Billed as the summer blockbuster for this year i was both excited and a little apprehensive upon arrival, it would have been worse were it not for the fact i skipped the queue with my Tate membership card; however, I was knocked back at how well the Tate had dealt with this show. Work ranging from throughout his career, starting at work as he left Goldsmiths in the late 80s and moving on through to the present day. Unlike the Kusama show there were several real center pieces for the show, in fact you could almost say it about all the pieces and each of them has had either their own piece of controversy or large media coverage.
If you enter from the West entrance as I do usually you are greeted by two things, one, a very large queue (so either book in advance for a much smaller line or get a membership) and two, the ever present amazing turbine hall, which you might have thought to be filled with perhaps work such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991, but no instead at the very bottom end of the hall there is a black box. Before you start queueing at the rear of the box you walk pas this image,
Now for many of you this will conjure up a familiar image such as the one on my previous blog post; however, upon entry and seeing it, For the Love of God 2007, in real life, it is instantly something special. What hit me most was the scale of it, in most images it looks huge, but in reality a human head isn't actually that large. The jewel on the forehead and the way it is presented in a dark room with spot lights makes it feel extraterrestrial, alien, the jewel an all seeing third eye, the eye of god perhaps. It is a little unnerving especially in the environment that you see it, a small group with security, not invigilators, watching and monitoring you in a room filled with the sparkle off the piece.
If we move now to the main body of the work upstairs on level 3, it would take an age to go through each piece, all works that have been analysed time after time. Anyone who knows any of Hirst's work will understand the underlying theme of death throughout, and the almost contradictory nature of the way as questions are asked they are almost instantly denied by the work. The butterfly plays wonderfully with these themes the butterflies are simultaneously hatching from the lava on the canvases as other expire or live out their lives through this room that we as viewers can walk through. One is not allowed to take pictures throughout the show; however, I took a few snaps just to give you guys a quick preview.
Another interesting part to the exhibition is the exit to the shop where there are many of Hirst's works for sale, smaller prints and editions all at more affordable (but still out of most of our price range) prices. It says two things to me first is that maybe there is a lot of truth in the rumors surrounding the value of his work and two, perhaps he wants a wider audience to his work, giving us all a chance to own a bit of art?
In Short:- 5/5 Great retrospective showing some of the most important pieces of art over the past 25 years.
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