Poem – Jo Thorpe

The Tate Modern

(found in Time magazine)
As power stations go, Bankside was a looker
a hulking lunker with tapering chimney

and squat symmetry enhanced by groups
of windows striping its entire height.

Also, it has size – which modern art loves
and a sooty past. Jacques Herzog

Pierre de Meuron, Harry Gugger
& Christine Binswanger didn’t mess too much

with the building. They wanted
to blur the boundaries of the monument

turn it into open space.
Blur’s the right word. It’s a gentle trans-

formation of a giant. The most astonishing
thing about it may be

that a looming great scary industrial complex
could become something so    polite.

*

The galleries will make the artists happy
well-lit boxes (plain), with floors

of white oak (unsanded), polished concrete.
The art organised by subject – nudes

still life, landscape
history …

the idea of power
the idea of pools

that Red Slate Circle
those Water Lilies

 

Jo Thorpe

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