Tate Modern and London Eye

Modernism emerged after World War II and involved looking at life in a very different way than before. World War II made many people rethink their fundamental assumptions about life. They wondered what the point of life was when people could kill one another on such a massive scale as they did during the war. Previous philosophies celebrating life and human rationality seemed outdated and something new was needed. In addition to the war, scientific discoveries also made people question their previous beliefs. For example, Darwin’s theory of evolution cast previous stories of creation into doubt. These new experiences, discoveries, and ideas made people feel that their basic beliefs were now inadequate. The modernist movement arose and was essentially a search for something meaningful in life which had been lost.

In addition to science, art was also affected by modernism. In fact, John Nash’s piece entitled Landscape from a Dream draws together a modernist point of view and Freud’s new scientific beliefs about the unconscious. The painting portrays a beach scene that interestingly contains a hawk and mirrors. The mirrors give the painting a dreamlike quality influenced by Freud’s theories of the unconscious. Nash reveals that we do have a deep unconscious area of our mind. The hawk ties in aspects of the real world with our unconscious, as the hawk is looking into the mirror in the painting. The painting suggests an attempt to reconcile reality with the unconscious, or a search for some deeper meaning, clearly a modernist quest.

The ride on the London Eye made me see the city of London itself as a post-modern text with regard to all of the architecture I saw from the air. Pastiche is a critical component of post-modernism that involves bringing together different traditions into one particular structure. On the London Eye, London itself became that one structure. It displayed architecture from many centuries and styles. Big Ben and Parliament stuck out as gothic, imposing buildings. St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey were both visible and represented a specific sort of religious architecture with towers in the case of Westminster Abbey and a dome structure for St. Paul’s Cathedral. Other buildings exemplified architecture from the Victorian period and many other buildings appeared more modern. The Gherkin especially stood out as the most modern-looking building with the oddest shape. Yet all of these architectural variations are drawn together in the city of London. This architectural combination makes London itself an example of post-modernism.