Compare and contrast

I was going to call this post 'art or fart?', as it seemed most appropriate when discussing the merits of modern 'art', such as many of the exhibits at the Tate Modern. After visiting the Museum of London, which was interesting and engaging, S and I spent the remainder of our day at the nearby Tate Modern, an imposing building on the banks of the Thames. We spent most of the time muttering about the 'emperor's new clothes'. People stood and stared at a plethora of paint splatterings and blocks of colour, or sat gormlessly watching poor-quality animation or short films about absolutely nothing. They looked blank and bored. Hmm.

There were some – a few pieces – that provided intellectual stimulation and hit synaptic goals, but on the whole, well, anyone could have produced some of the rubbish in there. I say rubbish because, frankly, my rabbit could have arranged her pellets in a more meaningful form. It's an old criticism that is met by cries of 'Philistine' but it's true. And it's not because I don't get it; it's that I cannot respect and cannot recognise 'art' that is in fact no step above what Joe or Joanne Bloggs could produce given some crayons and an egg box.

Yes, at the risk of being called a raging Philistine, I have to say that on this, my third visit, I again found the contents of the Tate Modern insulting, patronising and empty. You shouldn't have to (pretend to) have an existential crisis to appreciate art. You shouldn't have to dissect something to have it say something to you, or worse, try to decide what the creator of the piece was thinking! No, art should be above such theorising. When you see a rosebud, the sea, a formation of clouds, or the flowers in someone's irises, you just understand. Art should be like that, not some elite, hidden 'style' that can only be appreciated by those who have spent two years learning other people's theories at art school or elsewhere.

All that pretentious 'what was the artist trying to say?' angst leaves me cringing. Often, he or she was saying bugger all, as demonstrated very clearly by the explanations proffered by most of the artists in the Tate Modern's very own video clips of people explaining their art. It was like watching sixth-formers having crises. Painful.

It would have been funny had it not been so up its own behind, and so utterly vague. Artists saying things like: 'Well, uhm, I create these things because I like them,' and 'I, erm, like just seeing what happens when I throw colours together'. Well, that's fine: they are having fun expressing themselves through paint or balancing toilet rolls or whatever, but to read into such simple desires humanity's place in the cosmos is seeing a fine arrangement of regal clothes when the king is in fact walking around with his nadgers hanging out in the breeze.

Art turns me on when the creative work that has gone into it is relatively obvious, when you can speak about it without resorting to psychobabble, and it shows skills that leave you in awe, knowing that someone blessed with gifts that can't be reproduced, and who can fashion originality that doesn't reek of pretension, has produced beauty.


Walking out of the Tate, on to the Millennium Bridge, seeing the majesty of the glittering Thames, St Paul's Cathedral, the other bridges spanning the artery of London, and the blue lights twinkling on trees – Christmas and otherwise – was infinitely more delicious to the senses than most of what was on display the Tate Modern. Such a vista needed no labels.