The End of Looking at Paintings at Tate Modern (or the beginning?)

This week was the final session of The Looking at Paintings and we wound it up at Tate Modern

Sickert at Tate Modern -Ennui (1914)

bringing us into the 20th Century.


It was nice to be at Tate Modern it is (by it's nature) less stuffy than The National Gallery but there are (despite what are esteemed course leader Julia said) lots of traditional-ish paintings, we did see a sneaky sculpture but stayed away from the edgy performance stuff.


 It was nice too to keep seeing more connections we breezed past another Sickert and even another Meredith Frampton (which featured the same vase as we saw in 'Trial and Error' last week) This one was titles  -Portrait of a Young Woman.

One of the group takes a look at
'Portrait of a Young Woman (1935)'

Tate Modern is well stocked with Picasso and we saw both influences in his work  of Matisse and the fashionable (at the time) African masks.

Picasso showing his influences

We were able to see Picasso through his cubist journey  and we took a look to at a Lee Krasner painting - Gothic Landscape, it seems close to an abstract but is not quite.

  Krasner was the lover of Jack the Dripper/Jackson Pollock and was  was eclipsed by the larger than life Pollock.

Gothic Landscape 

The standout for me though was the surrealists and the skill (and importance)  of Dali was very clear

Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Dali (1937)

For sure I feel better equipped to look at Paintings (critically) and along with what I've been exposed to on other courses I'm beginning to get some feel for the flow of works in terms of 'isms' and chronology