Today was a lot of walking. We found a farmer's market-esque place in the Southwark neighborhood which is in southeast London. We found a lady who was selling a huge variety of olives, which Hilary loves, so we got a small container of those. Other than that we just did a lot of sampling which included some delicious cheese, brownies and salami.
After the market we walked around to try and find some cheap traditional fish and chips in an English pub. It turns out food here is a lot more expensive than I had thought so we had to do some walking to find a pub that was semi-decent. We finally found a place called O'Neills, When we walked in to it we discovered it was completely filled with business men. We were in the business district and it definitely showed. We awkwardly found a seat and decided to pretend like we fit in even though it was pretty obvious we didn't. Within ten to twenty minutes though we started to see some women trail in and eventually there was even a couple who weren't wearing suits. The food was good though so it was totally worth it.
Our goal today was to see the Tate Modern which we've heard from several people was a must see. It is free and open until 10pm on Fridays so we headed over there after dinner thinking it would be a little less packed at night. We were right, it wasn't very crowded at all, Now I've been to a few art museums in my time and none of them have really made much of an impact on me. I just don't really have the artistic eye to see what all the rage is about. Sometimes I look at a painting and think my nephew could draw this or I could have put a purple line over orange paint and called it art as well. Especially when I see things like a mirror being called art because the artist said there was some deeper meaning to it. Alright, I get that there is a 'message' to it and all that, but there are mirrors everywhere. I don't get how putting one in a museum makes it art. I don't meant to sound completely cynical, I just think when it comes down to it most artists are probably clinically insane and we as a society decide that we want to excuse it by calling their creations art, ha, maybe that is pretty cynical.
Anyways, I was going through all the different rooms and looking at the pieces of art and once in a while I would see something that was pretty or enjoyable but for the most part my thoughts were focused on the cynicism of the above paragraph. Then about halfway through I entered a room which had 4 gigantic paintings on it all done by the same man and for some reason I was hooked. There was something about these paintings that made sense to me. They are pretty abstract but I really, really liked them. I stood staring at the first one for probably about 5 minutes which is 4 minutes and 30 seconds longer than I looked at most. Then a tour guide came in with a group and started talking about all the different layers of the painting and what they stood for. It was really interesting to hear the interpretations of the artist. Finally I went over to the informational board each room has that explains the artist and the paintings. well the more I read about the painter the more I understood why I was drawn to his paintings.
His name is Gerhard Richter for those of you that want to look up some of his stuff. There were two quotes listed in the excerpt about him that I absolutely loved. The first one was "I have nothing to say and I'm saying it." There was a similar quote I heard the other day which said "I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing it well." Both of these seem to sum up a good amount of my existence at the moment. The second quote was "I don't know what I want. I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive, I like the infinite, the boundless. I like continual uncertainty." I ended up reading this quote probably 5 times total, over and over again. I've never found a quote that seemed more like me than this before. Granted no one can be summed up in a short quote, but if it was possible, Gerhard Richter and I should have been soulmates (except for the fact that I don't believe in those...). It just made so much sense. I fell in love with Richter right then. I'm excited to get a chance to see more of his work and learn about him.
A few other works I really enjoyed were Pablo Picasso's "The Three Dancers." The description explained it as love, sex and death are linked in an ecstatic dance resulting in a loss of self. Picasso's paintings are always colorful enough and different enough to strike anyone's interest but for some reason this was my favorite of his. The third painting I was drawn to was a Pablo-esque painting by Juan Grls. It was called "Bottle of Rum and Newspaper" I thought that was fitting enough. Then there was Niki de Saint's Phalle artwork "Shooting Picture" She had a line of pieces where she put packets of paint on a canvas and had people shoot the canvas. When the bullets hit the canvas paint would randomly splatter and drip. It was described as a 'moment of action and emphasis on chance.' It was a really cool concept. Next, Alighiero Boetti's "Map of the World" was awesome and the one piece of artwork I would take home if I could. It had the world on a canvas and each country was made up of it's flag. I recommend googling it if you are into that at all. Lastly, ther was Keith Arnatt's "Self Burial (Television Interference Project)." This one was very unique. It had 9 progressive pictures of a man being buried in the ground. The unique thing about this was in October of 1969 these pictures were broadcasted on TV in Germany one day at a time. Each day one of the pictures would interrupt a TV show for about 2 seconds then just go away. There was no explanation for the photos so the people watching at the time had to make their own assumptions. I'm really surprised this sort of thing was possible in Germany in 1969. How Arnatt got TV stations to agree is beyond me. Arnatt described commented on the piece saying "disappearance of the art object suggested to me the eventful disappearance of the artist himself."
After the museum Hilary and I walked across the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's Cathedral. It was about 10pm at this time so the church wasn't open but we took a couple pictures of it. It was huge and I'm sure it was really nice inside but my trip to Italy a few years ago pretty much churched me out for life. Once you see the Vatican it's hard to top. Plus when I walk in to churches I tend to focus on all of the money, time, labor and in some cases human lives that were lost. While it looks beautiful and all that, these resources could have been put toward a lot better things in my mind. This brings up a whole realm of religious debates that I'd probably get in to right about now if I wasn't have a one-sided conversation with a computer. Becca where are you when I need you!!
The first pic is the Millennium Bridge and the second is St. Paul's Cathedral.
We headed back to our hostel at this point and are hopefully headed to bed soon. It's Friday night in London but we are both exhausted and still trying to catch up from jet lag and getting over being sick. I'm trying to be good for once in my life and take semi-good care of myself so I'm not sick for the next 3 months of the trip. Plus it's super expensive to go out in London. I'm thinking we'll save that for the cheaper countries.
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