Art

Yesterday my parents and I went to the Tate Modern in London. It is a fantastic building and most of the artwork is amazing. I really like modern art - especially art with bright colours. I don't really like boring art and going round boring art galleries can be horribly tedious. In an art gallery I went to in Venice, almost every other painting was of Jesus or Mary or some other religious person. And all the colours were really dull and dismal, like brown and grey and black. Even the reds and yellows were quite dark and faded. So I didn't like that.

But the Tate Modern is full of bright, bold modern art - the kind I do like! When we went round yesterday, I saw loads of stuff that was brilliant. I particularly liked the Pop Art section. We studied Andy Warhol's stuff when I was in year 4 and even then I loved the colours and style of painting. There was also a room of Russian propaganda. There were loads of posters of Stalin and Lenin (I recognised Lenin because I drew him in my English book last year - I was bored) There was also a huge amount of photography which was nice. Some of the pictures were absolutely mind-blowing! A lot of the sculptures were great, such as a large black felt thing that had squiggly bits coming off it. But there were a few which I really didn't like.

One piece of 'art' was an ordinary mirror, supposedly encouraging you to see yourself in a different way. The 'artist' who made that is probably making thousands from buying a cheap mirror and making up a nice, thought-provoking story to get it into the Tate Modern. That can't be real art! And some of the paintings - I could have done them when I was in nursery! There was one which was just a canvas painted white. On the little description next to it said that it was meant to make you think about how even things that are difficult to see are always present whether you want to see them or not. Or some rubbish like that. These pieces really annoyed me.

I don’t like art that looks like it took 5 minutes to make. Some modern artists are making thousands from ideas that are vaguely linked to the actual piece of art. It's not fair on hard-working artists who spend a lot of time on their work and give it a huge amount of care and attention. It seems that nowadays, some artists just make something easy and come up with a complicated meaning to explain it afterwards. Art shouldn't need words to explain itself. It should express itself in the actual artwork, not the hidden meaning.


Addendum (never thought I'd use that word!)

I don't actually know much about art. I just have very strong opinions about things that I don't think are fair. If in an art lesson, I presented a mirror with a description next to it saying was showing the 'real you', I would be told not to be so lazy. I don't see how people are making thousands of pounds from doing the same thing! However, that is just my opinion and I'm sure lots of people love mirrors. But I don't think it's art. But then I don't know anything about art. So really I shouldn't have an opinion. But I do. And you shouldn't have to know about art to have an opinion of certain paintings and sculptures. But again, that's just my opinion.

Anyway, this addendum is going on for too long so I will stop now. Bye bye.