Tate Modern Visit #2 - The whirl-wind tour of surrealism & it's later influences.

Following on from my blog yesterday about the principle exhibition of the Tate Modern during June 2014, (Henri Matisse, The Cut-outs), I wanted to comment on the truly awesome works of many other 20th century painters.  The time I had available in the Tate Modern was rather curtailed and I have every intention of returning to continue my explorations.  Nonetheless, I will endeavor to do a little justice to some of my favourite works, but a brief history of why the Tate Modern is placed where it is follows;

The main hall of the Tate Modern, which is housed in the former south-bank or Bankside Power Station, is of special interest to me.  It represents everything in the development, from the 1880s and 1890s - and in a sense completion, of "Modernism" of the early 1950s in the culture of that time, prior to the post-modernist era of the 1980s.

This importance of the Tate Modern building is best explained by an analysis of what was happening in London at the time...

The introduction of mass consumable electricity being one of the foundations of modernistic simplicity and a cornerstone of the Modernist ideal, emerged during the 1890s.  Mass consumable electricity for the people, had in fact, become available as a sort of by-product in a way:  Most early electricity generation,  - since it's discovery and the various inventions to manage it, was conducted by the larger private companies and used to power the production of factories of all sorts of goods, and with the processing of early 'consumable' products (like for instance, sugar and sugar cubes - ergo, Tate & Lyle sugar refining, hence the patronage of Henry Tate and the Tate Museum - amazing huh?).  These processing sites of the raw materials of such mass production (and the for the coal used to power the furnaces for the steam generators to create electricity of course), were conveniently placed next to major distribution routes (like the river Thames) to provide ready access to transport.   As as there was often a surplus of electrical power from these early electricity generators, particularly at night (during reduced production), this was sold locally to the more wealthy houses and early consumers of the 1880s to 1900s.  The fashion to use electricity had started.  Soon, street lighting, once powered by gas, were converted to electric lamps.

 However, as electricity generation developed into a more 'municipally' governed, and community  based demand for supply generally, the sporadic and almost rhizomic development of private generating companies, - which by 1925, the governance of whom was in a complete shambles (as there were a multitude of various types of electricity supply with all sorts of localised voltages / frequencies and transmission types), simply because there were lots of little electricity providers but there were no official standards for it's generation or supply throughout a town or city.

It took an act of Parliament to establish a United Kingdom wide electricity generation and transmission standard in 1925 (which opened the door to later creating the National Grid in a further act in 1947 and more rationalisation in 1948 / 9, to make the grid that we know of today), and the commitment for the City of London to rationalise the power supply and distribution, which was done through the newly created London Power Company.  (The LPC was formed out of the merger of 10 of the private generation companies in London of the time).  A number of new 'super large' power generators (but rather small compared to today's plants) would be built in the centre of London, to cope with the burgeoning urban demand for electricity in a standardised format.  The south-bank site that was chosen for one of these 'new' large  power stations in central London, known as Bankside, had been the site of a power station since 1891, but the existing generation facility, which had been extended numerous times had become increasingly unreliable and highly polluting (and probably a major contributor to the London smog no doubt too).  The post-war improvements and re-building of much of central London demanded a new approach to electricity supply.   However, it took a major power outage in 1947 to prompt the need for the Bankside facility to be fully renewed and upgraded.

So, a new oil fired power generating plant was commissioned with the building designed by the famous Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (who also designed the iconic red telephone box and Battersea Power Station).  This new building was on-line and producing electricity for London by 1952, and a further phase of work saw the completion of it in 1963, (the year of my birth!)...

The choice for using Bankside power station to house the Tate Modern in my opinion is particularly  clever for a number of reasons, as well as the charting of Modernism, and it's closure as a power station in 1981 (as it was no longer economical due to the rising cost of oil), with the co-incided with the emergence of Post-Modernism.   The general site too was very near to the original Tate Museum, which had become too small to house our treasures of the 20th century.

The main hall is the original turbine hall.

 

The first works outside the Matisse Exhibition that I instantly recognised was that of surrealism and Salvador Dali.

Salvador Dali (1904 -1989)
The Metamorphosis of Narcissus 1937

Max Ernst (1891 - 1976)
Pieta or Revolution by Night (1923)

Joan Miro (1893 - 1983)
Woman & Bird in Moonlight 1949

The following works by Mark Rosco were gifted to the Tate museum, on his proviso that the works must be hung next to a work of William Turner (1775-1859), hence the inclusion of Turner's 1840-1845 work, "Approaching the Coast.

Mark Rothco's works are displayed in a small separate room in the Tate Modern, in order to understand that Rothco's intention, which is to view these seemingly simple red and black images in combination, as a vehicle for meditation and transcendence.  The quite, emotionally warm and comfortable environment in this segregated room truly does have an effect upon the viewer.  I spent quite a while just sitting and absorbing the gentle and soothing effect that these paintings have.  It's quite remarkable that these works genuinely can move you to a different meditative and contemplative state, even for those who are not perhaps, appreciative of modern art.  If anyone needs to be convinced how art (particularly here, as modern art) can literally move you, just visit the Tate and spend 10 - 15 minutes in this exhibition room!