Sampling London's Attractions

LONDON’S TATE MUSEUM OFFERS

STRANGE MODERN-ART EXPERIENCE

        In looking over my notes about our month in London several summers ago, it surprised me that my wife, Carla, and I spent more time in the Tate Modern than in any other museum. After all, the museum showcases modern art, and much of it strikes me as nonsense, but I found it fascinating.
        How strange are the artistic works? In one display, the artist took a shack full of old junk and had an army demolition expert blow it up twice. Then she put a light bulb in the middle of a room and suspended the blown-up pieces from the ceiling in the order in which they had been piled in the shack.
        All the junk is distributed evenly around the bulb, and if you stare at the bulb in the center, it looks as if the explosion was just taking place. Despite the amount of destruction of the objects, only 13 people are allowed in the room at one time so the guard can see that no one damages anything.

A DERELICT POWER STATION

        So what do you do with a derelict power station on the south bank of the Thames in the middle of London? Well, if you can find enough money from the lottery and other sources, you turn it into the one of the world’s major art galleries. Opened in 2000, the Tate Modern is part of the government-supported millennium projects, and it has become one of London’s most popular attractions.
        Two Swiss architects removed the turbines from the massive brick building and divided it into two sections. One, almost the length of two football fields and the height of the whole building, became Turbine Hall, featuring modern sculptures. The other half was windowed off and houses five floors of galleries.
        We took all four of the guided tours, enlightening but also amusing. One of the guides believed the greatest artist of the 20th century is a man who paints big canvases of two dark colors in a rectangular shape. Even after his explanation of the depth of emotion shown by the placement of the dark blue and almost-black red, I was less than awed.
        I had to laugh when one of the other guides, talking about a picture of dogs turned loose on a protest group and chewing up people, said, "Those dogs are behaving rudely" - an excellent example of British understatement.

London’s Tate Modern is a rebuilt derelict power station.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons

        The two permanent floors are divided into four parts: "History/Memory/Society," "Nude/Action/Body," "Landscape/Matter/Environment" and "Still Life/Object/Real Life." "Nude/Action/Body" includes some of the most unattractive paintings and photos of nudes we have seen in the world of art.

PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A KICK

        What most impressed us was the photography exhibition, "Cruel and Tender," the work of 23 of the most influential photographers of the 20th century in 23 rooms. Michael Nixon took a picture of his wife and her three sisters at the same time every year for 32 years. It was fascinating to see how the sisters changed at different rates. It made me wish I would have captured our four daughters on film together more regularly.
        In several rooms, the power of the work almost reduced me to tears. Walker Evans did it by capturing a past with which I was personally familiar. He worked during the Depression on a series of photos of a sharecropper and his family called, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." It captures the feel of poverty and the hopelessness that goes with it. Like my dad, the sharecropper had one pair of overalls for the week and one for Sunday. Actually, my dad was much richer - he had several other pairs of pants but mostly just wore the overalls.
        Carla thought the saddest photos were taken by a photographer called Sheikh of Somalian refugees who fled to Kenya during the war. They crossed a desert with little food and water, some children becoming so dehydrated and starved their mothers killed them.
        Sheikh went back eight years later and again photographed some of the children who had survived by being put on a special feeding program by one of the nongovernmental organizations. The change was remarkable. The saddest note was by one mother who had killed one of her children in pity and realized the child might have been saved.
        The only woman photographer in the group displayed large photos of women who, shortly after giving birth, stood nude with their babes in their arms. In contrast to this were her pictures of Portuguese bullfighters, who don’t kill the bulls but instead leap on them and wrestle them to the ground. As a result, they are more likely to come out of the arena with torn, bloody clothes and obviously bruised faces.

         Even if you are not a modern-art enthusiast, the Tate Modern is a stimulating experience with something to educate, amuse and offend anyone.

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Sampling London's Attractions

WALKING AROUND LONDON

        London has a small-town feel to it, which is heightened by the fact that a walk can take you past so many attractions. For example, when I visited several years ago to run a workshop on trauma, an evening walk took my companions and me from Piccadilly Circus to Trafalgar Square to the theater district to Chinatown and finally to X-rated Soho. And that included time for a leisurely dinner.

Trafalgar Square

        Our hotel was near the center of the city of London - that is, the central square mile of London. One day I took a walk without benefit of a map. After an hour I was hopelessly lost and had to ask directions five times before I found my hotel.
        Looking at a map of the area later, it was apparent why I had gotten lost - the streets of the city have no consistent pattern. There are many short and curving streets, and the Londoners have the habit of changing the names of the longer streets every two blocks or so.
        Later, when our team walked to the British Museum, we were more understanding about why even people who lived a few blocks away could not give us clear directions on how to get there.
        Having finished my presentations while my companions were still facilitating workshops, I spent most of a day re-exploring the south side of the Thames. I crossed at the Tower Bridge that overlooks the Tower of London. The map I brought wasn’t needed; you won’t get lost on the Bankside walk because you always have the Thames as your reference point.

Tower Bridge

        Historically Bankside was across the river from the city of London, and it was there that Londoners crossed the old London Bridge to find sin. Here the prostitutes worked out of "stewhouses" or brothels, betting was done on animal-baiting at bear pits and plays were staged at such places as Shakespeare’s Globe. Being considered the most sinful, plays were eventually forbidden even in Bankside.
        In a relatively short distance are the Tate Modern, Bankside Gallery, Shakespeare’s Globe, Clink Prison, Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hinde and Southwark Cathedral, and a short distance beyond you will find the London Dungeon, HMS Belfast and the Britain at War Experience. There is certainly much more to see here than one can in a day’s activity as a tourist. I’ve spent many days in the area over the years, and a number of these places have already appeared in my stories about London.

HMS Belfast

        At the London Bridge train station, I stopped by the London Dungeon, which I hear is a truly tasteless experience.
        Life-sized mannequins are being drawn and quartered in gory blood-spattered detail. Torture methods are highlighted, and actors dressed as vampires jump out of dark corners at the customers to keep the adrenaline flowing.
         As usual, a long line of young people were eagerly waiting for tickets so they could be grossed out. This is one major attraction that I haven’t had the patience to stand in line for, and I went off instead to see the Clink Prison and its horrors. It was late in opening, and I was the only customer.
         From childhood I’ve heard the term, "They put him in the Clink," and I hadn’t realized that the name came from a real jail in London where jailers kept prisoners, whom they didn’t feed. Instead, there were bars at passersby’s leg level so prisoners could beg for food.
        Despite the emphasis on the miserable conditions of the inmates shown by mannequins, it obviously doesn’t have the negative charm of the London Dungeon for tourists.
        I had hoped to climb aboard the Drake’s Golden Hinde, but it was closed for maintenance.
        The Southwark Cathedral was open, so I spent time inspecting the memorials, including one to Shakespeare, whose brother is buried here. Built in 1212, it’s been added to and subtracted from and built around but still maintains character and is worth a visit.
        A visit to the Tate Modern topped off my visit to Bankside. As usual, I found the exhibits both amusing and moving.
        Despite my mistrust of modern art as a put-on, I find some of it elicits a strong emotional response.
        This time, with my map in hand, I had no problem working my way back past St. Paul’s to our hotel.

Drake's Golden Hinde