An Afternoon At Tate Modern

Since my last visit, Tate Modern has put up four new exhibitions. I wanted to see 2 quite badly- Pop Life: Art in a Material World and John Baldessari: Pure Beauty.

Of course I took the audio guide. Was thrilled that they offered an ipod Touch for the job. Yippeeeee. Totally in tandem with the theme of the Pop Life! This is consumerism at its best! The information also provided additional videos and interviews not displayed at the galleries.

I like how they put Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami as the icons of pop art. I'm not exactly a fan because their colors make my eyes hurt. They're kinda cutesy. But I understand the inherent mass appeal. I like Keith Haring and love how Tate pays tribute by putting the pop shop just right at his exhibit.

One of my favorite pieces has got to be Damien Hirst's multi-colored dotted twin square frames. The exhibit had a pair of twins sitting below the two square frames of dots. When I saw the ladies, they both had identical clothes, hairdo, lipstick color, Nano, bottle of water and the same book- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. So cool!

Each time I look at John Baldessari's creations, my brain feels like it's been overloaded with information. His photographic works belong to the sort of conceptual realm that's quite mind boggling.

The hours flew by easily. No wonder each time I visit a big proper museum, I allocate at least 4 hours to do a cursory walk through its contents. I love love love museums.

Do ignore the dude on the chair. He's quite cute, but so totally in the way of everybody's photos. He's a tourist, not part of the exhibition. That's the entrance banner thingy and he's a major spoiler.