So our London walks around the south side of the River Thames and in to Tate Modern have brought us into the Energy and Process wing of the Museum.
We have been looking at a work entitled Venus of the Rags, which was created in 1967 and then recreated in 1974 by the Italian artist Michaelangelo Pistoletto.
Our previous London walks of art blog explained what it was made with and where the materials came from.
Today we look at what it means.
Ostensibly the work shows a figure of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, facing, confronting or even embracing a huge pile of rags.
It effectively brings together an icon of classical culture, Venus, and the detritus of contemporary culture, in this case the rags.
The solid and unchangeable brought together with the fleeting.
In this case Venus is solid, she has been around for a long time, she doesn’t and will not change.
Yes, she may be created and recreated out of different materials - and Pistoletto himself has created several different versions of the work in different materials, on one occassion even staging a live version of it - but her form, her memory, her iconic status does not change.
Clothes, which is what the rags are, do change. They can be discarded, torn up, shredded. They are indicitive, indeed symbolic of all things that pass, such as fads and fashions, both of which are driving forces of the modern age.
But there is also a certain irony about Venus of the Rags, in that you have a simple nude figure amidst a huge mountain of discarded and unwanted clothing.
Finally, there is perhaps a metaphor for our modern age in the work. For are we, like Venus here, not confronted by a huge omnipresent mountain of waste and garbage that our modern throwaway age has created.
So there we have our look inside the Energy and Process wing of Tate Modern.
You can of course join us on the wide variety of London walks that we offer, where you can see so much more of the ciy that has spent 2,000 years preparing for your visit.
Tags: Energy and Process, London walks, Michaelangelo Pistoletto, River Thames., Tate Modern, Venus of the Rags
