Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Postmodern Art of the Nineties and Eighties (Tate)

John Riddy
Rome (Borghese)
1999
gelatin silver print
Tate, London

INVENTING THE PIANO

In the night he dreamed hammers, silver as song.
Under the pale cap of his hair with his eyes
shut tight against the Paduan dark he heard
in his sleep how the sound was made, how plink
became the shimmer of notes drawn out,
lasting and lasting, outlasting breath even, dying
finally on the air as the quiver of strings ceased.

It was a simple matter after that, the crafting
of what he had dreamed, action that would give voice
to what he had conceived. Soundboard of cypress,
a veneer of ebony, tiny springs made of hog's bristle –
gravicembalo col piano e forte – there he had it,
the loud and the soft, sound that could flow like oil.
He, Bartolommeo Cristofori, had made a new thing.
All of it opened before him. The small hammers flung
themselves at the strings. A low arm, a light wrist, fingers
close to the keys. A binding together of notes, legato,
and the vast possible, smooth graces, shaked graces,
arpeggios, turns, trills, the clear semitones. Speech
of the heart, he called it, piĆ¹ piano, instrument which can sing.

– Laurie O'Brien (1995)

Lisa Milroy
Room
1997
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Paul Winstanley
TV Room V
1997
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Paula Rego
Him
1996
etching
Tate, London

Sabine Moritz
Shower with Table
1993
oil and acrylic on canvas
Tate, London

from IN THE MUSEUM

Imagine a museum without art,
an impossible rotunda of granite glowing
bare and roseate under the tungsten beam.
Expertly designed for show and tell,
its archways and erotic surfaces
endlessly repeat around the night-
filled space. Making your way along each curve
of the charmed corridor, you would reach out
to feel the smoothness breathe under your hand,
just as your sharp heels, clacking smartly,
would play the music you were waiting for.

– Martha Hollander (1990)

Sabine Moritz
Two Washbasins
1993
oil and acrylic on canvas
Tate, London

David Hockney
Four Flowers in Still Life
1990
lithograph
Tate, London

Thomas Struth
Kyoko and Tomoharu Murakami, Tokyo, 1991
1991
colour photograph
Tate, London

Thomas Struth
The Shimada Family, Yamaguchi, Japan, 1986
1986
colour photograph
Tate, London

PENELOPE GARDENING

Soon I'll be finished weaving ivy
and the new vines
will be patterned and sufficient.
Arc will balance angle.
Green will bare
only in suggestion
the comely white
of painted steel.
Sunlight will wax the leaves
rainfall has cleansed.
My trellis will not need me
and I'll be freed
to obligation.
Soon –
unless tonight
another storm unties my bracings
and batters my poor branches
out of balance.
Unless tonight
another shoot
grows willful out of pattern.
Unless tonight
I dream
a whole new possibility
of order.

– Susan Fox (1987)

Terry Winters
Monkey Puzzle
1987
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Patrick Caulfield
Interior with a Picture
1985-86
acrylic on canvas
Tate, London

Steven Campbell
The Dangerous Early and Late Life of Lytton Strachey
1985
oil on canvas
Tate, London

Richard Hamilton
Lobby
1984
collotype and screenprint
Tate, London

Bill Woodrow
English Heritage - Humpty Fucking Dumpty
1987
wood, metal, paper
Tate, London

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)