Icons such as Whaam!, Roy Lichtenstein's plane crash cartoon, is now shown at Tate Modern for the first time. (Whaam! detail, 1963)
Tate Modern has had a complete make-over, and it looks much better.
For the first time since the London art museum's opening in 2000, all 48 permanent galleries have been rehung around a wholly new concept.
Instead of four abstract themes, the collection now centres around four key periods of 20th century art. The result is more accessible to the wider public.
Almost half of the 400 works have never been shown at Tate Modern - including icons such as Whaam!, Roy Lichtenstein's plane crash cartoon.
"It's not just old wine in new bottles," says Frances Morris, Tate's head of displays. "There's a real sense of freshness and discovery."
Recent acquisitions form about 27% of the display. Among these is Ishi's Light, a marvellous 9ft tall egg-shaped sculpture by Anish Kapoor. It invites you to step inside, where your world - and voice - becomes strangely distorted.
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So far, Tate Modern's building - a converted power station on the South Bank - has arguably been a larger attraction to its 25 million visitors than the quality of the art inside.
To disguise major gaps in the chronology of the collection, it was first organised around the ideas of landscape, still life, nude and historic art.
Ishi's Light is a marvellous 9ft tall egg-shaped sculpture by Anish Kapoor. It invites you to step inside, where your world - and voice - becomes strangely distorted
But now the rehang focuses on four "crucible moments" of innovation in modern art: cubism, surrealism, abstract expressionism and minimalism.
"They are four areas where the collection is particularly rich and where we felt we could make good and innovative groupings," Morris explains.
Each wing has a core of key works by big names, plus a range of satellite displays about how the main movements relate to both earlier and later art.
In the abstract expressionism section, curators took great pains to hang Mark Rothko's nine Maroon paintings in a single grey room, as the artist had specified. (Rothko gave the huge canvasses to Tate after they turned out too depressing for the trendy New York restaurant that commissioned the series.)
But as the dreary walls entrap you, the dim atmosphere is disturbed only by the loud farting noises from next door. A nine-minute tape of gas passing is perhaps not quite the sound effect Rothko intended.
Alas, "it is not a cathedral with the relics of a saint," insists museum director Vincente Todoli. "This kind of acoustic contamination Well, you have it every day of your life."
Another gallery examines the legacy of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain - the urinal he on which he so famously painted "R. Mutt" and called it ready-made art. Next to it is Andy Warhol's ready-made box of Brillo washing powder and Opie's fake heating vent.
But Piero Manzoni went even further. He left a real piece of himself behind: a tin of his excrement or so the label claims in four languages. (The true content of the sealed can, dating from 1961, remains a mystery.)
There are familiar faces - such as Warhol's Marilyn and Elvis silkscreen prints - and exciting new ones, like the Guerilla Girls. The anonymous activists, who wear guerrilla masks, highlight inequality in the art world.
"Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" asks one of their posters. "Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female."
Some of the new displays immerse the viewer into the ideas behind the art. In the Surrealist wing, densely cluttered walls covered by Dali, Miro and Picasso literally plunges you into a dream world. Yet the Minimalist display features stark geometric forms in a blank white space.
According to Tate director Nicholas Serota, the rehang cost "much more than £1 million" - paid for by corporate sponsors and the state. It is an "essential" part of running the gallery, he believes.
The rehang certainly plays to the strengths of the collection. For the first time, the display does justice to the unique building. A huge improvement.
Tate Modern permanent collection, Southwark, opens 23 May 2006. Admission free.
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