Pride of place at Albert Dock belongs to an offshoot of London's Tate Gallery. This is serious culture, there are big name artists exhibited here. It is, according to the publicity, the largest collection of modern art in the UK outside London. However if, like me, you think that much of modern art has a serious case of Emperor's New Clothes syndrome, beware.
"How often have you heard the claim that 'a child of five could do that!' directed at modern art?" Thus speaks the Tate's brochure on the subject of their exhibit, Primary Vision: Art and Rediscovery of Childhood. Many of the pieces exhibited look precisely like children's drawings. They are intended to. Examples of real children's work are exhibited alongside as proof. The museum claims that it is really, really hard to paint with the freshness and intensity that children's drawings exhibit. Hmm, yeah, looking at the kids stuff, perhaps they are right. The kids' stuff is better. But I bet no one pays those kids vast sums of money for their work.
It isn't all bad though. In amongst the exhibit are a few works by a Swiss artist, Paul Klee. One of those pieces, Walpurgisnacht, is absolutely brilliant. I can see it still. Any kid who had painted such an intense, nightmarish mythological vision would have been shipped off for psychiatric treatment forthwith.
Elsewhere there are several big name pieces. I spotted work by Lowry, Moore, Sutherland and Hockney. It was the first time I had seen a Lowry piece close up and I finally understand what the fuss is about. TV and book reproductions just don't do his work justice.
There was a piece too by Chris Ofili, the guy who uses elephant dung in his art. I guess it gets him attention, and that is probably a good thing. The painting in question, which won this year's Turner Prize, was a statement against racism, in particular the idea that "all black people look the same". The artist had cleverly used just the eyes of a large number of black people to show how absurd the notion is. Very neat, but the dung had little to do with it except get people's attention.
What disappointed me most about the gallery was the lighting. There were a couple of paintings that were very difficult to see, from any angle. Galleries should not get that sort of thing wrong. It is sloppy, and they need to fix it.