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millionreasonsTo the Tate with Tanya, who had snagged a membership card. We went to the Yayoi Kusama and Damien Hurst exhibitions - both very pop-art, both bright, shiny, immediate things rather than art wot makes you fink. Kusama is a Japanese artist who spent two decades in NYC, becoming a middle aged flower child, hosting happenings, painting polka dots on people, constructing a boat made out of phalluses, getting all naked and psychadeelic, before returning to Japan in 1977. This culture shock was enough to make her commit herself to a mental institution where she still lives and produces. As ever with the Tate, the best art is not the paintings (which you never can see anyway - trop de monde), but the installations, in this case, a UV lit living room covered in polka dots and then the disco room: infinite mirrors layered in sparkly lights:-
Damien Hurst had his fair bit of sparkle as well. I got to see the famous shark, sheep and sliced cows (I didn't go to the YBA Sensation show) as well as a vile piece featuring a bleeding calf's head, fed on by flies which kept accidentally killing themselves on the insect-o-cutor. Yes, Damien, we get it, everything dies; you're not 15 anymore, get over it. As a counterpoint to this was the butterfly room in which the lovely insects flew about, resting on flowers, visitors, walls, and fruit. The guards were not keen on photos but I got a little badly framed pic of a bowl of butterflies. Hurst seems to have no middle ground, it's either horrible (a giant ashtray, a black sun made from dead flies) to the brilliant - mirrored rows of colour-coded pills, bright beachballs, bouncing infinitely, the (in)famous bridget Riley-esque polka dots.
My fave piece was probably Anatomy of an Angel, a plaster cast dissected Hurst-style. It was the only one that made me think a bit; about the role the angel lore plays in our society, they are things that only "exist" to help humans, we don't think about their mythical lives, we certainly don't consider if they have innards.
Damien Hurst had his fair bit of sparkle as well. I got to see the famous shark, sheep and sliced cows (I didn't go to the YBA Sensation show) as well as a vile piece featuring a bleeding calf's head, fed on by flies which kept accidentally killing themselves on the insect-o-cutor. Yes, Damien, we get it, everything dies; you're not 15 anymore, get over it. As a counterpoint to this was the butterfly room in which the lovely insects flew about, resting on flowers, visitors, walls, and fruit. The guards were not keen on photos but I got a little badly framed pic of a bowl of butterflies. Hurst seems to have no middle ground, it's either horrible (a giant ashtray, a black sun made from dead flies) to the brilliant - mirrored rows of colour-coded pills, bright beachballs, bouncing infinitely, the (in)famous bridget Riley-esque polka dots.
My fave piece was probably Anatomy of an Angel, a plaster cast dissected Hurst-style. It was the only one that made me think a bit; about the role the angel lore plays in our society, they are things that only "exist" to help humans, we don't think about their mythical lives, we certainly don't consider if they have innards.
