The Tate Modern

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Our final stop on our exploration of media was, in fact, the Tate Modern. Not to be confused with the Tate Britain, this Tate contains very simplistic and minimalist pieces of art, which I can appreciate, but is not my cup of tea.

My favorite painting that I saw in the Tate Modern was one that told a story. A black woman and a white man sat next to each other, except the man had a misshapen ribcage, which was described on the portrait’s plaque as “pigeon-chested”; the woman in the picture was also nicknamed “the Black Dove”. According to the plaque, the two of these people worked as sideshow acts in the 1920s and 30s. They performed in places like Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria; so my hypothesis is that the man received his nickname first due to the resemblance his chest has to a pigeon’s, and then the woman was paired with him for the act, so she received a bird-relation name as well. This painting really displays the progress our world achieved regarding race within the last century. This black woman was made a circus act simply because of the color of her skin. Today, black woman are lawyers, doctors, and are even Duchesses of Sussex. Hopefully, our world will look at paintings like this one and not just see the people, but see the story behind the picture as well.

Across the museum, I was also oddly mesmerized by one of the more electronic-based exhibits in which there were videos, or bright lights, or bold canvases at each angle. Every room in this exhibit reminded me of media from the 1980s due to the use of thick, fuzzy televisions, and the people in the videos wore attire most commonly seen before I was born. One video that was very simple but thought-provoking, was of two televisions stacked, one on top of the other, and all that was shown on each screen was of a pair of hands being washed under a faucet on a continuous loop. Initially, I thought this video was one of the most idiotic art pieces I had ever seen; however, when I actually tried to figure out the meaning of the videos, I thought maybe it is a social statement about how much water people waste on a daily basis. The actual meaning behind these videos, according to its plaque, is to show handwashing as less of an everyday activity, but as a symbol of the constant activity an artist has with their hands. Although modern art may not be my favorite form of media, it definitely has just as much significance as more historical paintings.

-Hannah L. Brown

“Agosta, the Pigeon-Chested Man, and Rasha, the Black Dove.” tate.org.uk. Tate

Modern. Christian Schad Stiftung Aschaffenburg/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and

DACS, London 2018. Web. 27 June 2018.

“Raw Material Washing Hands, Normal (A of A/B) Raw Material Washing Hands,

Normal (B of A/B).” tate.org.uk. Tate Modern. ARS, NY, and DACS, London

2018. Web. 27 June 2018.