Hi,

Firstly, I'm blogging again, which I haven't done since getting married in October last year, which is going fine thanks I likened it the other day to the difference between buying and renting, which says it all really...

So, with my lovely wife I went to the Tate Modern on Sunday. We walked over the Millennium Bridge on the way which was quite pretty, if a little chilly, and arrived to look at lots of nice manmade things.

What I often find fascinating at these things (tourist attractions, special events, gatherings etc) is the people and what brought them there rather than the actual thing itself. I'm rarely caught up in the thing itself, which I suppose is quite sad. Anyway, I had to question what this enormous amount of people was doing just walking through very plain rooms, slowly regarding painted bits of canvas nailed to the walls. Modern Art is cool, but do those images dreamed up by Ernst, Magritte and di Chirico et al back in the dawn, well morning, of the 20th Century have any meaning or worth today? At the time they were created, as some audio guide will undoubtedly tell you in the languages of the world's most affluent countries, these images were like nothing anybody had ever seen. Shocking even. For a while now we've been used to seeing abstract images that couldn't possibly be photographs - CGI landscapes in Star Wars, racetracks in Wipeout, most adverts... we're surrounded by them. So why would so many people flock to see the earliest examples of images which do not depict an object as seen in the real world? Why aren't they at home playing World of Warcraft or watching The Golden Compass? Maybe it's the espresso cafe with the great views of the Thames, or the excellent gift and book shop. I think it's more likely that people want to feel cultured and despite being unaware of the historical or political climate in which these images were created they insist on seeing everything, so that they can get back on the tube, better people than they were when they crawled out of the underground station earlier in the day.

The truth is that if these people had stayed in and read say Norbert Lynton's 'The Story of Modern Art' that afternoon (or even gone all the way and bought Gombrich's classic 'The Story of Art') they would have had a far richer and more deeply edifying experience of Modern Art. For instance, most of my life I've known Hopper's 'Nighthawks', which is hanging on the walls of many a trendy flat, coffee shop and poster outlet. But when I saw it in the flesh a few years ago in Chicago, just another painting on the wall, I gained no further insight into the painting itself (although admittedly I was like "wow, no way, the real thing"!).

Anyway, after perusing the exhibits we swung by the couches in the windows where you can submit hand-drawn pictures of knobs on postcards, which never seem to get featured on the 'what people are saying about Tate Modern' board, and left via the main turbine hall. Outside we saw Gok Wan selecting candidates for 'How to Look Good Naked', a pretty stark reminder of the culture in which we now live, and suddenly pined for the cultural safety of the plain rooms full of canvases.

W x