Anthills and space stations

The other day, my friends and I decided to go to the Tate Modern. It's an art museum that houses, yes, modern art. Mostly "modern" in the sense that anything after the second world war is classified as "modern," but also contemporary artwork as well.

It was ... interesting. I saw Monet's Waterlilies, which is much larger than I'd anticipated. People always comment that famous artwork is a lot smaller in real life than they'd imagined, but Waterlilies was vast. I always sort of had this image in my head of pale blue water with greens and carefully picked out lilypads in vague, shimmery brush strokes. However, the painting is large, this mass of blue greens and a lot of thin rust-colored veins in it. The effect is of lots of incredibly thin, incredibly fine fabric or tissue bunched over the painting. It's surprisingly delicate, surprisingly vague, surprisingly mellow. I learned that only part of the painting is usually depicted in reproductions - the lower left corner, rather than the whole thing, which is mostly empty and quiet.

There was an odd exhibit, which had two live parrots in a cage, sand and gravel on the floor, and a little hut that housed, not a goat or other animal as one would expect, but a television playing some obscure images. Modern art.

But perhaps my favorite exhibit was a film playing in a small black room. It was just a jungle floor, and ants. The artist had strewn a lot of large round confetti pieces on the ground near the ant colony, and they were climbing around, picking up the shiny, colorful bits of plastic and taking them back to the anthill. It was really fascinating to watch. Very ... quiet, and strange, and whimsical. The only noises were the faint clicking of the ants clattering over the undergrowth. It made me smile. It was so far-fetched, but it was really happening! Ants, curious, inspecting, claiming, marching around with these round flat discs of metallic gold and pink and green and blue and purple. Little moving pieces of color across the ground. Sometimes, one ant would struggle, dragging a piece of confetti over the ground, and then another would come along and help, and they'd scuttle backward with it, antennae waving in the air.

By the end of the day, I felt dazed. Going to a modern art museum is like having your senses assaulted moment by moment. You get a little loopy by the end of it. Stepping outside into the fresh air was intoxicating and invigorating. It was like a good night's rest, a hot shower, and a hearty breakfast, all in one deep breath of cool air.



I don't know if I've mentioned it, but a lot of the Tube stations are like space stations, all silver and curving and slick. I can't imagine why more independent directors don't use them as sci-fi film locations, because they're wonderful. Hilariously so. It's like being spacey is equivalent to being cutting edge. It's Mod all over again, but in a slightly less day-glo way.