the Tate Modern

Today I went exploring. I planned my route out to get to the Tate Modern museum near London bridge, but when I got to my tube station (warwick avenue) it was closed due to train vandalism (which reminds me, on one of the signs in the station last week it said one of the lines was closed due to “person under train” or something like that). Anyhow, a bobby nearby told me to take a bus to Baker Street (of Sherlock holmes fame) and then catch the tube from there. So I did, and it went fine. Then I made my way to the River Thames, where I took lots of cool pictures. Shortly after, I found the Tate Modern, and went inside. The museum was free, which was great. I went inside, saw a few of the galleries, and took some decent pictures. Apparently, you’re not allowed to take pictures, according to a man there with a walkie-talkie. At least I got in some good ones before I was told this. I saw some real Picasso paintings – one was weird like you’d expect when you hear the name Picasso, but the other one was a portrait which looked pretty realistic. Also, I saw some work by Andy Warhol which was pretty neat too. Some of the pieces were ridiculous, and I could have done a similar work myself. One of them was called “Grey” and it was just that. A large canvas painted uniformly grey. The write-ups next to some of the paintings made me roll my eyes, as they were sort of interpretations of what the painting is supposed to mean, etc. They had written a fairly in-depth writeup for “grey” which was unnecessary in my eyes. Other paintings and sculptures there were along the same lines as that, and are heralded as “great art”, which makes me wonder how some people are thought of as prodigies, and others as hacks, when all the pieces are so entirely subjective. Anyway, it was worth going, and it was pretty neat to see how they’d transformed an old power station into a 7 storey art museum. Oh also, I think I need to buy a tripod, because night shots are impossible to take on my camera due to underexposure – I only got a few to come out properly, and that’s because I set the camera down on the ledge on the riverside. I’ll look into that someday.

Oh one other thing – I am watching the x-files and the guy who plays Locke on Lost is in this one episode. And the girl who plays Amanda in Saw was in the last one I watched. Anyways, I saw Lost action figures advertised in one of the tube hallways, and I saw the Lost board game in a book store. Just thought I’d mention that.