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Pop Life and John Baldessari and Miroslaw Balka at Tate Modern: the crisis in curating

From:     art reviews London
Category: Art
Date:     02 December 2009
Time:     07:51 AM

Review:

What's wrong with Tate Modern? 
The curators have lost the plot. Every single turbine hall show is a sensation experience, walk into a 
black box, slide, see the light, as though the only kind of experience a mass art audience can enjoy is 
some theme park phenomenon. It is deeply insulting to the public. 

Upstairs we have pop life, one of the most pathetic shows of recent times. Art as decoration. Room 
after room of art symbolizing art, with garish poppy wall paper, emptied out art, with the occassional 
pseudo political piece of sex art to liven up the bourgeoisie. The art REPRESENTS art, but does not 
allow one moment of real experience or enjoyment. 

Baldessari is a trumped up mediocre "conceptual" artist, the amusing element being text explaining 
text pieces about text.  Another sort of quieter nothingness.  

All three shows indicate a crisis for The Tate's Curators, forced to churn out shows put together with 
the flimsiest of material, unsure of what is worthwhile about art, and patronising the public with silly 
illusions masquarading as art.


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