Roaring Visions: An Essay By CMAT
A few months ago, I visited the Tate Modern on one of my rare days off to see the immersive Yayoi Kusama exhibition. This show is wildly popular, and hard to get into, so I bought a Tate membership for the occasion and then just sweet-talked the box office lady until she let me have a late slot.
I love my Tate membership you know — I’ve gotten a lot of use out of it through the members’ cafe, where I like to sit at the window, gaze at St. Paul’s, savour a deliciously bougie Autumnal soup, and eavesdrop on the conversations of elderly people. (That probably sounds a little unhinged, but as a touring musician, I don’t tend to come into contact with elderly people that much anymore, and I really miss my grandparents who I lived with for six years.)
In Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms — the exhibition still running until at least April 2024 — there are two immersive experience rooms. The first is Chandelier Of Grief, a small hexagonal shaped room showcasing a giant mirrored chandelier in a room covered in mirrors. The second is the famous Infinity Mirrored Room which, plainly, is a box room filled with water, fairy lights and indeed, more mirrors, which has a little path running through it.
As I stood in the queue to enter the first of Kusama’s mirror rooms I considered how places like the Tate attract people with two distinct intentions: 1) People looking for a cheap and welcoming way to spend their abundance of free time in the company of other people — such as retirees, and young parents with babies who are still off work. 2) People, like me, who are looking to spend their tiny amount of free time in a place where you can feel better than everyone else for doing so. Artists, teenagers, middle-aged friends meeting up for brunch, that kind of thing. People who like to outdo each other through volume of books read, or number of museums set foot in. You will be able to identify this crowd because they will project their voice just enough to ensure that everyone in a half mile radius knows they attended a free lecture on the importance of brushstrokes and girth in the work of Cezanne. (Reader, that was me.)
Eventually, myself and a group of six got to the top of the queue for Chandelier Of Grief. A young gallerist explained all of the health and safety precautions relating to our visit: “Don’t press on the glass…if you feel dizzy look at the floor…knock on the door if you begin to panic…” After he had finished, he asked if any of us had any questions. There was a young woman in front of me, about 19-years-old, all high blonde pony, cropped bomber jacket, big gold hoops-ing, who was linking arms with her boyfriend. She slinked her arm out of his to raise it up, to ask a question.
“Yeah, which one is better?” “What?” replied the young gallerist.
“There’s two rooms, isn’t there? And the queues are dead long for both. So I just wanted to ask which one is better.”
In what I have to say was an incredibly annoying and condescending tone, the gallerist rebutted: “Well, I think what you might mean to be asking is which of the two pieces is more Instagrammable and to that I would say the second room.
“That’s not what I asked actually. I asked you which one is better. So, like, which one is better?”
“Ehh, I don’t know how to answer that. Art is subjective. Just see both and you can decide yourself.”
“Ok. Thanks.”
She re-linked her boyfriend as we entered the room. I then took stock of her very non-descript boyfriend; you know the one we all had when we were 19? He leaned in to quietly scold her.
“Why would you ask that man such a stupid question? That was so embarrassing.”
“I don’t think it was a stupid question.” By this point she was my hero. “He works in a gallery, in this room. Am I not allowed to ask him a question? Why doesn’t he know which one is better? I think he was rude actually.”
When we were ushered out of the chandelier room, I was forced to stop eavesdropping, as following them around a space any larger than an immersive installation might have resulted in an arrest. But for the rest of my visit, I couldn’t stop thinking about how she was right.
People like me, or the gallerist, have worked art appreciation into the fabric of our personalities, and identities. This forensic level of art consumption becomes so overly-considered, and academized, that it has rendered us unable to enjoy it. Why could he not just say which one was better? It really should be that simple after all — we should just be able to look at something, and identify if it makes us feel good, or bad, and therefore which one makes us feel better, or worse.
She really changed me that day. Simplifying everything down to the formula of which one is ‘better’ has really made me hone in on what my taste actually is, even when it feels nonsensical, because enjoyment is enough to justify any piece’s brilliance. Nora Ephron is better. Jedward is better. John Singer Sargeant is better. Marian Keyes is better. Beyoncé is better. Joan Didion is DEFINITELY better.
If you can go to the Kusama exhibition in the Tate Modern, you absolutely should go. The second room is better.
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As featured in Issue 126 of CLASH.
Words: CMAT
Photo Credit: Sarah Doyle
