Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Hard to tell

A definite mark of shame for a museum would be the improper displaying of an art piece. Of course, with most art, it's often very easy to determine the proper setting for it. Some pieces enter into the realm of "confusing", making it more difficult for the curator to determine the intention. That's a time when the museums and art historians can look for clues within the piece itself showing how it was meant to be displayed.

This is all well and good, provided that you aren't looking at the works of Mark Rothko being displayed at the Tate Modern in London. See, Rothko was a modern artist, which meant that his pieces could also theoretically have been painted by a five-year-old with some good color theory. And, well, it seems that the Tate has been hanging some of his pieces the wrong way.

One of the pieces in question is a dark canvas, with two bars painted on it in a contrasting color. Currently, the bars are vertical, but it seems as though the proper way to hang the painting would be with the bars running horizontal. We know, it's tragic. Besides, as any fool could easily see, the horizontal bars carry deep meaning about the separation between man and the divine, while the vertical bars are little better than a knock-knock joke.

Alright, honestly, we could see how the mistake was made. And sure, Rothko's signature could have been an indication, but, as the article itself even says, the artist seems to have changed his mind about the intended orientation while creating the work. And again, this is modern art we're talking about. It's not like they weren't able to notice a church being stolen, one brick at a time.

That's been happening in Russia.

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