Tate Modern

After spending a couple of weeks here, and being constantly bombarded with the classical history of the city, from the palaces, to the museums, to the thousands of sculptures and portraits of old royal people, to the old buildings, I finally got a dose of the art I really like: modern! Not that the old stuff isn't great for its history, but I can only take so much until all the names and places and battles and monarchs all blur together.

So I went to the Tate Modern Gallery, which is one of the best modern art galleries in the world! Besides getting to experience first hand a whole slew of artwork I had studied for months back at school, I also got to experience the artwork of one of my most favorite artists, Joseph Beuys. I took two entire classes devoted to the work he does back at UM, so to say I was excited doesn't really cover it. Beuys was a modern German artist, sculptor, teacher, art critic of some sort, who really just blurred the boundaries between art and performance. He was particularly known for his "aktion" pieces, which are somewhat like "happenings" if anyone reading this knows about those, it's where an artist uses performance as the art, in their creation of art. It's all very theoretical and metaphorical. Anyway, Beuys was an absolute genius slash crazy person, and created all these awesome sculptures and "aktions" that had to do with very specific, energy infused materials, as he would call them, such as fat (Fett), honey (Honig), felt (Filz) and rabbits (Hasen), to name a few. Beuys went through many different stages to his art, but it was always very spiritual in a sense because of the meanings he wanted to express through it. 

I got to see some of the "leftovers" of the "aktions", or in other words, the scraps that remained from his "aktion" pieces that no longer hold the same energy they once did. They are kind of like the fossils of the life his art once had when he was alive. Anyways, here are some cool pics! 

I know they don't make much sense here, but I can explain them later when I come home! :) 

-xox-