Tate Modern
The other day our group had the opportunity to visit the Tate Modern Art Museum–it was aight. I understand why some people are really against modern art but some of it was pretty cool. I was a fool who did not take any photos of the art plaques so I do not remember what a lot of the pieces were called but the one I could talk about the most is called “Man With a Newspaper.” this painting depicts four panels one with a man in a room with a newspaper and three of the same room but empty. The painting is supposed to mimic how 3-D images are made but to me, it just looks like a four-panel comic of a guy who is gone a long time. I like comics and the depiction of time in comics is something I really like to analyze so this piece really made me look into it. The “it is a comic of a man who is gone a long time” route has some flaws because the clouds in the background never move and the shadows do not shift and the plaque said it was wrong but whatever, I like comics and I like this painting.
Another painting I really liked was called “Eluhim.” I liked it because it reminded me of the art of Dave McKean who did all of the cover art for the Sandman comics and much like the Sandman comics, this piece was about Gods and the unconscious mind. The colors are very dark and the creatures in the painting are strange and spooky so I really liked it.
The gift shop of the Tate Modern let us draw on little paper circles and put them on the wall which was cool and all but they did not have anything Paddington related so 1/10 gift shop.
The globe.
I loved going to Shakespeare’s Globe. A few semesters ago I ordered a DVD of a production of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus that was put on at the Globe and I absolutely love that show so as soon as I walked in the theater I was freaking out. The whole place is so beautiful and I took so many photos of heaven (the canopy). I wish so deeply that I got up and stood with the groundlings because it looked like so much fun–I’ll do it for the next one even if I do it alone.
I think that the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that we saw was very good and certainly was one of my favorite shows we have seen on this trip (it would be my favorite but I just got out of Benjamin Button the Musical and that went hard). I think that the acting and directing were incredible. Each actor gave a hundred and ten percent to their role and the casting was really interesting. This production swapped a lot of the genders around and the actress who played Hermia had dwarfism so when Lysander called her “Dwarf” a hush swept the crowd. The people who sat behind me did not care for the gay casting of Nick Bottom and they made it very clear.
Now that being said–I hated the costumes for this play. The costume for Puck in particular because it was just a camo morph suit with sticks on some of it.
Artistic recreation:
A lot of the actors had on modern shoes which was very distracting and ruined my immersion. Some people had on docs and others had just regular tennis shoes that were spray painted.
Theatre in London U of A 