Shades of Tate

摘要

In the 21st century, we consume art in highly commodified forms, and the most successful commodifications take place in ever more remarkable architectural containers which brand or imprint the experience of the art itself as part of Iconic Existence plc. Too often, artworks - apparently central to the gallery experience, but subservient to the artifice of visitor-production - become palimpsests, or a kind of faux provocative decor for styled engagements with art. At the Centre Pompidou, would we rather be in the Place Georges Pompidou, looking up at the building? And in the multiple hearts of darkness of Jean Nouvel's Musee du Quai Branly, shall we study the ethnographic exhibits, or recall the night river scenes in Apocalypse Now? The compellingly luscious sunset of Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in 2003 made the idea of looking at art, per se, evaporate. In the dense ochre light of the fever-dream in that vast and effectively invisible architectural space, past and future vanished, and the present became a profoundly mysterious plasma.