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Art and Walks in London - More Tate Modern

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

So, to continue where we left off when we introduced you to the Energy and Process wing at Tate Modern, and told you a bit about which of our London walks end close to Tate Modern so that you can pay it a visit

We were in the Energy and Process wing trying to make sense of Dynamic Suprematism by the Russian Artist Kasimir Malevich and got as far as explaining that what, at first glance, seems like a meaningless jumble of different shapes is, in fact, a very spiritual and mystical work.

In a later post we will look at a painting by a leading member of the Futurist art movement that came out of Italy in 1909.

Like the Futurists Malevich was very excited by the brave new technological world that the dawning of the 20th century had ushered in.

Scientific advancements such as motor cars and airplanes had given people a radically different perception of speed and movement.

Mankind could travel faster than ever before. He could look down on landscapes from high above and, in so doing, gain a totally new perspective on the world and his surroundings.

But for Russia in 1915, at the time when Malevich painted Dynamic Suprematism, the new technological age was about something more than a mere altering of peoples perspectives and perceptions about their surroundings - it was a catalyst for cataclysmic, huge social upheaval that would culminate in the Russian Revolution of 1918 and the overthrow of the Czar.

Malevich and his fellow, left wing artists were eagerly awaiting the coming of this new Russia and the resultant government by the people and for the people.

So this should be looked at as the art of a coming new world. An art that would replace religious icons with a simplicity that would enable people to look into and ponder a painting.

Indeed, just as the religious icons of old were intended to make you stop and ponder the world beyond, so to does Dynamic Suprematism make you forget about the materialism of art and look instead at the meaning behind the art.

So there we end our look at the work of Kasimir Malevich in Tate Modern’s Energy and Process wing.

Tomorrow we’ll pick up on the work that stares across at it in the dialogue room, Richard Serra’s Trip Hammer.

In the meantime, why not join us on a London walk to explore the places that surround Tate Modern and to enjoy a stroll over the Millennium Bridge following in the foosteps of Shakespeare and Dickens.?

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London walks and Tate Modern

Monday, September 21st, 2009

When our London walks cross over the River Thames via the Millennium Bridge the view of all those on the tours is captivated, some might even say dominated, by a massive building on the south bank of the River Thames.

This building is Tate Modern but it was formerly Bankside Power Station which closed in 1981 when the price of oil (it was an oil powered power station) rose so steeply that keeping it open simply wasn’t economically viable.

It was a year after this closure that Richard Jones began offering his London walks to the public and the area on the south bank was totally different then.

In those days Bankside was made up of derelict warehouses, dark and sinister little alleyways that snaked behind the warehouses and echoing railway tunnels.

Clink Street, which features on both our Shakespeare and Dickens London walks, was a particularly sinister street. Indeed it was so sinister that in the 1980’s film Murder By Decree, which starred Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes trying to solve the mystery of the Jack the Ripper murders, this area was used to substitute for the streets of Whitechapel.

But then two things happened to change the area. Firstly, Sam Wanamaker realised his life long dream to rebuild Shakespeare’s Globe Playhouse on the south side of the River Thames. Secondly, in 1994, The Trustees of the Tate Gallery, who were looking to establish a new museum to house their modern art collection, acquired the old Bankside Station and launched an international architectural competition for a design that would transform the old Bankside Power Station into a suitable art gallery for their collection.

Their were over 70 entries but a young Swiss company were the winners because they submitted a plan that advocated working with what was left of the Bankside Power Station.

Thus in the year 2000 Tate Modern was opened by Queen Elizabeth 11 and over five million people a year now cross its threshold to admire, criticise, laugh and enjoy their collection.

So when you next join one of our London walks that corsses the Thames via the Millennium Bridge and you look up at the tall building with the soaring chimney, you will now know exactly what it is.

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Literary London - walks and houses

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Our repertoire of great London walks feature several that explore London’s literary heritage.

London boasts an extremely long and rich literary tradition.

Geoffrey Chaucer lived above Aldgate, in the easternmost part of The City until 1386, and playwright Joe Orton lived on Noel Road in Islington until his 1967 murder.

Marguerite Radclyffe Hall, author of the first lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, lived in Chelsea and is buried in Highgate Cemetery, both of which our featured on our London walks in those areas.

Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Fanny Burney, George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, George Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers, William Blake—the list of authors who made London their home goes on and on.

Alas, a little blue plaque is usually all that’s left to mark the past, but there are some exceptions.

The wonderful Georgian town house where lexicographer Samuel Johnson lived and worked, compiling the world’s first English dictionary, is now a shrine called Dr. Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Sq., Fleet Street, EC4.

His original dictionary, on display, includes the definition “Dull: to make dictionaries is dull work.” There’s not much here in the way of furnishings, but the long upstairs room in which he worked has plenty of ambience.

Thomas Carlyle’s House, 24 Cheyne Row, SW3, is an 18th-century Queen Anne on a beautiful Chelsea back street.

The Scottish author/historian/philosopher lived here 47 years, until his death in 1881. His house remains virtually unaltered, to the extent that some of the rooms are without electric light. In this eerie atmosphere you can imagine yourself sitting in one of the writer’s original Victorian chairs or playing the same piano Chopin himself played.

Dickens’s House, 48 Doughty St., WC1, was home to one of London’s most famous novelists for a short but prolific period.

It was here where he worked on  Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, and Oliver Twist. His letters, desk and chair, and first editions are on display, along with some memorabilia of his wife, Catherine.

If you are interested in DIY London walks you might like to purchase a copy of Richard Jones’s guide to Dickens London Walking Dickensian London that offers a choice of 25 walks around the London that Dickens knew and wrote about.

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