Volume 47, Number 12 · July 20, 2000
London's New Left Bank
By James Fenton
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE
Tate Modern: The Handbook
edited by Iwona Blazwick, by Simon Wilson
University of California Press, 245 pp., $29.95 (paper)
Representing Britain 1500-2000: 100 Works from Tate Collections
by Martin Myrone
London: Tate Publishing, 144 pp., £9.99 (paper)
The other morning, I stood on the bank of the Thames looking across the river at an unfamiliar part of London, a cityscape not unlike an American downtown—the reclaimed dockland of Canary Wharf. Behind me in the sunlight stood the vast Millennium Dome, open and somewhat empty, though the morning was well advanced. I had already visited several of its 'themed zones.' I had been alone in the Work Zone, alone in the Learning Zone and the Faith Zone and the Prayer Room. The Mind Zone and the Body Zone (where spermatozoa dance on film through an overhead vagina) had been sparsely populated, although the Play Zone was already attracting a decent crowd. Now I was alone again, and enjoying my unexpected solitude. When a major exhibition, or 'Experience' of this kind, proves something of a flop, it can be stressful for the lone visitor to cope with the desperate jollity of the professional welcomers—men and women dressed up in period clothes, with period senses of humor to match.
Review, 4451 words
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