Trees feature a great deal in our various London walks. For example on the Secret City Walk we point out a tree on Cheapside, close to St. Paul’s Cathedral, that the poet William Wordsworth actually wrote a poem about.
But to return to our little wanderings inside the Energy and Process wing at Tate Modern, we can even point out a tree in there and link it to our other London Walking Tours.
The tree in question is a work called Tree of 12 meters created in the early 1980’s by the Italian artist Giuseppe Penone.
It takes a while to “get” this sculpture. At first glance you appear to be staring at two very stark almost skeletal trees that appear to be almost petrified.
You could be forgiven for thinking that you are just looking at two dead trees that someone has stood upright and decided to call them art.
If that is what Penone has done then it could, of course, be a follow on to Marcel Duchamp’s breakthrough in the early 20th century when he bought a urinal displayed it in an art gallery making the belief that if he as an artist took an everyday object, no matter how mundane or basic, and displayed it in an art gallery then it became a work of art.
So, if Penone takes two dead trees and displays them in an art gallery setting, then they too become art.
And indeed, that would be exactly what the Arte Poverta movement would revel in. An ordinary, everyday object that is used by an artist to create a work of art.
Except, Tree of 12 metres is not any every day object, it is in fact a carefully and skillfully carved work that has been created using one of the oldest forms of sculpture - carving.
We’ll return to this theme in tomorrow’s blog as our Haunted London walk is about to take place.
In the meantime, don’t forget that we have a whole host of wonderul London walks that will show you places that you would never dream still existed.
