Romance in Venice & Paris? (Chapter 1 - Tate Modern)

I just returned from my first trip to Continental Europe in my life. Single and available, I visited the 2 famous romance Capitals of the World - Venice & Paris. Not alone I was though, but with my housemate Kaiyi, his girlfriend Adelyn, and their friend Hong Sheng. But this story doesnt start in either city, but London. To catch the Sunday morning flight to Venice Marco Polo, I travelled to London for the upteenth time this year on Saturday.

Together with Zhiquan, who is turning out a real good friend, I decided to visit Tate Modern on Saturday afternoon. That is where this story begins. My story of the Arts & Romance. Tate Modern contains mainly modern works of Art. Surrealism, Cubism, Pop Art the main streams exhibited, covering Spanish artists like Dali, Picasso but also many others. I have always found it difficult to appreciate the modern arts. They are not beautiful to the eye, or realistic. However, as I walked through the works of Art, I realised what Art is to these artists - a reflection of real life. The increasingly mechanized world of industralisation, the loss of touch of humanity, the increased detachment and enclosure, made them see beneath the surface of the world, onto a cold and bleak reality. Hence, the deformed human beings, seemingly ridiculous pictures of zebras in the city, strokes of red. This was not what they saw, but what they felt. To them, drawing pictures of beautiful people, or beautiful landscapes was more surreal than the cubes or deformed figures they drew. Society was simply not beautiful to them.

I went to another section where the artists used advertisements to form pictures, to illustrate the consumerism that had overwhelmed society. I recalled work I had done in my first year at University on the Frankfurt School and their criticism how consumerism was taking away the ability of people to appreciate and produce good quality Art.

I slowly began to appreciate the modern works of Art. Maybe all along since young, I too was engulfed in the consumeristic movement, and therefore, could never feel the disenchantment of the modern artisits, thus, I could not feel their works of art. But increasingly, I think I am slowly breaking away, realising that consumerism may not be a fixed certainty, but rather, just another phase in societal evolution.

The key themes I will leave you in this chapter are : 1) The Arts as a reflection of Society & the Times, not just portraits of beauty. 2) Consumerism is simply a phase in the evolution of Society, not an eternal reality.