The many leaflets and flyers pouring out of Tate Modern in connection with its opening carry the same sentence about the Tate’s collection of international contemporary art, which includes a short list of major artists represented: Bacon, Dalí, Duchamp, Giacometti, Hepworth, Long, Matisse, Mondrian, Picasso, Pollock, Riley, Rothko, Warhol, and Whiteread. This is a fascinating list, and I am sure the Tate Modern staff had puzzled over it for quite a while. First, five out of the fourteen artists listed are British, suggesting a key rôle of Britain in the international art scene. Some world-renowned Britons, like Moore and Caro or Hockney and Hirst, all of whom are represented in the collection, are not even included, so as to make the list so much more credible and compelling. Second, the list promotes second-rate artists like Bacon and Hepworth to the top of the international league. Even a third-rate artist like Riley is thrust forward. Third, many of the first-rate international artists, like Malevich and Kandinsky or Beuys and Kiefer, all of whom are also represented in the collection, are not listed, having been squeezed out by the Britons and second-rate American artists, like Pollock and Rothko. While pondering the list, one cannot but hear the Union Jack flapping in the wind to the strains of “God Save the Queen.”