LOGO
I considered these questions pretty heavily in my last blog, and I said when I began to think critically about the Tate logo I wasn't convinced. I was thinking conventionally, that the images are too complex, or too difficult to reproduce or recognize with the variations. Thinking about it more I decided the designers arrived at a good solution given the challenge of uniting four various museums under one brand identity. The letters that make up TATE are such strong simple forms that they can handle the distortion of different blur effects or warping and still be legible. Also, the Tate has a reputation for being a cutting edge place, and the logo is meant to reflect this dynamic nature - there are actually only four variations in frequent use, three with a shifting emphasis or bulge, and one that is a consistent thin stroke weight with slight blurring around all the edges. I think the unconventionality of the mark does fit with the contemporary Tate collections; it speaks to a mysteriousness and uncertainty about the present and future for mankind and for art. It also suggests to me how we cannot define contemporary art like we make concrete definitions of the past. I don't find the multiple logos to be distracting, they are similar enough to all be recognizable as the Tate brand, but show how Tate is always evolving. I think the prestige Tate has allows them greater freedom with their logo, and they have sufficient resources to maintain it.
FREE ADMISSION
This will make me sound very cynical, but I'm not sure that having free museums makes a huge difference in who attends the museums in London. I think visiting museums will basically always be an activity for the middle class and above, because it is part of their cultural heritage regardless of nationality. When I walk around the Tate I feel like I see the same sort of people I would see in the U.S., regardless of entry fee. I think that people who are not exposed to museums when they are younger can become intimidated by them, seeing them as highbrow palaces that are not accessible to them. I also think that similar to in America the only time lower class people visit museums is often in grade school to high school and in this setting it becomes a more social activity, the field trip mentality takes over and probably not a whole lot of culture is absorbed. I guess I could assume that the zero cost of entering the museums means school groups visit them more, so perhaps the British youth are exposed to more museum culture, but I wonder if they continue these visits into adulthood, or if by that point they have gotten so sick of that experience that they are turned off by the thought of going to a museum. I certainly hope there is some positive impact coming from the free admission here, ideally it means people who could not afford to go to a museum or are put off by the cost would be more enticed to go, but as I explained I think there is a lot of rather complex sociology involved. Probably it is foreign tourists who are most enticed to go given the free admission. It does give London the feeling of being a very freewheeling and perhaps mildly communist city. In a more idealistic mind frame, I want to say people would be more likely to visit science museums and other exploratory museums, though art museums are still probably a little off-putting and not enticing.
I considered these questions pretty heavily in my last blog, and I said when I began to think critically about the Tate logo I wasn't convinced. I was thinking conventionally, that the images are too complex, or too difficult to reproduce or recognize with the variations. Thinking about it more I decided the designers arrived at a good solution given the challenge of uniting four various museums under one brand identity. The letters that make up TATE are such strong simple forms that they can handle the distortion of different blur effects or warping and still be legible. Also, the Tate has a reputation for being a cutting edge place, and the logo is meant to reflect this dynamic nature - there are actually only four variations in frequent use, three with a shifting emphasis or bulge, and one that is a consistent thin stroke weight with slight blurring around all the edges. I think the unconventionality of the mark does fit with the contemporary Tate collections; it speaks to a mysteriousness and uncertainty about the present and future for mankind and for art. It also suggests to me how we cannot define contemporary art like we make concrete definitions of the past. I don't find the multiple logos to be distracting, they are similar enough to all be recognizable as the Tate brand, but show how Tate is always evolving. I think the prestige Tate has allows them greater freedom with their logo, and they have sufficient resources to maintain it.
FREE ADMISSION
This will make me sound very cynical, but I'm not sure that having free museums makes a huge difference in who attends the museums in London. I think visiting museums will basically always be an activity for the middle class and above, because it is part of their cultural heritage regardless of nationality. When I walk around the Tate I feel like I see the same sort of people I would see in the U.S., regardless of entry fee. I think that people who are not exposed to museums when they are younger can become intimidated by them, seeing them as highbrow palaces that are not accessible to them. I also think that similar to in America the only time lower class people visit museums is often in grade school to high school and in this setting it becomes a more social activity, the field trip mentality takes over and probably not a whole lot of culture is absorbed. I guess I could assume that the zero cost of entering the museums means school groups visit them more, so perhaps the British youth are exposed to more museum culture, but I wonder if they continue these visits into adulthood, or if by that point they have gotten so sick of that experience that they are turned off by the thought of going to a museum. I certainly hope there is some positive impact coming from the free admission here, ideally it means people who could not afford to go to a museum or are put off by the cost would be more enticed to go, but as I explained I think there is a lot of rather complex sociology involved. Probably it is foreign tourists who are most enticed to go given the free admission. It does give London the feeling of being a very freewheeling and perhaps mildly communist city. In a more idealistic mind frame, I want to say people would be more likely to visit science museums and other exploratory museums, though art museums are still probably a little off-putting and not enticing.
I really enjoyed this installation - though I have to admit that on the list of things I am a sucker for small porcelain things has to be one of them. I understand why people might criticize this installation for not necessarily utilizing the massive height in the Tate Modern to it's full potential, but I think you can also view this as a strength of the installation, the quiet restraint of this thick carpet of seeds and the vast breathing space given to the millions of pebbly bits. The seeds were just so inherently lovely to look at, it reminded me of letterpressed type in that both have such subtlety, history, and the presence of humanity/the human touch. I didn't mind that there was no interaction with this piece, I can see how that would improve the experience, but it would also cause a diminishing of the final product, even with it roped off there was a gum wrapper and a pen in the portion of seeds I first walked up to. The accompanying video also lends weight to the project - seeing all the people who were employed by the project, and seeing them while away their days painting sunflower seeds in this small town in China - but I cannot say the video fully supports the claims of the curator. Each piece is certainly part of the whole, i.e. the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about "the individual and the masses" to me. I mean yes we all start as seeds in our mothers, and Weiwei says sunflowers represented the Chinese people, so I guess the connection is there but I don't see it. I also don't see it as answering either of the questions you pose, I think the work operates mostly on a surface level as an aesthetic experience, and not as a work inciting much dialogue.
DISPLAY
I have to stand behind the use of white walls when displaying modern art. I will concede that other neutral colors, by this I mean black and some grays, could also be effective. I realize that all that white can feel too intense for some people, or that the austerity can be rather draining, but there is a reason for all the white - it just provides the best background to focus on the art, make it shine and make it pop off the wall. Colors would be fun in the galleries, but surrounding an artwork with any color is going to have an effect on our perception of the colors in the art, especially with the minimal or no framing of modern art; in period galleries colored walls are acceptable because the massive frames protect the art from possible visual confusion created by the walls. I think Tate's efforts to bring visual interest into the spaces between displays with color and text are helpful but they could definitely do more. They also use bright vinyl letters at the very entrance of each wing - hot pink, lime, etc. - but I think they could push both these practices further as well. They could also consider inserting smaller point of entry walls (without art on them) within the wings that are in a color or texture, or introduce some other sort of visual break to alleviate the stress of being so surrounded by white. I think what Tate has is sufficient - if they want the whole museum to run together - but I would support some "pulses" to break the monotony of room after white room, to distinguish different styles/periods, hold visitors interest better, and help visitors orient themselves.
POWER STATION TO ART MUSEUM
The exterior of the Tate modern is, objectively, pretty ugly. It looks to me like a fusion of a prison and a lighthouse or something, but I can also see how it makes perfect sense and even looks like it was designed for this purpose by a postmodern architect. The Tate Modern looks really timeless to me, like it could have been built a few years ago by some sort of sadist or built 50 years ago by that sadist's grandfather. So as you can tell I find the exterior a bit frightening, but almost comically so like Andre the Giant - if he were a museum. The two added floors of glass at the top are a wonderful gesture, I think, connecting the Tate Modern to the current language of museums, and also function as a unique place to publicize the special exhibits. And certainly it is a great space size-wise, and I appreciate the re-purposing of another building, once again bringing to mind postmodernism with this recycling or referencing of the past. The exterior for me is what makes this museum a one-off, it's not another glass and metal sculpted museum a la Gehry. It's an edgy sort of building to use, we always associate re-purposed industrial buildings with unconventionality today, this makes a connection to unconventionality in art and by extension this special collection. The individuality diminishes inside I think, the main hall brings in some of the exterior's personality but the atrium could be more emphasized on the higher floors. I think the galleries are indistinct and could be basically anywhere, though given my support of white walls I suppose most all museum galleries could be anywhere…
OBJECT OF APPRECIATION
I took pictures of several possibilities for my object of appreciation from the Tate Modern; reflecting on them in my iPhoto library I kept returning to one of the Gerhard Richter paintings from the Cage series of 2006. I first became aware of Richter when I saw an exhibit in Florence that displayed the gamut of his work from the photo-realist perfection to the purely abstract. I think Richter's artistic development is pretty fascinating, the photo-realist paintings I saw were lovely and it amazes me that one person could do such drastically different things both so well. The large canvases of the Cage series are so overpowering I thought it was fun being surrounded by them and standing at the base of one and letting it tower over me. I think all the paintings were pretty successful but my favorite was on the wall opposite the room entrance. In that piece there was more contrast of color with very light patches towards the top, dark black striations in the middle, and lively yellow-greens throughout.
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