Art as a shared experience

I've always enjoyed visiting art galleries as long as I can remember. Not just the big ones, such as the National, the Tate, Tate Modern, Louvre, Orsay etc but the smaller ones, those hidden away in the corners of towns and cities which really are for the aficionados rather than the tourist throngs.

One of my more bizarre experiences was in London a few years ago when I went to an 'installation' at a well known esoteric West End gallery and had to view the installation from the street through the letter box. I saw Goya at the Royal Academy where the galleries were so packed it was akin to standing on the North Bank at the Boleyn, and Magritte at the Hayward where it was so quiet I wondered if some sort of surrealist joke was being played on me and all the crowds were watching me on CCTV from an adjacent room. The most moving experience was in Krakow about fifteen years ago, early Sunday morning, snow falling and a silent gallery, looking at the history of Europe's largest transit camp through the eyes of its artists.

Tate Modern is celebrating its tenth anniversary and if one art gallery has embraced the notion of looking at art as a collective experience then I suppose it's been the Tate. Until fairly recently Britain didn't really 'do' modern art, along with ballet and opera it was viewed as something only Johnny Foreigner or weirdos got into but the times have been a changing. It remains true that the big old former Bankside Power Station can sometimes feel a little claustrophobic but more often that not you have space to think, to reflect and most importantly to appreciate the works on display. Kandinsky, Kahlo, Magritte, Hopper, Gilbert and George, are among the more famous artists whose exhibitions I have attended but there have been many less well known artists whose works I have spent many a Saturday gazing at.

Being a member of the Tate, which covers both the Tate and Tate Modern, gives you some privileges: reduced (sometimes free) tickets for the exhibitions, a quarterly magazine which more often than not makes me realise I know very little about what makes art, access to the members room which has a restaurant and possibly the best view of St.Paul's in London, but most importantly it gives you the opportunity, through the paying of the annual subscription under the Gift Aid scheme, the chance to help buy works of art that could be lost forever to the country.

In the first fifty years of its existence the Tate Members helped finance the acquisition of some 400 works of art, ranging from such great artists as Matisse. through Picasso, Constable and Hockney, onto, my personal favourite, Turner through to modern works such as those by Twombly and Pollock.

There are of course many people who think that art is all a waste of time and money and that any money giving to art or art foundations or museums or galleries would be better spent on something more tangible, something more profitable. I think that's a sad attitude and writes off with one sentiment one of the great human experiences, spiritual fulfillment. We all need time out from our daily routine, and whether it's a painting, a record, a book or a poem, or even watching the sky or the waves lapping onto a beach, it's great for the spirit to be able to step outside ourselves for a moment each day, to contemplate something beyond our normal experience. The Tate Modern has helped me step beyond my comfort zone over the past ten years and long may it continue.

This weekend I'm off to the place where modern art began:Paris, so I hope everybody who has stumbled across this corner of cyberspace has a good Bank Holiday Weekend.