I am not quite sure where to start with my opinion on the curretn exhibition Pop Life: In a material world at the Tate moodern. It was well curated, exciting, visceral, sensual, packed with "well known" popular art. Any memeber of the public could visit this exhibition and know something about the work on show... Tracy Emin, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst..well known, highly succesful artists.. But perhaps it was an amateur exhibition?
Upon walking in to the exhibition you are immediately greeted with a massive self portrait of Andy Warhol. Fair enough..he is the greatest EVER Pop Artist. In the same room a Jeff Koons bunny and a Takashi Murakami sculpture... a typical manga girl.. highly sexual..but at least slightly original. The next couple of rooms were then dedicated to Andy Warhol. I'm not complaining. I will forever be in awe of his magnitude. His innovation and his social life. A most interesting piece was a page from his book where he described himself as having "social disease"!!!... a thirst for the celebrity, a pushing of identity,a desire not to miss out on fame and the famous. His whole career was built around this...climbing the social ladder. His art in a way was pushing himself.
At this point, I felt the exhibition was quite interesting, but not as good as the Hayward's Andy Warhol exhibition earlier that year. I felt it was a bit of a copy until i walked into the next room. We have all heard about the Brooke fiasco!! A photograoh of a higly made up ten year old Brooke shields was hung in the exhibition pushing the idea of what it was to live in modern America. This caused huge hype and contreversy...not a ten year old. But coem on... it wasn't like this was an exhibition about pedophilia... it;s not liek this picture hasn;t been exhibited before... it's not like Brooke Shields cares. But yes.. it has been removed...but the information on the wall hasn't changed. It really is quite amusing to be stadning there reading about a portrait of a boyish figured ten year old whilst staring at a twenty something women clad in gold bikini. Get over it? was this a publicity stunt or was this a publicity stunt!
Ok next room...strictly for the over 18's!!! Being some what young looking.. of course.. I was questioned. Not only humiliating but it seemed a bit of a rip off seing as they were chargin children to go in and they couldn't see half the exhibition. I walked in. Looked around. Took some notes and walked out. Did a massive blown up photograph of Jeff Koons wifes arse hole promote any reaction in me... No. I;ve seen it all before. It's just pornography. Do I care what his Penis looks like? No. Fair enough. it may get him excited looking at a plasticy statue of him and his wife "doing it" but it's just boring. Whats it meant to do? Shock us. The exhibition continued like this...
A roon of Cosey Fanni Tutti...jsut a collection of top shelf magazines. Ok ..fair enough... what defines art? .. but I paid eleven pounds to get in here and she wasn'e even pretty.
A sex tape that an artist sold for millions. Her and a collector..having slow sex. I wasn't going to sit there for an hour and watch it...was anyone? At least not there.
Next room a life size, realistic impalyed horse. Ok at last. Something new..and yes this actually was disturbing, shocking. It just made me laugh that this was meant to be the boring bit. Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst were beautiful in comparison to some of the work I had seen. I must admit. Damien Hirst's preserved calf is absolutely fantastic. it looks so peacful, so ethreal... It is like its title and IDOL. His twins however, did some what take the piss. A live instalation of twins sitting in front of some dots. It this case I had Jon and Peter. I lively couple of old men...who clearly had no interest in waht they were doing. I found it fasinating that they were sitting there saying the lieks of " we just get paid loads"..."it's a load of bullshit really"..well yes I would agree it is!
..i will read this later and edit.. i jsut have no time now!!
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