) . But this Brazilian chick was serving many of her abstract peers and the ones that have gone before.
 |
| Natureza Morta, 1953 |
Now I actually won't do a full on review of this. Nope. Her work you need to experience all of it. It isn't fair that google will only provide me with very few of her pieces so it wouldn't be fair showcasing Schendel without seeing the rest. So please go to this. I was blown away at how bare this space was, I could count on one hand how many people at a time were in each room as me, including the staff! I don't understand why there wasn't as much hype for Schendel as there was for Klee, other than she is an unknown-to-western public Brazilian FEMALE. So glad I am now aware of his brilliant, psychological artist who truly expressed time and transparency, icons and symbols through materials, textures, space and installations.
 |
| Still Waves of Probability, 1969 |
When you get to Room 10, the probably millions of transparent fibres are stunning, especially when you stand in one place waiting for others to walk around it, seeing those figures become transparent and fragile. There is so much contextually going on and I am still suffering lack of sleep thanks to NYE, so do yourself a favour and check out this exhibition before it ends on the 19th Jan.
 |
| Untitled Work, 1960s |
No comments:
Post a Comment