Westminster, 2008I had a real day off yesterday going to Tate Britain and the Whitechapel Gallery, taking a number of 'Windows on the world' photos as I wandered around Westminster, and watching Elizabeth: The Golden Age on dvd in the evening.
With the periodic rehangs of the permanent collection, a trip to Tate Britain is always interesting. Yesterday I enjoyed seeing drawings by William Blake, Cecil Collins, David Jones, Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer in Drawn from the Collection where there were also achingly honest and painful autobiography from Tracey Emin and cinematic fragmented narratives chalked on blackboards by Tacita Dean. A David Jones was included along with a Gwen John in Ryan Gander's Art Now: The Way In Which It Landed, 1939 a strong Hans Feibusch was in the Asylum room, and there were several wonderful Graham Sutherland's the Art from Nature display.
At the Whitechapel I saw The Man in the Background by Lene Berg which consists of found home-movie images repeated with different narratives that gradually reveal a complex double life shaped by Cold War cultural politics. In this film Lene Berg seeks to raise a critical awareness of history as a source of knowledge, and the more or less given understanding, we have of history. Through creating puzzles of narratives, she questions how "official history" relates to subjectivity as well as how and on what grounds we can assess the consequences of art, literature, philosophy and research? Did the CIA use artists and intellectuals for their own good, or was it in fact, just as much the other way around? Was the CIA immoral or not? Is an artist under any obligation to be honest?
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The Band (featuring The Staple Singers) - The Weight.
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