London Day Three

Fish and Chips!

The London Eye at Night

Big Ben

Westminister Abbey

London Day Three- Tuesday March 30^th 2010

Today was a very long day, but perhaps my favorite thing that we did today was visit the Tate Modern Art Museum. After we had breakfast and all that jazz, we went to Tate first, which I enjoyed very much.

Tate Modern

Tate Modern is the national gallery of international modern and contemporary art from 1900. The free galleries, which we went to, were on two levels. The first level was all about ‘Material Gestures’- a wing featuring post-war European and American painting and sculpture. Some of the artwork included: Claude Monet and Expressionism, Cy Twombly, Victor Pasmore, Gerhard Richter, Viennese Actionism, Expressionism, Material Gestures Exhibition, and Francis Bacon and Anish Kapoor. The next level, titled ‘Energy and Process’, explored the radical 1970s art movement Arte Povera. Works by Richard Serra, Kasimir Malevich, Ana Medieta, Marisa Merz, Anselm Kiefer, Yvonne Rainer, Jannis Kounellis, Peter Fischli, and David Weiss were featured here, focusing on themes such as fabric and fabrication and landscape and action. All of the art was very modern- and anyone studying modern art can tell you that some of the topics can be quite radical or quite extreme. Everything from a simple brush stoke on a canvas to splashes of different colors of paint on an entire canvas to videos of naked women covering themselves in blood and rolling around in feathers. I found this museum to be very similar to the Pompidou museum in Paris. Both of which are modern art museums exploring the same themes. The main exhibition going on until May was ‘Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World’, a theme and artist I am very interested in. Piet Mondrian is my favorite contemporary artist, famous for his depiction of the three primary colors in a simple geometric sequence. Tommy and I even made our own Mondrian painting last semester for our apartment. I would have loved to pay the 10 pounds to see the exhibition but we didn’t have enough time in the day. I did however buy an architecture book called ‘Making Public Buildings’- a book about the design process and how 10 projects developed from initial thought and site to final concept and design, and then eventually construction and final result. The book even goes into detail by including interviews with the architect and some of his/her first sketches. I thought the book would help me a lot with the design process… so after spending almost an hour in the bookstore and going through almost every architecture book there, I bought it!

St. Paul’s Cathedral

We stopped by St. Paul’s Cathedral after going to Tate Modern, but we didn’t go inside because it was something around 15 pounds to get in. As Melanie and Justen rested, I decided to walk around the Cathedral and explore a business district along the side streets of the Cathedral. It was a really cool experience because I happened to be there during the lunch break, so it seems like every British businessman was outside eating or talking in the plaza, or in a restaurant eating with their fellow employees. They were all dressed up, suit and tie, and looked very professional. The architecture is what caught my eye- the buildings were all contemporary, with every intention to satisfy a hard-working business. The facades were mostly glass, and the public spaces were spaced out very efficiently. It was at this moment that I pictured myself being one of them- with a suitcase and a suit on, in the midst of an architectural project, talking to colleagues and employers, eating a sandwich in the middle of the day. It could happen, and I could live in London for the rest of my life.

St. Paul’s Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the city, and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The present building dates from the 17^th century and was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It is generally reckoned to be London’s fifth St. Paul’s Cathedral, all having built on the same site since 604 AD. The cathedral is one of London’s most famous and most recognizable sights. At 365 feet high, it was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1962, and its dome is also amongst the highest in the world, St. Peters Basilica in Rome being higher.

London Tower Bridge

So Justen and I decided to pay the 5 pound student fee to go up the London Tower Bridge, which was well worth it. We skipped out on going into the Tower of London because the line was too long and it was way too expensive. Plus, by this point, it was quite miserable outside- it had been rainy and windy all day. Honestly, every once and a while I felt the need to just go back to the hostel and kick it- which is a feeling I usually never get on trips.

The Tower Bridge is a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London, England, over the River Thames. It is quite close to the Tower of London, which gives it its name. It has become an iconic symbol of London. The bridge consists of two towers which are tied together at the upper level by means of two horizontal walkways which are designed to withstand the horizontal forces blah blah blah. The bascule pivots and operating machinery are housed in the base of each tower- which we got the chance to go down and see. We saw all the operating equipment and machinery below, which was really cool. The bridge used to be powered by steam, and we got to see all the furnaces and stuff below that they used to use.

After we left the Tower Bridge Justen and I walked around for a little bit, and of course we lost Melanie, so we hopped on a metro and headed back to the hostel. On our last night in London, on what I would consider to be one of the greatest places in the world, Justen and I went out to Piccadilly Circus again. We got lost in the city for about 3 hours, but it was fine with us, because we saw a lot of places we haven’t been to yet. We saw a lot of cool modern Architecture and skyscrapers. In admiration of the city, we got lost in its streets and found ourselves at the cities edge by the time we wanted to go back to the hostel. So we turned around and headed back in the other direction. We were walking around for a while before we finally got back.