The Tate is in a State of Flux

Times were I'd bound through the gates of Tate Modern with real enthusiasm, yet now I'm a cynic. The experience it offers is not how I remember it, and I'm not sure why.

The building does look tired, and dated. The freshness of the conversion has become familiar, and I'm more likely to notice litter, cracks, and leaking taps than the remarkable Turbine Hall, now preparing for the latest Unilever Series. Last years was underwhelming, and first glance of the work in progress leads to similar feelings - hmph.

When I was younger it was all new to me, now it's same old. The same old gang, just hung differently. It all feels stale, and clubby: the Chris Ofili "scandal" was indicative of the whole charade.

A current exhibition I recently saw - and enjoyed - explores the birth of modernism. No, not Kandinsky (a typical blockbuster chock full of schoolkids and twattish footwear) but "States of Flux". An interesting (but frustrating) take on early modernism: cubism, futurism and vorticism were all on the menu, but it didn't expand my understanding of either. On the contrary by lumping all three into one room it smacked of convenience: the subtleties sacrificed for the story.

The story was where the exhibition ended (and began, in a thrilling entrance room): Pop Art. We're whisked through the decades to (once again) take a cartoonish eye over consumerism. The thread is weaved in a contrived manner: I noticed desks featuring in the work of two artists. Are desks central to the Art of Flux? I don't think so, but it's a sneaky trick to artificially coax the narrative. In the Takahashi "room" I read with amusement:

some additonal items were added...including the desk and chair

Despite the convenience of learning art through a chronology of movements, I'm just deeply averse to being told that "artists" switched "from a fascination with the city to a cynicism of mass-consumerism." Who did? We're talking (overall) about different people over different times and is the sort of nonsense theory that occurs when abandoning methodological individualism. It's the consequence of forcing a modernist thirst for central narrative onto a complex storyline. I'd like to look at a painting without being told how it "fit's in" to those around it. Show me the art, and let me make my own associations. This was brilliant.

One of the most fascinating rooms was "USSR in Construction", dedicated to the 1930s magazine of the same name (see here), but it angers me that ultra-modernism is placed as a (inevitable?) consequence of what came before. That the city creates city planning, or dynamism begets socialism - Schumpeter might be placated but only indirectly because it isn't true. The path to modernity wasn't inevitable, because The Fatal Conceit occured: hyper formalism in science Science, modernity, Socialism - all the folly of confusing rational thought with Rational thought. The lesson must be to:

"demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

The same goes for the Tate: this article should have been a review of Kandinsky. Unlike James I don't feel it's the end of "palatable human civilisation", but that's probably due to my last remaining fissures of youth. When I'm as wise as he is now, I'm sure i'll feel the same.

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