Tate Modern

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The Tate Modern in London is Britain's national museum of international modern art and is, with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, and Tate Online, part of the group now known simply as Tate.

History

The galleries are housed in the former Bankside Power Station, which was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of Battersea Power Station, and built in two stages between 1947 and 1963. The power station closed in 1981. The building was converted by architects Herzog & de Meuron and contractors Carillion,[3] after which it stood at 99m tall. The history of the site as well as information about the conversion was the basis for a 2008 documentary Architects Herzog and de Meuron: Alchemy of Building & Tate Modern. The southern third of the building was retained by the French power company EDF Energy as an electrical substation (in 2006, the company released half of this holding).

The collections in Tate Modern consist of works of international modern and contemporary art dating from 1900 onwards.

The Tate Collection is on display on levels three and five of the building, while level four houses large temporary exhibitions and a small exhibition space on level two houses work by contemporary artists.

 

Collection exhibitions

When the gallery opened in 2000, the collections were not displayed in chronological order but were rather arranged thematically into four broad groups: 'History/Memory/Society'; 'Nude/Action/Body'; 'Landscape/Matter/Environment'; and 'Still Life/Object/Real Life'. This was ostensibly because a chronological survey of the story of modern art along the lines of the Museum of Modern Art in New York would expose the large gaps in the collections, the result of the Tate's conservative acquisitions policy for the first half of the 20th century. The first rehang at Tate Modern opened in May 2006. It eschewed the thematic groupings in favour of focusing on pivotal moments of twentieth-century art, with further spaces allocated on levels 3 and 5 for shorter exhibitions. The layout is:

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.[6]

Level 3 - Poetry and Dream

The sexually explicit section on this level features a drawing by the pseudo-anonymous French artist "Proper Man" entitled le cock et le balls which is his attempt to explore the tension between old and new attitudes to sexuality within an urban environment.

 

Level 5 - Energy and Process

This focuses on Arte Povera, with work by artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, Kasimir Malevich, Ana Mendieta, 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,[10] Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and the photographer Eugène Atget,

Temporary exhibitions

Level 1 - The Turbine HallThe Turbine Hall, which once housed the electricity generators of the old power station, is five storeys tall with 3,400 square metres of floorspace. It is used to display large specially-commissioned works by contemporary artists, between October and March each year in a series sponsored by Unilever. This series was planned to last the gallery's first five years, but the popularity of the series has led to its extension until at least 2012

The artists that have exhibited commissioned work in the turbine hall are: 

Date	Artist	Work(s)
May 2000 - November 2000	Louise Bourgeois	Maman, I Do, I Undo, I Redo
October 2001 - March 2002	Juan Muñoz	Double Bind
October 2002 - April 2003	Anish Kapoor	Marsyas
October 2003 - March 2004	Olafur Eliasson	The Weather Project
October 2004 - May 2005	Bruce Nauman	Raw Materials
October 2005 - May 2006	Rachel Whiteread	EMBANKMENT
October 2006 - April 2007	Carsten Höller	Test Site
October 2007 - April 2008	Doris Salcedo	Shibboleth
October 2008 - April 2009	Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster	TH.2058
October 2009 - April 2010	Miroslaw Balka	How It Is
October 2010 - April 2011	Ai Weiwei	TBA

 

The Level 2 Gallery is a smaller gallery located on the north side of the building which houses exhibitions of cutting edge contemporary art. Its exhibitions normally run for 2 – 3 months.

Level 4 - Major temporary exhibitions

As with levels 3 and 5, level 4 is broken into two large exhibition areas. This is used to stage the major temporary exhibitions for which an entry fee is charged. These exhibitions normally run for three or four months. The two exhibition areas can be combined to host a single exhibition. This was done for the Gilbert and George retrospective due to the size and number of the works. 

OLYMPIC visitors to London 2012 will be greeted by a looping steel structure taller than the Statue Of liberty. the 115m ( 377 feet ) structure has been designed by Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor. 'What it gives us an object that does not perceive to have a singular image from any perspective,' he said. 'It needs a journey around the object.'  The 19.1 million project, withviewing platform, lift and restaurant, will officially be called the ArcelorMittal Orbit. Steel firm Arcelor Mittal is putting in £16 million while the rest is coming from the London Development agency. Mayor Boris Johnson said: 'Long after the games are over, our aim is to have a stunning spectacle in east London that will be recognized around the worls.   V I D E O      B E L O W

 

 

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Reference

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Tate's Gauguin show aims to explode myths of Tahiti

 

Works by Paul Gauguin will be shown in London for the first time in 50 years in a blockbuster exhibition at the Tate.

The show, including works never before exhibited in Britain, will feature more than 100 paintings, woodcuts, watercolours, carvings and rarely-seen writings.

It has long been believed that the
artist, who lived from 1848 to 1903, became the painter we know today when he left his native France to live in Tahiti.

But Belinda Thomson, co-curator of the exhibition which will open at Tate Modern in September, said it would challenge the idea that his move to the South Seas transformed his art. She believes the seeds of his distinctive style were sown years before.

In Tahiti he pursued his fascination with folklore, fables and traditions to tell stories through his paintings, as he had done earlier when living in Brittany and Provence, she said.
“Well before he travelled to Tahiti he was already interested exploring alternative cultures in Europe,” she said.

“In Britanny, he was interested in the whole folkloric aspect of culture and that interest governs his approach to Tahiti where he was very keen to tap into their belief systems.”

He had to work hard to do so as, at the end of the 19th century, the rituals of Maori culture were fast disappearing in the face of Christian evangelising.

She hoped the exhibition would show visitors that Gauguin was a more serious artist than often perceived.
“We're much more aware than people were in 1955 when the Tate [last] had a big show of the complexities of Gauguin's art and his attempt to infuse it with sometimes poetic and literary ideas,” she said.

The exhibition will also argue that he not only used myths in his art but wove myths about himself.
“He uses his own personality, his own looks, to create a powerful image of the artist as a creator, a God-given but also monstrous being,” Mrs Thomson said.

Like the Royal Academy's just-ended exhibition on Vincent van Gogh, the artist with whom Gauguin briefly shared a house, the Tate show will include Gauguin's writings.
More than 420,000 people saw the Van Gogh show, which finished yesterday, making it one of the most successful exhibitions the Academy has had. About 260,000 people saw the recent Anish Kapoor.

Gauguin: Maker of Myth, sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, will run from 30 September to 16 January