Pop Life

The other day I was starting late at work (oh the joys of not waking up at 5am!) and the boyfriend had a day off. And instead of indulging the boy and spending the morning watching crappy TV, I persuaded him to come with me to the Tate.

The boyfriend is not the biggest fan of art. He thinks a lot of it is a waste of time, especially the pieces that he thinks he could do himself (ie. a white canvas with a blue line, etc). And at times I'm inclined to agree (although as I point out to him, he might be able to do it, but he wouldn't have thought of it in the first place).

Anyway. Off we toddled to Pop Life. It was £12.50 to get in. Fine. Not extortionate. And because it was mid-week, it was fairly quiet.




As an exhibition it is ok. The first half I found a little long. And although the exhibition features a lot of artists, there are almost too many, and you end up feeling that you haven't really got to grips with any of them.

Two things struck me as we went round.

1. The sex. Now, you are warned that some of the pieces are of an extremely sexual nature, but even so, seeing an 8ft tall picture of an ejaculating penis, or the larger than life sculpture of the artist Jeff Koons in extremely explicit sexual positions with his porn star wife was really a little overwhelming.

2. The idea of art, the artist, and the consumer.

There was one piece by Andrea Fraser. To create the piece she had spoken to a gallery, and they had found her a customer that wanted to purchase the piece she was about to create. But the piece would be created with this man. She filmed the two of the them having sex. And it was this film that was on display.

On paper this sounds a little like prostitution. But I think the idea was that in the moment of creating art, you inevitably sell a part of your being. Yes, it is a form of prostitution, but there is no way that you can create art without investing part of both your physical and emotional self. And I guess what she was trying to say was that your work is then sold to a stranger, and a stragner that will then own this incredibly personal part of you. In this film, she just made this parallel in the most basic way possible - using the literal image of sex.

It seemed that all the ideas demonstrated by the artists were that of how life and art intertwine. And how what you as the artisit see, is then recreated, along with your own emotional investment into said image, purely for the superficial enjoyment of others. Hence the prolific use of pornography, or elements of pornography throughout the exhibition.

Purely by chance, shortly after going I started to read Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray". This too totally focuses on the idea of art and life, and how the two are inextricably linked (albeit in a Gothic and more fantastical way). And the only conclusion that I've really come to, even if it is a little crude, is that all artists must pimp themselves out to the faceless public, because all of us (be it painters, sculptors, draftsmen, poets, authors, even bloggers) have to invest our own personal beliefs, emotions and intimacies, and lay them all naked before the eyes of strangers.

On a lighter note, I think my favourite piece was the silver steel bunny.

Turner prize: A Retrospective

this weekend i felt that i needed to embrace the many cultural opportunites that london has to offer.

and so i went to the turner prize exhibition at tate.

i am not renowned for my artistic interests, and usually my preferred approach to galleries is to get round them in about 15 minutes, and then sit in the coffee shop.

however, i was pleasantly surprised with this one. i loved it.

there were the obvious winners that are always intersting to see. the cow in formaldehyde being one (and gosh, cows really do have tiny brains don't they?)

but the thing that i most enjoyed was the massive range of art forms that were there. the thought process behind many of the pieces is often so insightful and imaginative.

Gillian Wearing's winning piece was a film of a group of police men and women, standing as though they were being photographed. they were filmed for 60minutes, stuck in this format.

there are a few who look as though they have drifted off. some others have really bad cases of the fidgets. but towards the end, all of them just look very uncomfortable. at the end there is a huge sense of relief.

in the description of the piece, it says that the artist wanted to explore ideas of surviellance and the feeling of being constantly watched. this is now something very central to all our lives, and to use the police in this exploration, i feel adds a further dimension to her work. the police are people of authoirty, the people that often act upon the findings of today's constant surveillance and cctv footage. without getting carried away, i thought that piece especially was very interesting.

other interesting ones for me were Anish Kapoor's scultures, using an intense purple pigment. the effect was that you can't really focus at all on the pieces. and the colour is so intense that you feel as though you are losing your balance. all from a piece of art. amazing.

chris ofili offers a moving tribute to stephen lawrence, a young victim of a racist attack, but without entering the realms of cheese. in fact, i didn't even notice the tribute until i realised that in the tears of the woman in "no woman no cry" is the face of the murdered teen. then, on reading the description, i looked for the words written behind the painting, where it says "rip stephen lawrence". the tribute was so unintrusive, and yet so definitely there, that i found the effect profoundly moving.

i don't know if i am now becoming a bit geeky, having entered this whole new world of art and all. but next weekend i'd quite like to venture to the national portrait gallery. and not just to use the coffee shop.