THERE ARE MANY FORKING PATHS, in life as in art, through the social and political construct that is Britain. At Tate Britain, a rehang of the biggest collection of the nation’s cultural patrimony, from the Tudor period to the present, unfolds chronologically across thirty-nine rooms. Divided by the three-hundred-foot-long Duveen Galleries (which are always devoted to temporary commissions or displays), rooms to the west, whose walls are sumptuously colored in hues of deep blue, mahogany, emerald, purple, scarlet, indigo, span from 1545 to 1940. To the east, art from 1940 to today is set against
The art world’s desire to fold 20th-century makers into the history of modern art often ignores what was truly innovative about their work, writes Tanya Harrod