rediscovering myself at the art gallery

how a trip to the tate modern refilled my cup and taught me to be kinder to myself

I went to the Tate Modern art gallery the other week with a friend. I nearly substituted it for one of those friend errand dates because I had been reading so much online about how every meet-up doesn’t have to be intricately planned with activities and hour-by-hour schedules. I had things to buy, things to post and things to pick up so I thought her tagging along would be nice.

Then it started to pour with rain, the angry September kind that lets you know in full force that summer is over. We switched back to a day—inside—at the Tate Modern. And in the end, I was so glad.

Everyone talks about the power of art, how it can change you, teach you things about yourself, about life in general, and I’ve never disputed this but it was starting to sound a little too good to be true. Can I really look at a painting or a photograph and be moved from within? Can I see something that no matter how “basic” or plain it is, feel something I can’t put into words? I think it had just been a very long time since I had walked around an art gallery, especially with a friend. A very knowledgeable friend at that.

One of the first rooms we entered was very plain. My eyes were immediately drawn to a canvas with only thick peach and white-coloured horizontal stripes. Then there was another but they were blue (if I remember correctly) and another minimalist-looking canvas on another wall. They almost blended in with the white walls of the building itself. I thought, okay, these are… nice. And then we walked towards what appeared to be the main event, a large set of frames depicting different types of grids. Just plain white paper and grey lines with different degrees of separation between them. Some had thick white spaces between, some thinner. Some, the edges of the grid were on display, as if unfinished tables, others, finished tables. We looked at it, we looked at each other and mentally rolled our eyes. Right, one of these artists is it? We said without moving our lips.

But we seemed to linger. There were so many grids to look at, the next natural question we came to was: Which one is your favourite?

I went straight to the grid that appeared most like the inside of a lined notebook, the one with closely spaced lines, untouched and ready to be painted with ink. My friend agreed but said she preferred the ones with a bit more space between the lines. I could see her point, a little less grating to look at perhaps. Then we headed to the one we disliked the most; a grid that appeared unfinished, the ends of the lines having no casings on the side. Too aggressive. It looks spiky. I don’t like that one. Next, one that appeared like a standard table with two columns. Nice spacings for each rectangle. The one beside it too thick, the one beside that one too dense.

We stood there for probably a good 15 minutes discussing how each grid made us feel and how they looked arranged altogether like this. I came to love it. I even took a picture with it and envisioned it on a wall somewhere in my big, big house that I would need to be able to afford something like this and fit in my home. It ended up being one of my favourites from the entire day.

Later, we stared at a Magritte, a four-quadrant painting of what looked like the corner of a living room, one quadrant with a man sitting at the table, the other three looking as if he had wandered into another room, somewhere outside of the painting. 

We joked that it might be a spot the difference, love a good spot the difference, and to our wonderful surprise, it was. I like how an image laid out in this specific format will automatically transport you back to your childhood, to the many minutes spent staring at pictures arranged just like this, and here I am, at 27, doing it still. I noticed the framed picture on the wall in the painting looked slightly different from the others but I just thought it was the light. Then a woman materialised out of nowhere beside my friend asking us what we thought of the painting, like a friendly host of children’s TV show. Oh, we were just wondering if it was a spot the difference, ha! And she replied, well, look closer, maybe there are some differences in each panel. She gave us a minute to dart our eyes across all four rectangles, and the painting started to tell a much different story. Oh yes, the clouds in the sky are different in each panel. And the curtain holdbacks are slightly different colours. Then she added, and the roses in the vase are different too. 

She continued to talk to us about how clever the surrealists were and her love for art oozed from her as she spoke. She kept stepping away as if to end the conversation but returned again to add one more thing. Her enthusiasm was scented, sweet like honey. She left a scent of it behind when she left.

My friend was able to tell me about some of the artists. She was very knowledgeable. At times it made me feel inadequate. I pride myself on being “artsy” but when it comes down to it, I probably can’t talk for ten minutes about a singular artist or art movement. Of course, my friend had no idea any of this was going on in my head. But she’s so great because when I would throw out my interpretations—the installation of a tower of radios looked to be getting more modernised as it grew taller and the interception of archaic machinery near the top could indicate how old things come back into fashion, the framed picture I spotted in the Magritte, the subtle repetition in the Dali—she wouldn’t shut me down or offer a different perspective that probably made more sense. She’d say how interesting it was or how amazed she was that’d I’d come up with that or noticed that other thing. Oh wow, you’re right! Oh, I can see it now! This was genuine. It made me feel warm. I decided to concentrate on the fact that we have our strengths and that one is no better than the other, just unique to us and how our brains work. Art taught me this about myself.

We spent the rest of the day throwing our emotions at all different types of art like paintballs—sculptures, photographs, pieces of cloth pinned to the wall by pushpins, a hanging phallus…that one’s not for me—hoping to leave something of ourselves there with the art. I tried not to take too many photos and regretted not having personal versions on my phone of some of them when I got home. Digital minimalism is tricky.

Maybe it was the right day, maybe it was the right person, maybe it was the right art gallery, but I had forgotten how rewarding and satiating it is to spend a day looking at art. I mustn’t leave it so long to do it again.

all the arts i saw and me (2024)

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Hello all! As promised, here is my reflection on a recent trip to the Tate Modern art gallery. I had such a good time, I’m still thinking about it. Also what are we thinking about my collage skills, have they improved at all, probably not :) But they’re so fun I’ll never stop!

Tell me what you think about during trips to art galleries. Are you a little too quick to judge like my friend and I were? Are you the art expert friend? Are you just happy to be there?

Also very unrelated but I recently opened a crafts store where I’m selling some of the crochet things I make. If your books are looking a little chilly as autumn rolls in, maybe this will help?

Thank you as always for reading! Love you! See you next week!

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