“Pink Bunch” – Raoul Dufy Wednesday, Apr 25 2012

                                          “Pink Bunch“  (1940)
 
                                                 Raoul Dufy 

                                              _____________ 

 

the line between abstraction and representation, impressions of flowers becoming real flowers   in the imagination, with colour, texture, and nearly even dew

 

 

have a great day 

 

Richard

 

 

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Olivier Messiaen – “Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum” Sunday, Apr 8 2012

just in time for Easter here is something from
Olivier Messiaen, whom I consider to be, after
Shostakovich, the most important composer of
the Twentieth Century, and may one day, with
more distance, prove to be, of the two,

preeminent 

  
Messiaen, a devout Catholic, wrote specifically
to the glory of the Catholic God, an interesting
return to the music of the Baroque period, and
earlier, when the Church sponsored essentially
all the arts  

 

perhaps Messiaen is also a precursor - the “Et

exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum“, which
I’m presenting, or, in my humble Latin,”In 

Anticipation of the Resurrection of the Dead“,

is from 1964 – of the resurgent fundamentalism
we’ve been witnessing in all churches,

synagogues, mosques, in our own times

 

“Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum“, is
not at all Romantic, not even Impressionistic,
two world wars have been fought since, man  

has stepped on the unglorious moon, God even

died in the early sixties leaving us to reinvent

our own future, a time of youth and flowers,

and great indeed expectations, as it turned out  

 

the even profound assumptions of the earlier

order however, in the language of music

represented fundamentally by beat and tonality, 

hadn’t worked, couldn’t work anymore, having

been manifestly discredited, women had received 

the vote, financial and sexual independence,

traditional authority had been categorically

overthrown, there was no going back

 

 

Richard Strauss had already suggested this new

broader horizon, in 1896, with his “Also Sprach 

Zarathustra“, a mighty work, made famous, even

unforgettable, by the movie  ”2001: A Space   

Odyssey“, when the very sun bursts upon the

intergalactic universe to its interstellar strains

 

but Messiaen takes you even further into the
reaches of the infinite 

 

I couldn’t help thinking of a more adult Miró -

the individualized elements - but more profoundly 

metaphysical, I have rarely seen, heard, something

so transfixing, powerful, even the silences between

movements, there are five, are riveting

 

 

happy Easter

 
Richard 

 

 

 

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“Le sacre du printemps”, then, and later Sunday, Mar 25 2012

 

                            “Russisches Ballett (I)“  (1912)

                                          August Macke

                                                        ____________  

 

 

“Le sacre du printemps”, Stravinsky’s original, French,
title for “The Rite of Spring”, was choreographed by
Vaslav Nijinsky, a legendary ballet superstar of the

time, to sets, costumes and story by Nicholas Roerich,

a name essentially now forgotten 

 

Sergei Diaghilev, the equally legendary impresario,

produced the show for his hot then Ballets Russes,

which opened at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

in Paris, May 29th, 1913, a hundred years but one

since, nearly to the hour

 

here is a 2009 recreation of the original production,

minus of course the Ballets Russes

 

here a celebrated alternate version, 1970, from

Maurice Béjart and his Ballet du XX^e siècle - a very

highly regarded choreographer mid Twentieth Century,

with dancers to prove it - this effort now considered

their very crowning artistic achievement 

 

 

may springtime bring you also meanwhile myriad

other roses

 
Richard  

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“Man at the Window” – Gustave Caillebotte‏ Saturday, Feb 11 2012

             

                                  “Man at the Window“  (1875)
 
                                            Gustave Caillebotte  

                                                                  __________ 

 

 

it’s hard not to think of Caspar David Friedrich (1818) or

Norman Rockwell (1962) upon viewing now this painting,

which came up today in a lecture I was viewing on the

Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte, 1848-1894, halfway

between both 

 

they are, all three of course, all about contemplation,

but all explore a different aspect of that phenomenon

 

let me suggest that Friedrich‘s concerns are patently

metaphysical, he casts his eyes, which we do not see,

incidentally, upon a horizon that looks like destiny,

ours by extension, murky yet imbued with possibility,

even the improbable

  

or maybe this is just what I see

 

 

Rockwell‘s perspective is instead aesthetic, a view

of the world as expressed by others, the capacity to

understand and relate to other voices, opinions, within 

our social construct, allegorized here by the exhibition

room

 

it is a closed speculation, circumscribed by the limited

dimensions, physical or conceptual, of any other

counterpart, contained therefore metaphorically, and

concisely, within a frame  

 

that frame represents the physical limits imposed on

a painter, but also the conceptual limitations of the

viewer him- or herself, it works both ways, for some

this will be a man merely looking out a window, for

others an opening on an epoch

  

 

Caillebotte, 1848-1894, looks inward to his isolation,

alienation, from his luxurious interior, black as a cave,

upon a confined avenue where nothing but an impossible

communication, with the lone woman crossing the

street, surely a furtive eye, gives way necessarily to

resignation, and a kind of existential yield to ineluctable

fate, a sensibility beginning to burgeon at the time, see

Nietzsche, 1844-1900, and nihilism  

 

then again this is only my impression, this is what I got

 

and a picture is worth, we say, a thousand words

 

 

Richard  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“The Connoiseur” – Norman Rockwell‏ Thursday, Feb 9 2012

       

                                        ”The Connoiseur“ (1962)
 
                                               Norman Rockwell
 
                                                       ____   

serendipitously trolling Rockwells after sensing his spirit in a

poem I’d just been reading I happened upon this marvelous

piece, an homage of course to Jackson Pollock, perhaps the

most successful of the Abstract Expressionists

 

but lurking behind the obvious surface of this painting it was

easy to recognize also another glaring, though not as explicit

maybe, tribute, misted perhaps by the transformational

permutations of context and time, wherein a seed becomes

a tree, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, to no less an iconic 

masterpiece than Caspar David Friedrich‘s “Wanderer Above  

a Sea of Fog“, the work we just, a blog or so ago, explored

 

both look upon their own idea of a new horizon

 

and a Pop Art stab at an Abstract Expressionist through a

High Romantic is a cute trick, witty, wonderful, wise

 

 

it’s an easy step to a literary counterpart from there, Keats’ 

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” nearly automatically

comes to mind, another iconic Romantic new dawn

 

               Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

                   And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

                   Round many western islands have I been

               Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

               Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

                   That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

                   Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

               Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

               Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

                   When a new planet swims into his ken;

                Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

                   He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

               Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

                   Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

 

 

Beethoven, were I to go to music, is always, especially in his

later works, contemplating new dimensions, new worlds, he

more than any other composer is a metaphysical explorer

 

maybe also Pink Floyd

 

who’ve taken me to their own also exalted musical galaxies, 

awesome commanding perspectives, transcendental heights,

to my own “wild” indeed “surmise / Silent, upon a peak in”

my version of “Darien” 

 

 

Richard 

 

psst:  Chapman’s Homer   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog” – Caspar David Friedrich Sunday, Jan 29 2012

 

                                   ”Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog“  (1818)  
 
                                              Caspar David Friedrich 
 
                                                     __________ 
          

upon further reflection I realized that the painting above had also “the same power, the same clarity and precision” to describe the Romantic Era as the first chord of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata, it is an equally powerful representation of the spirit of that highly introspective time

 

the Romantic Epoch championed nature, patriotism - on the political heels of the French Revolution – and explorations of the soul, following the latter’s calls to liberty, equality, fraternity, the natural groundwork for what followed, our own period of reverence for human rights

 

we look with Caspar David Friedrich here upon a nebulous perspective, onto daunting horizons, reflecting, with him, through the painter’s psychological ingenuity and art, upon our own daunting choices, our own murky landscapes, our own obscure and imposing destinies, both physical and philosophical, a profoundly Romantic conception 

 

it was a time when the heart and its irreverent passions took centre stage, stood, in all its permutations, under the light

 

 

please excuse my egregious oversight

 

and of also the inspired Caspar David Friedrich I’ve begged pardon, expressed my heartfelt, humble compunction, and regret, for a not insignificant slight  

 

 

cheers

 

Richard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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a cello concerto‏ Sunday, Oct 23 2011

               ”Portrait of Marquise de Pompadour”

                                 François Boucher  

 

                                     __________

 

 

Joseph Haydn, 1732 to 1809, who preceded and outlived
Mozart, 1756 to 1791, was also an older contemporary of
the more imperious Beethoven, 1770 to 1827 

 
of the three Haydn is the most pleasant, polite, courtly,

witty, elegant, congenial, the musical equivalent of, say, 

the painters Boucher or Fragonard, though with a perhaps

more restrained sensuality 

 
his audience, and indeed his sponsors, were aristocrats,
his music makes no political, emotional, ideological
demands, it is meant merely to delight, which it does

in spades 
 
one of his symphonies, the number 45, for instance, loses

instrumentalists one at a time in its final movement until

two only remain, Haydn himself and the concertmaster,

the orchestra had been wanting to go home but had been

retained by the count at his summer palace, Esterhazy,

longer than anyone expected, each one, according to

instructions in the score, was to put out the candle on

his music stand, in Vienna, incidentally, not one of

them of course was a woman, then was to leave the

shrinking stage, the not inconsiderate count let them

scurry the very next day

 

 

Mozart is more spontaneous, less academic than Haydn,

playful, unaffected, less inhibited, younger, by very

definition therefore less refined, more maybe, as a

consequence, unintentionally magical

 

Beethoven meanwhile is a quantum leap from their

Classicism, which is to say the musical groundwork

for our epoch set down by both those other

foundational pillars, into Romanticism, unleashing

upon his forebears’ firm structural, Classical, base 

his more humanist, less formalized, view of the

emotions, paving the way, for instance, blazing a

very trail for, among others, its later towering

figure, Chopin 

 

 

here is Haydn’s Cello Concerto no 1 in C major, written

in 1761, Eve-Marie Caravassilis plays the cello, Patrick

Botti conducts the Concilium Musicum de Paris in the

Church of St-Catherine of Hungary in Paris, all of these

to me unknown, August 10, 2011, just last year  

 

I was not unimpressed

 

 

note the consistency throughout of the pace, and the

courtly discretion ever, in even the nimble, never 

boisterous or brash, concluding, for instance, presto, 

pithy, pert, but always peremptorily polite, it would

never come crashing down 

 

what Revolution, it assumes, what 1789, let’s party

 

 

Richard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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John Ruskin, on truth in art Thursday, May 13 2010

that we have dismissed, often indeed forgotten, the great voices of our culture,
the great oracles, the dead, they’ve dared to call them, painters, composers,
poets, doesn’t make their pronouncements less true, less inspiring, proof that
they are still very much alive, and relevant 
  
that they are still relevant ties us to the great notion that we are from very
Homer to the present day one family, one illustrious family, which to disregard, 
or any of its great giants, would be our inestimable loss 
 
where would we be without their wisdom, leaves without a trunk
 
 
John Ruskin was a great influence on Marcel Proust, my own supreme poet and prophet, I needed to plumb his literary pockets for, I did not doubt, nuggets of priceless gold
 
 
Richard 
 
 
                       _____________________

 

Chapter 7
 
8 – That then which I would have the reader inquire respecting
       every work of art of undetermined merit submitted to his
       judgment, is not whether it be a work of especial grandeur,
       importance, or power; but whether it have any virtue or
       substance as a link in this chain of truth; whether it have 
       recorded or interpreted anything before unknown; whether
       it have added one single stone to our heaven pointing pyramid,
       cut away one dark bough, or levelled one rugged hillock in our
       path. This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, for
       no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help
       to his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate
       mission, and if they discharge it honourably, if they acquit themselves
       like men and faithfully follow that light which is in them, withdrawing
       from it all cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of
       it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine
       before men, and be of service constant and holy. Degrees infinite
       of lustre there must always be, but the weakest among us has a
       gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which
       worthily used will be a gift also to his race for  ever: 
                ‘Fool not’, says George Herbert,
                                                                     ‘For all may have,
                             If they dare choose, a glorious life or grave’ 
      
 
                                            John Ruskin (from “Modern Painters“) 
 
 

                     ______________________________________________

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Still Life with Teapot and Fan – Wang Weidong‏ Thursday, Mar 18 2010

                           ” Still Life with Teapot and Fan “ 
 
                                       Wang Weidong  
 
                                   _________________  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                despite bifurcations in the direction of abstract art – Impressionism Surrealism, Expressionism, Pop – representational art, with its evident demands on the artist - formal excellence, not just heat and heart - still inspires perhaps our foremost admiration 
 
perhaps it’s true however that still lifes, nearly by definition, are bloodless, as is to my mind, here again, this exquisite nevertheless “Teapot“, which reaches out to your intellect rather than to your emotions
 
it speaks of duty rather than love, tradition rather than innovation, a nostalgia for security, conformity, philosophy perhaps, and ultimately by inference faith and trust  
 
if you let your sense of taste do the talking
  
 
Richard

                  

                           __________________________

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Venus of Willendorf Saturday, Jan 30 2010

              

           

                                Venus of Willendorf 
 
                          (24,000 B.C. – 22,000 B.C.)
 
                                     __________
 
 
by giving it prominence in a work of art an artist by definition
idealizes a figure, gives it stature, Andy Warhol did that to our
own cultural overlord, Commerce, with his soup cans, putting
them right up there where altarpieces used to be, these icons 
are even in financial institutions now in fact instead of churches,
supplanting thereby the earlier Christian message, which you
don’t see represented very much in art anymore incidentally,
our present culture not finding much of an even metaphorical
call for it any longer it would appear 
 
“Marilyn” (1960s)
 
“Mickey Mouse“ (1981)
 
the Venus of Willendorf (24,000 B.C. – 22,000 B.C.)
 
“Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” (1995)
 
these last two upending what is in fact only an arbitrary
cultural notion of svelte and silken beauty ever, though
often vigorously held  
  
 
Richard

 

                           _____________________

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