Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Art of This Century (Tate Modern)

Pawel Althamer
Self Portrait as a Businessman
2002 with additions 2004
installation (clothing, newspaper, other retail commodities)
Tate, London

MODERN CITY

A wedge of steel flung skyward
and beyond it the prairie flatlines.
Each unhappy family permits itself
another slice of pie. The sky turns
constantly trying to get it right.
To the east, the slum eats itself:
a man in satin fields calls
and walks the children's block.
To the west, the west begins.
Beneath us in the underground museuem
moths feed at the stuffed muskrat
and the grizzly's fur fades to white,
so white you argue he's a different bear.

– Eliza Griswold (2007)

Bob and Roberta Smith
I Went to an Event at the Tate
2009
commercial paint on fridge door
Tate, London

Bob and Roberta Smith
I was Hansel in the School Play
2008
woodcut
Tate, London

Tania Bruguera
Tatlin's Whisper #5
2008
performance (2 people, 2 horses)
Tate, London

THE GREAT TSUNAMI

She recognizes its crest in the way he looks at her.
The wave is as vast as the roiling mass in the Japanese
Print they had paused in front of at the museum,
Capped with ringlets of foam, all surging sinew.
That little village along the shore would be
Totally lost. There is no escaping this.
The wave is flooding his heart,
And he is sending the flood
Her way. It rushes
Over her.

Can you look at one face
For the whole of a life?

Does the moon peer down
At the tides and hunger for home?

– Michele Wolf (2001)

Paul Winstanley
Woman at a Window 2
2003
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Michael Craig-Martin
Becoming
2003
software and monitor
Tate, London

Tacita Dean
Majesty
2006
gouache on photograph mounted on paper
Tate, London

Patrick Caulfield
Braque Curtain
2005
acrylic on canvas
Tate, London

FIRE SAFETY

Aluminum tank
indifferent in its place

behind a glass door
in the passageway,

like a tea urn
in a museum case;

screaming-machines
that dumbly spend each day

waiting for gas or smoke
or hands or heat,

positioned like beige land mines
overhead,

sanguine on walls,
or posted on the street

like dwarf grandfather clocks
spray painted red;

little gray hydrant
in its warlike stance;

old fire escape,
all-weather paint job peeling,

a shelf for threadbare rugs
and yellowing plants;

sprinkler heads,
blooming from the public ceiling;

all sitting
supernaturally still,

waiting for us to cry out.
And we will.

–  Joshua Mehigan (2010)

Juan Araujo
Glass House No. 6
2006
oil on panel
Tate, London

Juan Araujo
Glass House No. 7
2006
oil on panel
Tate, London

Juan Araujo
Sculpture
2009
oil on paper
Tate, London

Dexter Dalwood
Situationist Apartment May '68
2001
oil and chalk on canvas
Tate, London

Sandra Gamarra
Page 70
2006
oil on canvas
Tate, London

from HIJA FOR EMERSON'S BIRTHDAY

          I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen
          who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein.
                  ––President George W. Bush, Washington DC, May 25, 2004

               .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     . 

Or is it the rebellious, the disobedient,
Whose sisters' brothers died on our side near Samarra,
Without whom our world's (mostly) better off?

It's hard to tell, when they have veils. It's hard
To tell, when phantom limbs report again tomorrow,
Just whom we're better off without. Yet ask
Yourself: can we condemn "the vanity
Of false distinctions" in light of presidential Scripture?
"If thy right hand offend..." ––We must cut Matthew

Off quick as RFK, alas, in order
To go now to commercial. We're sorry. We're in the hands
Of the commercial. We leave you with this question:

Would our world be better off without Iraq
Itself? Or what about your simple self?
––A little better, you must mean, or worse?

––And what about our own bull-headed liars,
As Emerson might say? And the Milky Way ––
Better off without this blue-green pearl of Earth?

Yet who could tell? And if no one could tell...
What can we mean by tell? Now that's a simple question.

– Stephen Yenser (2011)

Nathaniel Mellors
Time Surgeon Performers' Mask
2007
lithograph
Tate, London

Allen Ruppersberg
Honey, I rearranged the collection to remind everyone that the original definition of a curator was:
A guardian of a minor, lunatic; a person who has a cure of souls 

2001
screenprint
Tate, London

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)