Damien Hurst Tate Modern and Christian Louboutin Design Museum.
Whenever I visit Tate Modern I always walk over the Millennium Bridge, getting off the tube at St Pauls. You get a great view over the city and all those iconic landmarks. The Olympic rings suspended inside the span of Tower Bridge are spectacular, when you get closer you see how massive they are. At night lit they must look even more impressive. The Shard is finished from the outside, that is a day trip in itself, the observation platform and lift journey would be as good as any theme park ride. A must do, maybe in October, if its open. The usual huge crowds in around the south bank everywhere looked so alive and full of anticipation, you can almost feel the buzz of the impending games.
The picture I took of the Hurst anatomical figure does not really give you a sense of the scale of the figure, its huge, worth looking for a scaled image on the internet. I have a vauge memory from the audio guide that Hurst sold that piece to Saatchi for a million pounds, not the sort of thing you would put with your gnomes in the front garden. The themes that Hurst has explored in the exhibition of life and death hit you as soon as you walk in, one of his earliest pieces in the exhibition is a student photograph of him posing next to a severed human head from an anatomy class in Leeds. Would he have got away with it today? H and S and human rights would have knocked that on the head straight way. The next severed head you see is the cow being eaten by fly’s. Contained inside a hugh steel and perspex box it really grabs you. I asked one of the gallery attendance how often they have to replace the cow head, once a week, it gets eaten. The thing that I found most interesting was the reaction of the public, if his intention is to shock and disturb people he has achieved what he set out to do. The young children, there were many didn’t seem to mind. Would I have taken my children, maybe not. It was morbidly entertaining watching the insectorcutor zapping the flies as the strayed onto the vu lights.
The shark, sheep and cows young and old chopped and variously preserved have an impact of their own. Suspended in time the moment they met their end, the cow looks like its still forcing out a last moo, or w t f. I had no idea about the scale of the pieces, they must weigh literally tonnes. How they move them around I have no idea, where are they kept when not on display, who owns them, are they really art, is it clever or are they just shocking? I still don’t know. But it was definitely worth going to see. The butterfly’s room was lovely. As you can see from the slides one of them was very attached to me. The gallery staff gamely try stopping people taking pictures and I got a serious wigging even though I told the lady ‘but I’m taking pictures of myself’, does the butterfly belong to DH? or the Tate? Can you not take a picture of yourself standing in a gallery? Why can’t you photograph the art?
I felt seriously outnumbers at the Christian Louboutin, I am male. Queueing down the street this is still a real crowd pulling exhibition and one that woman almost obsessively engage with. I really like female shoes especially the taller and more exotic types but Louboutin takes it to a whole new level. The fetish section of the exhibition was where most of the men seemed to have gravitated to, my wife pointed this out to me. I was too engaged in the work to notice. Louboutin takes making shoes to a whole new level. Red soles and rapier like stilettos are his trade marks. Most of the shoes in the exhibition would be very difficult to walk in and only fit a size 4, but they are things of exquisite beauty in their own right. Exploring themes from his childhood and in a brief period as a landscape gardener he does things with materials that are fabulous. I have never seen a pair of knee length boots made out if palm tree bark. He loves his studs and spikes, many steel stilettos and steel toes caps. Some shoes you simple could not stand up in as the heel is longer than the sole of the shoe, perhaps you are supposed to just lounge around and look beautiful in them? To prove the point two of the beautiful people who hang around outside the exhibition walked past wearing ‘the shoes’, recognisable for the highest of heels and red soles. So it can be done. The full back tattoo of an angle set off the ensemble beautifully, definitely not for mere mortals and everyday wear. Art and craftsmanship in harmony this exhibition is wonderful.
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