I spent a rainy day in an art museum in London. A modern art museum in an old building with lots of stairs. The Tate Modern on the banks of the Thames River was a great way to spend my rainy afternoon. I took the bus from the hotel to the closest stop and took the quick walk to the museum.

It was so great to see Peit Mondrian’s work in person, his Composition C (no. iii) with Red, Yellow and Blue from 1935 in person. I loved being able to get the close up of his signature. I’ve studied many of the pieces that I saw in person over my years in college, I’ve seen them all in books before. But to see their signature, where it’s written in imperfect writing was pretty cool to me. I loved seeing that the lines of the art weren’t perfect, that there were areas of imperfection in this art that seems so perfect to me. I saw Monet’s Water Lilies that was painted sometime after 1916 and it was beautiful and I was surprised at how large the piece was. I was able to see the striking work of Ellsworth Kelly’s Mediterannee from 1952, a large impressive color blocked piece (2 images up). Josef Albers works (seen directly above) from 1964 were pieces that I had studied in my Color Theory classes and it was so cool to turn the corner into a gallery and see these works that I remembered. The white on white sculpture from Ben Nicholson from 1936 was one that I wasn’t familiar with, but I loved the simplicity of it. The large sculpture from Henri Laurens (second image) from 1948 was also quite impressive and one that I hadn’t seen before. Seeing the Cage series from Gerhard Richter from 2006 was very cool. I loved the massive size of the paintings and the texture of his work and the colors he chose were some of my favorites (the large square painting able with the close up image below of the brushstrokes).

Overall, it was a great visit to the museum and after I finished walking through the rain was coming down so hard that I decided to eat a late lunch in the cafe to wait out the storm. After I finished eating I headed out across the Millenium pedestrian bridge to St. Paul’s Cathedral where I picked up the bus tour again and headed back towards our hotel.