a   t a s t e   o f   a r t

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by Andrew Hodges



You are now at the climax of our tour of central London, 27 July 2000: the Tate Modern gallery of ART. First we enter the large Turbine Hall. We see:

Peter explains to me that you must walk up the stairs and reflect in the mirrors at the top.

Art makes you think — that is the point of the Tate Modern.

The theme of the Tate Modern is: INTELLIGENCE.

I see.


art and science

The Tate Modern is in the building which was formerly the Bankside electricity generating station. It used to hold the computer control centre for the National Grid.

In July 1969 I was right here, doing a summer job as a maths student, learning Fortran.


old moon		It was at the time of the first moon landing.
In those days I thought that the future lay in science and maths. (In 1969 we might have called these installations a form of Bourgeois Art!) But the enormous attention given to these objects shows how wrong I was. Image is all.

These objects, which are vaguely like the lunar landers, give me the impression of an effort to convey the superficial images of twentieth century science and technology, without having any idea of what the substance or method of science is actually all about.


art and text

 We look at an exhibition of empty boxes, with bits of mirrors and coloured surfaces. There are captions with explanations like this:

My perceptions:
  • The language of the sculptures seems to depend a lot on the grandiloquent language of the caption texts.

  • Most of the captions would be just as true if totally reversed. For instance, the objects could equally truly and equally impressively be said to be 'absolutely static, separate and passive,' rather than 'setting in motion a dynamic interplay.'

  • I wonder whether anyone involved in this could give any account of 'the elemental forces of the physical world' which keeps up with Galileo, let alone Newton, Maxwell, or Einstein.

art and music

 From a neighbouring room comes the sound of Grieg's Morning. This, it turns out, accompanies Gilbert and George's video of themselves drinking gin. Superimposed we hear the equally familiar sound of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.

This insensitive and unimaginative robbing of the musical tradition leads us to the Nude and Body Zone.


art and sex

Tit for Tate

 The captions explain to us that in ART, nude means a FEMALE nude. But since those moon-landing days feminism has made such an impact that there are some MALE nudes.
so modern!
new moon
We watch a grainy video loop of a naked white man dancing to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.He has a longish but rather thin cock.

This groundbreaking achievement shows it is possible for a woman artist to photograph a man.

We see a film of naked black men pretending to fight.

The caption explains that this is 'a challenging installation, raising sensitive issues of homoeroticism.'

You wouldn't see anything like this in Ibiza, of course.

SMart ART!

 We see short videos of men in comic masks telling stories which, the caption explains, are true. One man explains how a woman in his office had seduced him and photographed him while he was wearing her knickers etc. etc. and then using these photographs had blackmailed him into further compromising photographs... Furthermore, his telling this story to the artist's video camera is itself something he is compelled by her to do...

We note that either the 'reality' claimed in the caption is a fraud, or else this installation is a collusion in a crime: blackmail.

On a practical note: this installation gives a good lesson to the young lads thronging the gallery. If they go in for S and M it is safer to stick to men.



ceci n'est pas un pont
ceci n'est pas une image
This is the view from the café. I create this installation, entitled MUGS.

It's natural to compare


c'est vraiment un pissoir

We piss-artists set in motion a dynamic interaction between our bodies, the elemental forces of the physical world, and this three-dimensional work of art.

We uninstall ourselves.



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