Day Out

In an effort to take advantage of our fair city, Pete and I attempt weekly walks. Usually we don't get much further than our sweet little ROYAL BOROUGH. I mean, with the Park and the Queen's Deer and the Royal Observatory and the Old Royal Naval College. 

The Market and one of the best little microbreweries around, why leave?

But occasionally we do head north of the river. Mostly this takes us to our second favourite place in town.

The Natural History Museum.    Love it.    Best Building in Town.    Dinosaurs!!!


Last time we headed out, we stayed on our side of the river and attempted a little culture.

Sidebar: I consider myself to be an average appreciator of the arts. I'm no historian and I have fairly vanilla tastes, but I can appreciate the far-out stuff. I was a modern dancer once upon a time and participated in some fairly out-there pieces (The object is the subject of the object...) and I have recently emerged from years of reading non-representational (codename for BS) and post-anything and everything theory. I can get into deep meaning but I also have a fairly good BS radar.

We decided to go to the TATE.

And I call BULLSHIT!!!

Maybe I have lost my artistic edge. We were definitely the most un-cool people in attendance, no skinny jeans, chunky (mostly unnecessary) glasses, asymmetrical haircuts in unnatural colours, weather inappropriate jackets and shoes. Kudos to them. Maybe I am just turning into an old fuddy-duddy but most of the art I saw that day was trash and crap. Literally. Piles of dirty laundry, used machine parts, and the cherry on the cake, dried crap on wires.

Our favourite: a video of blowing trash. No moving soundtrack or monologue. Just what appeared to be an iPhone video left on while walking to work. The bag in American Beauty was Gone with the Wind in comparison.

The best part of the day: Pete's commentary. In response to the video, 'Why not do something really meaningful and pick up the trash.' While looking at sheep shit on wires, 'If this is art, my parents are sitting on a gold mine.'

OK. Maybe you had to be there and witness the dry delivery and eyebrow raise.  I was laughing pretty hard.

But the best comment was a little girl trailing behind her dad, 'This isn't nearly as fun as I thought it would be.'  AMEN.

Near the end, I spotted a Monet.  It wasn't his best.  One of the 'practice' water lilies if you ask me, but I dragged Pete back. 






But, like I said, it wasn't his best and the little girl had summed up the experience pretty well. 


I make fun of the cool kids, but that's only because I'm jealous. I enjoyed their art more than the ticketed displays. It wasn't all crap. The sheep shit guy also had a visually interesting red display. I didn't get it, but I liked looking at it.

These inverted stairs were very cool and I enjoyed the visual of these wooden planks.

So how about you all? Are you one of the cool kids? Do you enjoy Modern Art?