The Smell Remains the Same

At the Tate Britain, from the 70s, when I first started to dig it.

But that's about it.

In this and the next couple of posts, some thoughts about the major, entirely wrong restructuring--or destructuring, or actually, destruction.

The net effect: cynical reason plus presentism plus big Britart money minus meaningful British patronage of the arts in the 50s and 60s and 70s = good old British philistinism 2.0. Throw millions of pounds at some new stuff because it's less guilt inducing and more obvious, like the elephant with the machine gun and the flags: geddit?

The aesthetic of much of the contemporary art and its curation is precisely the identical cynical reason that uses Earth as an exploitable resource.

And of course, as we all know (as they knew in 1807, or 1660), the present is the best: finally we are out of that awful history tunnel!

Then outsource the "history" to BP and have it compressed into the smallest possible space. Use decades rather than periods because it provides a way to justify the contemporary stuff ("1960," "1970," "1980" -- but only "1540" then "1620" then "1750"--just making these dates up but you get the picture--and of course the curators also just made them up).

Net effect: the core of the Tate, the Romantic period and Victorian period art, disappears (in the former case) or is crammed into a single room (the latter). Exhibit the latter pictures Academy style, cramming them on top of one another. How marvelously of the period darling. But how convenient: we can stuff all the Whistlers and Pre-Raphaelites together to provide lots of space around the elephant and gun.

The Romantic period is disappeared entirely. Blake has been put in a ghetto up a small flight of stairs in the corner of the Turner rooms: I had to ask. When I was a kid he was front and center. In a hushed, beautiful dark space with glass cabinets. Now he's in a deep ultramarine room, the pictures crammed again one on top of the other, a huge slice of wall devoted to "look how nice to Blake we've been over the years."

This was a poor guy who made next to nothing doing illustrations while alive. Not being bought by the Tate (if it had existed).

The Romantic period and the march of the isms that followed has to do with the discovery that Joe Public has (infinite) inner space.

By contrast, there are about three quite meaningless, contextless, eighteenth-century art rooms. It figures: that was also an age of commerce uber alles.

Bridget Riley and David Hockney have been crushed into two contextless hangings in intersitial spaces.

Francis Bacon. Where are you sir?

The net effect: it is as Adorno said. Interiority and freedom have had their day and no longer juice the bourgeoisie. And Adorno said it back in the 40s.

British philistinism is now where American philistinism was in 19 fucking 45. Congratulations kids! Welcome to the mid twentieth century!