Tate Modern

TATE MODERN TATE MODERN Tate Modern is Britain's new national museum of modern art. Housed in the former Bankside Power Station, Tate Modern displays the Tate collection of international modern art from 1900 to the present day, including major works by Dalì, Picasso, Matisse, Rothko and Warhol as well as contemporary work by artists such as Gilbert & George, Susan Hiller, and Sam Taylor-Wood. Tate Modern stands at the heart of London, opposite St Paul's Cathedral. The building has been converted by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, who have trasformed it while respecting the integrity of the original design. A new two-storey glass structure or lightbeam spanning the length of the roof provides natural light into the galleries on the top floors and houses a stunning cafè offering outstanding views across London. The Swiss Light, designed by Michael Craig Martin in collaboration with architects Herzog & de Meuron, illuminates the top of Tate Modern's chimney. A lightweight luminous roof, fabricated from translucent panels, at night this beacon is a unique addition to the London skyline. Tate Modern shows the Tate collection of modern art in a completely new way. Instead of the traditional chronological order, Collection 2001 is arranged in four groups, each of which spans the century. The displays show how landscape , still life, the nude and history painting have survived and been trasformed during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The themes cut across movements and disciplines, linking historic works with contemporary, and combining painting and sculpture with film, video and photography. They reveal how traditions have been confronted, rejected and extended by artists from the beginning of the century onwards. Each theme is arranged in a suite of galleries, and could make a complete visit on its own. Landscape is usually seen as an image of the natural or urban environment, however it now embraces artists' own physical experience of the world. Many artists have worked with material of landscapeitself and brought it into the gallery, while some have used abstract shapes and colours to convey the sensations of nature. Highlights include rooms dedicated to Mark Rothko, Ben Nicholson and Joseph Beuys and key works such as Claude Monet's Water-Lilies, displayed alongside Richard Long's Red Slate Circle. Over the last hundred years, still life has been the focus of many of the most radical innovations in art. Cubism re-presented object as fragmented, abstract forms, while other artists explored the way object were produced and consumed in a new technological age. The works in these galleries trace alternative ways of engaging with everyday things, from the readymades of Marcel Duchampto Fischli deceptive simulation of the contests of a whole room, which they created for Tate Modern. Throughout the twentieth century artists have remained preoccupied by the human figure and human themes. Picasso and Henri Matisse were amoung the arti