Title: Tate Britain – Francis Bacon & Turner Prize
Rating (out of 100): 100 (Bacon) / 40 (Turner)
Mood: disturbed and challenged (but in a good way) – Bacon / disturbed and confused (but in a bad way) - Turner
Website: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
Timeout / Culture Critic: http://www.timeout.com/london/art/event/8729/francis-bacon.html & http://www.timeout.com/london/art/event/9084/turner-prize-2008.html / http://www.culturecritic.co.uk/exhibitions/francis-bacon/ & http://www.culturecritic.co.uk/exhibitions/turner-prize-2008/
The Tate Britain (Pimlico) currently has two main exhibits - Francis Bacon and 4 top nominees for the 2008 Turner Prize. Both shows charge an entrance fee but are free (as always) with a Tate membership. The Bacon Show is fantastic. It is huge (both in terms of the number of paintings displayed, the number of rooms and the scale in which Bacon worked). The colours are moody, the subjects are even moodier and the introductory statements in each room set the mood perfectly. My favourite rooms were room 4 (fantastic red colours – remind me of a much funkier and more interesting version of Rothko’s red paintings) as well as from room 7 onwards. The last line of the last room says it all “he faced death with a defiant concentration on the exquisiteness of the lived moment”. An amazing show and an amazing artist and man. Absolutely fantastic. Check out the interactive show on the Tate Britain website for a preview (or a reminder) of this brilliant show. http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/francisbacon/interactive/
My appreciation of the Turner Prize show is quite a bit less. But first, two big caveats: (1) I don’t like video art (I prefer my art to not have video… if I want the experience of watching video in the dark, I’d rather see a film) and (2) some modern art escapes me… I find it so modern that it ceases to have any interest or beauty or aesthetic complexity for me. So, as you can imagine, I ran through the Turner Prize show not finding any of the artists’ works all that interesting. The only one I did like was the show of Cathy Wilkes, especially her installation of the naked female mannequins, surrounded by empty jam jars as well as one of the mannequins which was partially enclosed in a bird cage. Other than that, I focused on the Bacon exhibit.
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