'Century City':
Cultural Explosions in the Tate Modern
For over a century modern art has gained a foothold in almost every region of the world. To some people in the field, modern art started with 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon', painted by Pablo Picasso in 1907. Others argue that modern art began with Edouard Manet's 'Olympia', completed in 1863. The Tate Gallery of Modern Art in London conceives the birth of modern as being directly related not to an artwork, but to the energy produced by a wide variety of modern metropoles which have sprung up all over the world since the beginning of the twentieth century. Organized as one of the first major temporary exhibitions to be held at Tate Modern, 'Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis' examines key moments of cultural creativity in nine great cities around the world.
* By THOMAS J. BERGHUIS
Before the Tate Modern's official opening on 11 May 2000, the new director of the museum, Lars Nittve, expressed his personal view on the future role this museum should have in the world of modern art. Nittve believes the museum would have to re-invent its role in the London metropolis. This re-invention has clearly begun with the opening of the 'Century City' exhibition. A total of nine cities are featured in the exhibition, each connected to a specific period in the twentieth century: Paris (1905-1915), Vienna (1908-1918), Moscow (1916-1930), Rio de Janeiro (1955-1969), Lagos (1955-1970), New York (1969-1974), Tokyo (1967-1973), Bombay/Mumbai (1992-2001), and London (1990-2001). Specialist curators for each of the regions have been invited to design the contents for each of the cities. Representing the two Asian cities at the exhibition are the New York based Dr Reiko Tomii for Tokyo and Geeta Kapur for Bombay/Mumbai. Kapur, who lives and works in New Delhi, has also incorporated the Bombay-based journalist Ashish Rajadhyaksha as associate curator and specialist for Indian cinema, Marathi theatre, and literature.
The works represented are not limited to visual pieces, but also include examples of architecture, cinema, dance, fashion, music, and theatre, so that each of the sections shows how at certain periods through the twentieth century the energy of the modern metropolis peaked to produce a 'cultural explosion' in which all these artistic forms flourished in a dynamic and radical interchange. Therefore, at a specific point in time these cities became transnational spaces, presenting a global perspective in the arts.
This is not the first time that modern art has been associated with the metropolis as a point of departure for presenting art in a global perspective. In 1991, at the Martin-Grophius-Bau in Berlin, an exhibition was organized by Christos M. Joachimides and Norman Rosenthal with the title 'Metropolis'. At the exhibition, artists coming from cities all over the world showed their work. However, whereas the ideas behind the 'Metropolis' exhibition seem mainly to have sprung from the opening-up of many former Eastern European countries at that time, the 'Century City' exhibition clearly aims to help the Tate Modern re-invent its position in the London metropolis. This can also be seen from the fact that alongside Bombay/Mumbai, London has been chosen to represent the metropolis of 'cultural explosion' in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first year of the new millennium. Perhaps this is the reason that the title of the exhibition reads 'Century City' and not 'Century Cities', because with the opening of Tate Modern, London has become this century's 'Century City'. *
The exhibition 'Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis' will run from 1 February to 29 April 2001, at the Turbine Hall and Level 4 of Tate Modern at Bankside, London.
Piece', Yoko Ono (1964) Sebastian Lopez is director of The Gate Foundation, Amsterdam. He is also currently a guest lecturer at the Department of Art History, Leiden University, the Netherlands
E-mail: info@gatefoundation.nl