31 October 2009
It’s Halloween – so I’m back to spook you. To scare you. Well, contemporary art and music (& movies, dance, theatre, etc.) should be a little scary. Maybe a LOT scary. (And NO – that doesn’t mean GROSSED OUT. It’s not about cheap EXPLOITATION. In fact it’s not about CHEAP – EVER! Nor for that matter EXPLOITATION – EVER! Have I made myself CLEAR? (Or am I simply confusing the Scientologists who may be reading this?)
So – no – I’m not going to go into an extensive re-tread. Everyone here knows my story (and it’s a sad one); so let’s skip it. Yeah, yeah, yeah – I’m as exhausted as ever. So here we go. Last night (30 October) I went to the opening of conceptual art legend Stephen Kaltenbach’s very aptly timed and titled show at Another Year In L.A., S’Fear. Certainly some aspect of ‘fear’ – or certainly a kind of intimidating mystery – and of course, simply fear and apprehension of the unknown, have played prominently in Kaltenbach’s work in the past: what is hidden from view, scarcely limned through its container or shell (or title – which of course is its own kind of container). And so it was here: more explicitly (and, in one instance, theatrically) than ever. The fear – and the sphere – and the implicit mystery of geometries of two, three and more dimensions. Theatricality to one side – which I find irresistible – it’s a thoughtful and elegant show. So go. Oh – and you might bear in mind that Another Year may be moving from its current landmark Deco building on San Fernando because of some MASSIVE pile of a high school(?) that is set to rise directly across the street. (We need another high school? Why not just make the ones we already have BETTER? As in through MORE, BETTER TEACHERS? A little (or a lot) MORE MONEY??) So – one more reason to hustle over there and see the show.
Thursday night (29 October), Opera Buddy and I went to a screening of a film of the Barcelona-based Fura des Baus production of Wagner’s Die Walkure staged in the (Calatrava designed) Palau de las Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, featuring Peter Seifert and Jennifer Wilson as Brunnhilde and Juha Uusitalo as Wotan with the the amazing Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana brilliantly conducted by the apparently indefatigable Zubin Mehta. (If you’ve forgotten how amazing he can be, I can recommend this filmed opera on that basis alone.) The production is heavily video and effects-laden – with the internecine dramatics of the first two acts a bit muddied by the staging – but redeemed by the climactic (always threatening-to-never-actually-reach-climax) third act and Brunnhilde’s agony – which reduced Opera Buddy (despite her reservations about the production overall) to tears, and me (after my exhausting workday) to simultaneous catharsis and paralysis. (I comforted OB – ‘hey Dads are like that. Ya try to make them proud of your battle prowess and they end up disowning you & you have to settle for them not letting anyone fuck you but a billionaire master-of-the-universe,’ Right?) Well. (I’m telling you, it was pretty fucking GREAT.)
Earlier that day, I had the great fortune of viewing a portion of Ann Janss’s extensive and eclectic collection of L.A. and other artists – which in addition to some phenomenal Michael McMillen pieces and an entire gallery devoted to an amazing H.C. Westermann series, See America First, provided me with an introduction to the work of Steve Galloway. (As usual, I have to ask myself – was my head stuck under a rock or something?). I’m not going to go into great detail at the moment; because I have to jet out to, uh, the Silver Lake Dog Park. (You think I’m joking, don’t you? Well think again.) If you see a zombie in the dog park, it’s just me. Back in a zombie minute. (That could be a few millennia, you realize.)
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Murmures des Richesses
9-10 October 2009
Oh who cares who was at the Burchfield opening at the Hammer? Annie Philbin, Cathy Opie, Marlene Picard, Mitch Handsone, Lydia Szamraj, television producers (Hey – I just wrote a treatment – have ya got a minute? I think I have a copy in the car.), models, investment bankers – all the usual suspects. (Never did fetch that treatment.) But let me tell you what I was doing (almost a week later!) before. First of all, there was a truckload of GREAT work at Bergamot Station, where I went to do a bit of reconnaissance. The Francesca Gabbiani show (the second part of a two-part show) at Patrick Painter was extraordinary. I’ve been a fan of hers practically from my first exposure to her work (which, speaking of the Hammer, I believe was through a Hammer Project space (or maybe it was in the main galleries, I don’t remember – but the Hammer gave her the exposure). But her work just keeps getting richer, denser – more elaborate, exquisite, too, of course – but always to a very controlled, specific end – the whole of the conceit, the composition, at the service of the unified effect. (Though it is impossible not to be drawn into the rich details of these ‘black mirror’ collage-tableaux.) In the work on view here, the artistic and decorative fashions of 18th century rococo pastoral are re-worked into a kind of swirling ecological cacophony ‘framing’ a black ‘mirror’ lagoon-negative space. But here the foliated and filigreed shells, flora and fauna of the benign 18th century pastoral-boiserie is given a more forbidding cast, veering into the depths of jungle or forest – barn owls looming over chameleons, reptiles and dense foliage.assembled into a slightly tempestuous froth. The effect is simultaneously haunting and enchanting. Trick-or-treat – Patrick: would you mind putting one of these in my candy sack? I could spend hours with any one of these singular pieces.
I’m jumping ahead a bit here, though (yeah, on a certain level, that makes no sense) – because on the prior Wednesday evening (that’s 30 September), I had the privilege of attending Ana Cervantes’ extraordinary piano recital – really a recital/recitation – a unique music, literary, and arguably even visual experience, almost entirely curated, commissioned and performed – I want to say breathed or launched upon the airwaves – by this marvelous pianist-performer. In the past, I’ve tended (a bit irrationally to be honest about it) to militate a bit against ‘program’ music – as a kind of coloration, literary or narrative, that the music doesn’t really need or support; that may indeed veer sharply from what the purely musical character delivers on its own abstractly. At the same time, I’m completely mad about film soundtrack music – as sensitive to score and sonic tapestry woven behind, through and surrounding film image, action and dialogue – the astonishing capacity a great score has to underscore, heighten or emphasize mood, prefigurations, undercurrents, suspense, climax – as I am to any other aspect of the film: script, dialogue, performance, direction, editing. I’m full of contradictions, I fully realize. Then of course we routinely, almost unconsciously, deal with the ‘literary’ bridges of popular and folk song, commercial music that bombard us daily, to say nothing of the heavy lyric and literary content of musical theatre (or could we stretch that to simply say theatre, period?) and, uh (GASP!) OPERA!
In other words, I guess I’m getting over such irrational biases. A good thing, too – because Ana Cervantes’s magnetic performance, which she titled Rumor de Páramo: Murmurs From the Wasteland effectively put to rest whatever reservations I might have had left about this nexus. (Which are really merely the reflection of my own interior tug-of-war between my literary and purely musical sensibilities.) To be introduced to great bodies of musical and literary work on the same evening for me is practically a formula ready-made for an ecstatic experience. By far the great literary inspiration of Rumor de Páramo is the work of Mexican writer, Juan Rulfo, one of whose principal works is the novel, Pedro Páramo. And as if he needed any endorsement beyond the genius (I think I can take the word of Cervantes, et al. here) of his work, Octavio Paz (a titanic literary hero for me, whose work alas I have only read in English and French), perhaps Mexico’s greatest man of letters, wrote that Juan Rulfo was “the only Mexican novelist to have provided us an image – rather than a mere description – of our physical surroundings.” (meaning Mexico itself). The only composer on the program with whom I was familiar was Arturo Márquez – who might simplistically be described as a Mexican impressionist, TKTKTK
Oh who cares who was at the Burchfield opening at the Hammer? Annie Philbin, Cathy Opie, Marlene Picard, Mitch Handsone, Lydia Szamraj, television producers (Hey – I just wrote a treatment – have ya got a minute? I think I have a copy in the car.), models, investment bankers – all the usual suspects. (Never did fetch that treatment.) But let me tell you what I was doing (almost a week later!) before. First of all, there was a truckload of GREAT work at Bergamot Station, where I went to do a bit of reconnaissance. The Francesca Gabbiani show (the second part of a two-part show) at Patrick Painter was extraordinary. I’ve been a fan of hers practically from my first exposure to her work (which, speaking of the Hammer, I believe was through a Hammer Project space (or maybe it was in the main galleries, I don’t remember – but the Hammer gave her the exposure). But her work just keeps getting richer, denser – more elaborate, exquisite, too, of course – but always to a very controlled, specific end – the whole of the conceit, the composition, at the service of the unified effect. (Though it is impossible not to be drawn into the rich details of these ‘black mirror’ collage-tableaux.) In the work on view here, the artistic and decorative fashions of 18th century rococo pastoral are re-worked into a kind of swirling ecological cacophony ‘framing’ a black ‘mirror’ lagoon-negative space. But here the foliated and filigreed shells, flora and fauna of the benign 18th century pastoral-boiserie is given a more forbidding cast, veering into the depths of jungle or forest – barn owls looming over chameleons, reptiles and dense foliage.assembled into a slightly tempestuous froth. The effect is simultaneously haunting and enchanting. Trick-or-treat – Patrick: would you mind putting one of these in my candy sack? I could spend hours with any one of these singular pieces.
I’m jumping ahead a bit here, though (yeah, on a certain level, that makes no sense) – because on the prior Wednesday evening (that’s 30 September), I had the privilege of attending Ana Cervantes’ extraordinary piano recital – really a recital/recitation – a unique music, literary, and arguably even visual experience, almost entirely curated, commissioned and performed – I want to say breathed or launched upon the airwaves – by this marvelous pianist-performer. In the past, I’ve tended (a bit irrationally to be honest about it) to militate a bit against ‘program’ music – as a kind of coloration, literary or narrative, that the music doesn’t really need or support; that may indeed veer sharply from what the purely musical character delivers on its own abstractly. At the same time, I’m completely mad about film soundtrack music – as sensitive to score and sonic tapestry woven behind, through and surrounding film image, action and dialogue – the astonishing capacity a great score has to underscore, heighten or emphasize mood, prefigurations, undercurrents, suspense, climax – as I am to any other aspect of the film: script, dialogue, performance, direction, editing. I’m full of contradictions, I fully realize. Then of course we routinely, almost unconsciously, deal with the ‘literary’ bridges of popular and folk song, commercial music that bombard us daily, to say nothing of the heavy lyric and literary content of musical theatre (or could we stretch that to simply say theatre, period?) and, uh (GASP!) OPERA!
In other words, I guess I’m getting over such irrational biases. A good thing, too – because Ana Cervantes’s magnetic performance, which she titled Rumor de Páramo: Murmurs From the Wasteland effectively put to rest whatever reservations I might have had left about this nexus. (Which are really merely the reflection of my own interior tug-of-war between my literary and purely musical sensibilities.) To be introduced to great bodies of musical and literary work on the same evening for me is practically a formula ready-made for an ecstatic experience. By far the great literary inspiration of Rumor de Páramo is the work of Mexican writer, Juan Rulfo, one of whose principal works is the novel, Pedro Páramo. And as if he needed any endorsement beyond the genius (I think I can take the word of Cervantes, et al. here) of his work, Octavio Paz (a titanic literary hero for me, whose work alas I have only read in English and French), perhaps Mexico’s greatest man of letters, wrote that Juan Rulfo was “the only Mexican novelist to have provided us an image – rather than a mere description – of our physical surroundings.” (meaning Mexico itself). The only composer on the program with whom I was familiar was Arturo Márquez – who might simplistically be described as a Mexican impressionist, TKTKTK
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Dandelion Whine
2-3 October 2009
Before I pick up where I left off – and yes, I’m lagging behind again – here’s a discovery. The Blue Whale is apparently a beached whale on Saturdays. This has always been the case to some extent, as I’m aware – the building has long been mostly devoted to design, architecture, textile and furniture showrooms catering mostly to the trade who keep regular Monday through Friday business week hours. But until recently, it seemed there was always something open (besides the restaurant) – or at least some special event that kept the doors open for some segment of non-trade customers or would-be clients trawling the interior design studios. Not so – or certainly not so anymore. When I returned early Saturday afternoon for a bit of reconnaissance (mostly Carl Berg), I was dismayed to be told by a guard that the entire building was closed. That, I said confidently to him, was impossible. There were art galleries on the second and third floors that should be open for business. Should be – but apparently are not. As we both made calls on our respective phones, it became clear that there was no one at the Carl Berg Gallery. I left a message; but there was no reason to expect an immediate reply. The building is apparently closed on Saturdays to ALL. You would think this might change, given the re-purposing of so many of these spaces for art galleries – but nooooo. The galleries will simply have to find a way around this. Here’s a shout-out to Carl: I think some kind of party or salon at some bar – say half-way between that area and Culver City (not the Mandrake – which is something apart and unto itself) – should take the place of the gallery’s Saturday hours – which, let’s face it, are as important to clients and collectors as they are to the rest of us art world shmos cruising for a free view, intel, and something to talk about at the next dinner, drinks or, uh, BAR.
So – Erin Dunn (half the reason I was there) will have to wait a bit. But let me just preview more extended comments by saying it is one of the most astonishing debuts I have seen in some time. Carl Berg obviously agreed. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have essentially handed over an entire gallery – an enormous space divided axially into several smaller rooms or galleries – to this young artist, who only recently settled in Los Angeles after graduating from RISD, with only a few appearances in group shows to date. Obviously any artist this young (I’m not sure if she’s even 25) is still evolving and will probably veer some distance from what is on view here. But the assuredness of her vision (and its range) and technique – in addition to the exuberant, fantasist freedom with which it’s deployed – are truly astonishing.
The work is largely drawn from nature – but abstracted, heightened in color, composition and orientation, and scale to something that is a world apart – a garden of earthly delights transformed into a private fairyland of exquisite, almost monstrous creations. The closest comparison (in terms of both color and style) I can make is to the work of Odilon Redon. Some of Dunn’s flower paintings (I’m not sure what else to call them) struck this note most distinctly – but with slightly more immediacy, a more vivid charge. (And for the most part, they are larger than Redon’s typical scale.)
But it is not just the paintings. Berg did not just throw a gallery to Dunn. Her work – which ranges into collage/assemblage, objects, textiles – encompasses a world. It is something that requires this kind of space. I don’t mean to overstate or exaggerate, but it is visionary on an almost Blake-an scale. No, she is not a William Blake, a Bosch or Breughel, or – well perhaps it’s jumping ahead a bit to even put her in the same company with Redon. But it is a vision complete, compelling and coherent. Okay – let’s move on. I’ll come back to the Beached Whale. At some point.
This past evening (which now slips into the 4th) I’ve been to the opening of the Robert Gober-curated Charles Burchfield show at the Hammer – Heat Waves In A Swamp – which is something of a revelation viewed within the context of the past 15 or 20 years of Los Angeles art. I should say, with some embarrassment, a revelation to me – not obviously to Gober, nor to Ann Philbin. I had only the vaguest clue who he was – knew his work dated from some time in the early 20th century, knew he’d worked in Buffalo, New York, vaguely associated him with Ashcan School painters of upstate New York. As far as I knew (which was NOTHING), he might have just been another journeyman artist cum illustrator cum graphic artist (partially true – his work does have a graphic quality; and he earned his living for a time designing (with splendid success) wallpaper. Nothing could be further from the truth. In point of fact, he was the first artist given a solo mid-career retrospective at MoMA – which triggered an extensive correspondence with the redoubtable Alfred Barr. Edward Hopper singled him out for praise early in his career. (It was not long after that encomium that he was able to devote himself full-time to his art.) More recently (well, okay 25 years ago) there was a Metropolitan Museum show; still more recently (1993), a show at The Drawing Center. Well, we know where Ann Philbin was; but where the hell was I? Apparently sleeping under a rock somewhere – what? – my subscription to the Times had lapsed?
Of course, Opera Buddy (who I assumed had skipped in favor of the Resnais movies at LACMA) knew all about Burchfield. “Oh, of course – Charles Burchfield. He was a genius. I love his work.” (Am I awake yet?)
The work is not exactly a ‘wake-up call’, however much a revelation to me. Hopper praised Burchfield for his dedication to painting “life” or nature. But as a ‘naturalist’, Burchfield’s hand (and eye) are heavily stylizing – occasionally abstracting nature into a tapestry of interweaving ornament. It is at once schematic and elaborate – a simplified line extended and elaborated into a motif repeated or integrated within a composition of similar landscape elements – or ‘natural’ motives. And as much of a ‘naturalist’ as he was, he did not shy away from depicting the industrial landscape of the northeast and midwest U.S. It was easy to see how he could lend his talents quite successfully to wallpaper design – and of course, his designs were rich, fantastic. But it was a good thing he was able to get away from that business. His best work – mostly watercolors, or watercolors with goache, ink and graphite – has an almost ethereal quality – qualities he was able to sustain almost to the end of his career. One of the most amazing pieces – slightly monochromatic, almost grisaille – comes close to the end of his life (1961-65), Dandelion Fields and the Moon – silvery and shimmering.
In short (yeah, it deserves more than a ‘short’ – but bear with me for a bit), it’s a terrific show. Who was there? Oh let me get back to you about that.
Before I pick up where I left off – and yes, I’m lagging behind again – here’s a discovery. The Blue Whale is apparently a beached whale on Saturdays. This has always been the case to some extent, as I’m aware – the building has long been mostly devoted to design, architecture, textile and furniture showrooms catering mostly to the trade who keep regular Monday through Friday business week hours. But until recently, it seemed there was always something open (besides the restaurant) – or at least some special event that kept the doors open for some segment of non-trade customers or would-be clients trawling the interior design studios. Not so – or certainly not so anymore. When I returned early Saturday afternoon for a bit of reconnaissance (mostly Carl Berg), I was dismayed to be told by a guard that the entire building was closed. That, I said confidently to him, was impossible. There were art galleries on the second and third floors that should be open for business. Should be – but apparently are not. As we both made calls on our respective phones, it became clear that there was no one at the Carl Berg Gallery. I left a message; but there was no reason to expect an immediate reply. The building is apparently closed on Saturdays to ALL. You would think this might change, given the re-purposing of so many of these spaces for art galleries – but nooooo. The galleries will simply have to find a way around this. Here’s a shout-out to Carl: I think some kind of party or salon at some bar – say half-way between that area and Culver City (not the Mandrake – which is something apart and unto itself) – should take the place of the gallery’s Saturday hours – which, let’s face it, are as important to clients and collectors as they are to the rest of us art world shmos cruising for a free view, intel, and something to talk about at the next dinner, drinks or, uh, BAR.
So – Erin Dunn (half the reason I was there) will have to wait a bit. But let me just preview more extended comments by saying it is one of the most astonishing debuts I have seen in some time. Carl Berg obviously agreed. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have essentially handed over an entire gallery – an enormous space divided axially into several smaller rooms or galleries – to this young artist, who only recently settled in Los Angeles after graduating from RISD, with only a few appearances in group shows to date. Obviously any artist this young (I’m not sure if she’s even 25) is still evolving and will probably veer some distance from what is on view here. But the assuredness of her vision (and its range) and technique – in addition to the exuberant, fantasist freedom with which it’s deployed – are truly astonishing.
The work is largely drawn from nature – but abstracted, heightened in color, composition and orientation, and scale to something that is a world apart – a garden of earthly delights transformed into a private fairyland of exquisite, almost monstrous creations. The closest comparison (in terms of both color and style) I can make is to the work of Odilon Redon. Some of Dunn’s flower paintings (I’m not sure what else to call them) struck this note most distinctly – but with slightly more immediacy, a more vivid charge. (And for the most part, they are larger than Redon’s typical scale.)
But it is not just the paintings. Berg did not just throw a gallery to Dunn. Her work – which ranges into collage/assemblage, objects, textiles – encompasses a world. It is something that requires this kind of space. I don’t mean to overstate or exaggerate, but it is visionary on an almost Blake-an scale. No, she is not a William Blake, a Bosch or Breughel, or – well perhaps it’s jumping ahead a bit to even put her in the same company with Redon. But it is a vision complete, compelling and coherent. Okay – let’s move on. I’ll come back to the Beached Whale. At some point.
This past evening (which now slips into the 4th) I’ve been to the opening of the Robert Gober-curated Charles Burchfield show at the Hammer – Heat Waves In A Swamp – which is something of a revelation viewed within the context of the past 15 or 20 years of Los Angeles art. I should say, with some embarrassment, a revelation to me – not obviously to Gober, nor to Ann Philbin. I had only the vaguest clue who he was – knew his work dated from some time in the early 20th century, knew he’d worked in Buffalo, New York, vaguely associated him with Ashcan School painters of upstate New York. As far as I knew (which was NOTHING), he might have just been another journeyman artist cum illustrator cum graphic artist (partially true – his work does have a graphic quality; and he earned his living for a time designing (with splendid success) wallpaper. Nothing could be further from the truth. In point of fact, he was the first artist given a solo mid-career retrospective at MoMA – which triggered an extensive correspondence with the redoubtable Alfred Barr. Edward Hopper singled him out for praise early in his career. (It was not long after that encomium that he was able to devote himself full-time to his art.) More recently (well, okay 25 years ago) there was a Metropolitan Museum show; still more recently (1993), a show at The Drawing Center. Well, we know where Ann Philbin was; but where the hell was I? Apparently sleeping under a rock somewhere – what? – my subscription to the Times had lapsed?
Of course, Opera Buddy (who I assumed had skipped in favor of the Resnais movies at LACMA) knew all about Burchfield. “Oh, of course – Charles Burchfield. He was a genius. I love his work.” (Am I awake yet?)
The work is not exactly a ‘wake-up call’, however much a revelation to me. Hopper praised Burchfield for his dedication to painting “life” or nature. But as a ‘naturalist’, Burchfield’s hand (and eye) are heavily stylizing – occasionally abstracting nature into a tapestry of interweaving ornament. It is at once schematic and elaborate – a simplified line extended and elaborated into a motif repeated or integrated within a composition of similar landscape elements – or ‘natural’ motives. And as much of a ‘naturalist’ as he was, he did not shy away from depicting the industrial landscape of the northeast and midwest U.S. It was easy to see how he could lend his talents quite successfully to wallpaper design – and of course, his designs were rich, fantastic. But it was a good thing he was able to get away from that business. His best work – mostly watercolors, or watercolors with goache, ink and graphite – has an almost ethereal quality – qualities he was able to sustain almost to the end of his career. One of the most amazing pieces – slightly monochromatic, almost grisaille – comes close to the end of his life (1961-65), Dandelion Fields and the Moon – silvery and shimmering.
In short (yeah, it deserves more than a ‘short’ – but bear with me for a bit), it’s a terrific show. Who was there? Oh let me get back to you about that.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Regarding Henry -- and Alicia
29-30 September 2009
Before I continue my little tour around the two new 'fine arts' floors of the Pacific Design Center, I want to take just a moment to remember two amazing individuals who had an enormous influence on me.
You may have already read that Henry Hopkins -- former (and first, as I recall) director of the Hammer Museum (as well as UCLA's Wight Art Gallery) and for many years, the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, artist, scholar, teacher, mentor to so many here in California -- died Sunday here in L.A. I last saw him not two months ago at an art/nightclub opening that featured the work of a gifted former student. Although he looked well and was in so many ways his affable self, it was clear that he was in delicate health. I only learned the next day that he was still recuperating from major surgery, which made his appearance all the more remarkable -- yet so completely Henry. Intrepid, ever willing to stray from the beaten path, always on the look-out for the new thing (though never unwilling to take a second look at the 'old'), alert to fresh sparks, willing to take on all comers -- that was Henry. However infirm he may have been that early evening, his eyes were ever alert and alive. His always amazing eye for painting was very much in evidence that evening as we walked through the show (of paintings by Angel Chen) -- applauding the artist's colorism, singleing out especially strong paintings, or simply passages of paintings -- at once the teacher's teacher and connoisseur's connoisseur, and always with such grace and good humor. More than once he took me aside to steer me towards an artist or artwork or simply some art world 'person of interest', to impart some bit of news he knew I would relish. That he was always so open, accessible, informative and encouraging to me, personally (and he was no less encouraging to so many), is something I will always cherish.
The second passing I must take note of is only slightly more distant chronologically and geographically. Alicia de Larrocha died in Barcelona Friday; but like most great artists, she was a citizen of the world, and my associations with her are ineluctably linked with New York and Los Angeles. I had the privilege of seeing her perform many times in Los Angeles -- at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion and the Hollywood Bowl -- both in recital and in concert with the L.A. Phil; and in New York at both Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. So much of what I have learned about classical form, and especially Mozart and playing Mozart at the piano, was shaped by her own precise and elegant playing. Brendel later became huge in my 'Mozart (and Schubert) universe' -- but Alicia de Larrocha was the original model, the template forever engraved in my mind whenever I listen or (still more rarely) attempt to play Mozart. And of course, she was my introduction to a world of French and Spanish music: Ravel, Granados, Albeniz. To this day I don't think she has an equal in her interpretation of the Spanish classics.
And, as anyone who attended her recitals can attest, her intelligence, poise and sensitivity, were manifest in almost every piece of music of played. She knew how to 'turn a phrase' and make it new every time, to make us hear it almost as deja vu and epiphany at the same time, to hear it written fresh as if the composer had just set the notes down. She retired only a few years ago -- a celebrated recital she gave with the Tokyo String Quartet at Carnegie Hall -- but for her many fans, her music-making lives forever.
Before I continue my little tour around the two new 'fine arts' floors of the Pacific Design Center, I want to take just a moment to remember two amazing individuals who had an enormous influence on me.
You may have already read that Henry Hopkins -- former (and first, as I recall) director of the Hammer Museum (as well as UCLA's Wight Art Gallery) and for many years, the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, artist, scholar, teacher, mentor to so many here in California -- died Sunday here in L.A. I last saw him not two months ago at an art/nightclub opening that featured the work of a gifted former student. Although he looked well and was in so many ways his affable self, it was clear that he was in delicate health. I only learned the next day that he was still recuperating from major surgery, which made his appearance all the more remarkable -- yet so completely Henry. Intrepid, ever willing to stray from the beaten path, always on the look-out for the new thing (though never unwilling to take a second look at the 'old'), alert to fresh sparks, willing to take on all comers -- that was Henry. However infirm he may have been that early evening, his eyes were ever alert and alive. His always amazing eye for painting was very much in evidence that evening as we walked through the show (of paintings by Angel Chen) -- applauding the artist's colorism, singleing out especially strong paintings, or simply passages of paintings -- at once the teacher's teacher and connoisseur's connoisseur, and always with such grace and good humor. More than once he took me aside to steer me towards an artist or artwork or simply some art world 'person of interest', to impart some bit of news he knew I would relish. That he was always so open, accessible, informative and encouraging to me, personally (and he was no less encouraging to so many), is something I will always cherish.
The second passing I must take note of is only slightly more distant chronologically and geographically. Alicia de Larrocha died in Barcelona Friday; but like most great artists, she was a citizen of the world, and my associations with her are ineluctably linked with New York and Los Angeles. I had the privilege of seeing her perform many times in Los Angeles -- at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion and the Hollywood Bowl -- both in recital and in concert with the L.A. Phil; and in New York at both Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. So much of what I have learned about classical form, and especially Mozart and playing Mozart at the piano, was shaped by her own precise and elegant playing. Brendel later became huge in my 'Mozart (and Schubert) universe' -- but Alicia de Larrocha was the original model, the template forever engraved in my mind whenever I listen or (still more rarely) attempt to play Mozart. And of course, she was my introduction to a world of French and Spanish music: Ravel, Granados, Albeniz. To this day I don't think she has an equal in her interpretation of the Spanish classics.
And, as anyone who attended her recitals can attest, her intelligence, poise and sensitivity, were manifest in almost every piece of music of played. She knew how to 'turn a phrase' and make it new every time, to make us hear it almost as deja vu and epiphany at the same time, to hear it written fresh as if the composer had just set the notes down. She retired only a few years ago -- a celebrated recital she gave with the Tokyo String Quartet at Carnegie Hall -- but for her many fans, her music-making lives forever.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Between Abandon and Atonement
28 September 2009
Back to Thursday night (24 September) – and Saturday night (26 September) – a little late, I know (I could have used that Town Car I was, uh, ranting about, since my venerable Volvo decided to take a powder not long after I had left Kristin Calabrese’s and Josh Aster’s “Itty Bitty” show at Circus of Books; on top of which I lost my cell phone somewhere in that neighborhood. One more expensive detour I really didn’t need.) I left off talking about Mark Dutcher’s sculpture, but didn’t really address the painting; and I have to confess it was difficult to address this painting – in other words, settle my eye, my focus, upon it. Where would I find my way into the painting? How to ‘scan’, to ‘map’ it if you will, to really make sense of the palette (which was dominated by blues – lots of cobalt, Prussian, lapis, sapphire, midnight tones; many textured (including velvet, as Mark pointed out to me)? It was a very large panel. On top of which – or should I say, to the side of which – there was a separate rhomboidal panel or flange flatly painted in blue, hinging or folding out from the main rectangular panel. If I was having a hard time finding my way into the painting, this element was not helping me, nor for that matter helping me find a way out.
That Mark will eventually find his way back into the kind of painting he wants to make (and out of the labyrinth of texture, incident and other painterly problems he seems to have created for himself), I have no doubt. Of the curators, Dan and Ryan Callis, I have my doubts. But then maybe it’s just me: I confess I grew impatient trying to ‘read’ Monique Prieto’s usually very readable text paintings in that trademark Stonehenge megalith font of hers. But at least with Prieto, there’s something to challenge the eye simply in terms of the painting as a whole. Ryan Callis’s painting certainly scanned easily enough – but then most pattern-and-decoration type painting does. Certainly this is the ground for this kind of painting, though more geometricized here, with a nod to the incidental, even figurative elements. But so what? What is it getting at?
[I’m a little cantankerous, right now, aren’t I? You can see why it’s easy to let a blog go. Unless there’s something really exciting to talk about, why bother? It’ll get reviewed eventually, somewhere – hopefully by someone less jaded than I – so why not just let it go without comment? But, you know how the song goes – ‘the best is yet to come’; and so it was this particular evening. It may not keep us blogging here in L.A., but it sure keeps us going out to the art openings, concerts, movies, etc., looking for that new new thing that inspires us in a way nothing ever has before.]
Ryan’s brother/husband, Dan’s work was even more derivative – couched somewhere between a kind of semaphoric colorism and and the aforementioned pattern and decoration. The color was refreshing. It would look good as a summer print, I thought – but then we’re dressing for autumn aren’t we? In other words, could you show me something in a, uh, … INTERESTING?!! I’m not here textile shopping for Marc Jacobs. Ya know what I’m saying?
[No, I’m not going to stop now – you’ll why see in a second.] The most interesting painting – and some of the pieces were not, strictly speaking, painting – was done by an artist named Matty Byloos, whose work I’d never seen before. Speaking of texture, I wanted to get closer to the paintings (there were only two) to get a better sense of its relative thinness or flatness, saturation, and so forth – from a distance the color appeared laid down fairly thinly, perhaps scraped down – but people (the crowd was pretty heavy) kept wandering into my sightlines and so I moved on to the black-and-white drawings – completely different in character from the paintings, and perhaps even more compelling, somehow deeper on some level than the paintings, which had a certain matter-of-fact finality to them. With a foreclosure being filed roughly every seven seconds here in the U.S., what could be more timely, I thought, than paintings of houses that appeared boarded up and abandoned? But really this only scratches the (thin) surface. Abandonment and isolation are certainly keynotes here; but there is something further quietly sublimated off these surfaces, something haunted, forlorn, trapped energies, unfinished business. (Or was I just tired? Ready to get in my car and fall asleep at the wheel?)
The black-and-white drawings – which looked as if taken from some collection of stock images or photos, or handbook illustrations (or perhaps Situationist graphic images – are mostly domestic interiors, situations and genre scenes, suddenly interrupted or intruded upon by black-out balloons or clouds, black mists descending upon the centers and obscuring some critical bit of the depicted transaction. They were, like the houses, haunting and mysterious; schematic ‘bad dream’ images, in which the central action (usually involving one’s own consciousness) is somehow self-censored. I later learned that Byloos is also a writer, which does not surprise me at all – not that there is anything particularly narrative about these pieces – but all of them, paintings and ‘drawings’ (or is it the other way around?) exude an acute psychological intelligence.
There’s more to report: mostly on the group show at Carl Berg and the special showcase space he’s created upstairs on the 5th floor of the Pacific Design Center (I somehow doubt that he’s permanently annexed this space – but its current inhabitant just might make him do it.) In the meantime, remember this name: Erin Dunn.
Back to Thursday night (24 September) – and Saturday night (26 September) – a little late, I know (I could have used that Town Car I was, uh, ranting about, since my venerable Volvo decided to take a powder not long after I had left Kristin Calabrese’s and Josh Aster’s “Itty Bitty” show at Circus of Books; on top of which I lost my cell phone somewhere in that neighborhood. One more expensive detour I really didn’t need.) I left off talking about Mark Dutcher’s sculpture, but didn’t really address the painting; and I have to confess it was difficult to address this painting – in other words, settle my eye, my focus, upon it. Where would I find my way into the painting? How to ‘scan’, to ‘map’ it if you will, to really make sense of the palette (which was dominated by blues – lots of cobalt, Prussian, lapis, sapphire, midnight tones; many textured (including velvet, as Mark pointed out to me)? It was a very large panel. On top of which – or should I say, to the side of which – there was a separate rhomboidal panel or flange flatly painted in blue, hinging or folding out from the main rectangular panel. If I was having a hard time finding my way into the painting, this element was not helping me, nor for that matter helping me find a way out.
That Mark will eventually find his way back into the kind of painting he wants to make (and out of the labyrinth of texture, incident and other painterly problems he seems to have created for himself), I have no doubt. Of the curators, Dan and Ryan Callis, I have my doubts. But then maybe it’s just me: I confess I grew impatient trying to ‘read’ Monique Prieto’s usually very readable text paintings in that trademark Stonehenge megalith font of hers. But at least with Prieto, there’s something to challenge the eye simply in terms of the painting as a whole. Ryan Callis’s painting certainly scanned easily enough – but then most pattern-and-decoration type painting does. Certainly this is the ground for this kind of painting, though more geometricized here, with a nod to the incidental, even figurative elements. But so what? What is it getting at?
[I’m a little cantankerous, right now, aren’t I? You can see why it’s easy to let a blog go. Unless there’s something really exciting to talk about, why bother? It’ll get reviewed eventually, somewhere – hopefully by someone less jaded than I – so why not just let it go without comment? But, you know how the song goes – ‘the best is yet to come’; and so it was this particular evening. It may not keep us blogging here in L.A., but it sure keeps us going out to the art openings, concerts, movies, etc., looking for that new new thing that inspires us in a way nothing ever has before.]
Ryan’s brother/husband, Dan’s work was even more derivative – couched somewhere between a kind of semaphoric colorism and and the aforementioned pattern and decoration. The color was refreshing. It would look good as a summer print, I thought – but then we’re dressing for autumn aren’t we? In other words, could you show me something in a, uh, … INTERESTING?!! I’m not here textile shopping for Marc Jacobs. Ya know what I’m saying?
[No, I’m not going to stop now – you’ll why see in a second.] The most interesting painting – and some of the pieces were not, strictly speaking, painting – was done by an artist named Matty Byloos, whose work I’d never seen before. Speaking of texture, I wanted to get closer to the paintings (there were only two) to get a better sense of its relative thinness or flatness, saturation, and so forth – from a distance the color appeared laid down fairly thinly, perhaps scraped down – but people (the crowd was pretty heavy) kept wandering into my sightlines and so I moved on to the black-and-white drawings – completely different in character from the paintings, and perhaps even more compelling, somehow deeper on some level than the paintings, which had a certain matter-of-fact finality to them. With a foreclosure being filed roughly every seven seconds here in the U.S., what could be more timely, I thought, than paintings of houses that appeared boarded up and abandoned? But really this only scratches the (thin) surface. Abandonment and isolation are certainly keynotes here; but there is something further quietly sublimated off these surfaces, something haunted, forlorn, trapped energies, unfinished business. (Or was I just tired? Ready to get in my car and fall asleep at the wheel?)
The black-and-white drawings – which looked as if taken from some collection of stock images or photos, or handbook illustrations (or perhaps Situationist graphic images – are mostly domestic interiors, situations and genre scenes, suddenly interrupted or intruded upon by black-out balloons or clouds, black mists descending upon the centers and obscuring some critical bit of the depicted transaction. They were, like the houses, haunting and mysterious; schematic ‘bad dream’ images, in which the central action (usually involving one’s own consciousness) is somehow self-censored. I later learned that Byloos is also a writer, which does not surprise me at all – not that there is anything particularly narrative about these pieces – but all of them, paintings and ‘drawings’ (or is it the other way around?) exude an acute psychological intelligence.
There’s more to report: mostly on the group show at Carl Berg and the special showcase space he’s created upstairs on the 5th floor of the Pacific Design Center (I somehow doubt that he’s permanently annexed this space – but its current inhabitant just might make him do it.) In the meantime, remember this name: Erin Dunn.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
RANT-ing and Raving -- but Still Here, Still Looking, Still Listening
25-26 September 2009
I’m big on preambles, as anyone who has ever dipped into this blog knows – but I’m not even sure at this point who, or if ANYONE will be reading this – so I’ll keep this one brief. Every once in a while – and lately, oh let’s face it, MONTHS – awol goes, uh, AWOL. Well, maybe that’s not quite the way to put it. It’s more like – awol goes OVER THE EDGE. The last few months – really the last year – have been like that; and – well, do I really need to explain it? I don’t think so -- but I’ll try to sum up. It’s called LIFE; and it’s a bloody messy business. There’s the economy that’s foreground and background to all of this. There’s the tapestry of emotional turbulence interwoven throughout, but perhaps more dramatically over the past year or so. There’s politics – of the public forum, naturally -- always troubling; of the private, professional and workplace spheres (and the art world, too – but where to comment, intervene? I’m not about to jump into that unless I have my facts in order); and then, quite simply, the demands of working and making a living in this kind of environment. And there’s the stream of practical obstacles, private tribulations and everyday disasters that clutter everyone’s life.
I fall ASLEEP. Okay? It's bloody EXHAUSTING. (And here’s a shout-out: anyone want the part-time job of helping me get up in the morning? I need an assistant for this, no kidding.) So sue me – or better yet, come work for me.
Okay – Thursday night (the 24th): very hot-town-summer-in-the-city. Except, of course, it was fall. Dressed autumnally (fawn wool crepe, Ferragamo, matching suede court shoes), running late from the Black Glass Ellipse of the Flynt Publications Building, I made my way to the International Klein Blue Whale of Pacific Design Center (parking a nightmare), headed towards melt-down of course – but what a way to go. My first PLANNED stop was RANT, a group show curated by Dan Callis and Ryan Callis (brothers? Husband and wife (Ryan I think can be a girl’s name)?) – I know nothing about either of them as artists, and if their own work is any indication, I don’t have much interest for the moment in learning anything more. (I WOULD have liked to know SOMEthing about them, artistically, curatorially; but there was no printed information available at the show – or for that matter a checklist of the work, artist bios (some of whom are well enough known – e.g., Phoebe Unwin, Monique Prieto, Mark Dutcher, Alex Couwenberg), or curatorial statement – not that I really need one. I’m assuming that the title will more or less telegraph what the emphasis is supposed to be.) Touching on that last parenthetical point, I’m not sure if the show quite reached that fevered pitch, but for at least a few of the artists, you could see it moving in that direction, some more idiosyncratically than others. (Monique Prieto’s work, needless to say, fit RIGHT IN – hey, I mean that in a good way, sort of.) And for the rest – well, it added up to enough visual (maybe aural, too) cacophony to get you revved up to that point, more or less.
And I needed to be revved up – I had no idea to what extent. A good part of the third floor (and parts of other floors above and below) is now given over to art gallery space leased cheaply to any number of galleries and independent kunsthalle-type ventures (e.g., Lucas Reiner and John Millais’s space just kitty-corner from the “RANT” space) -- a by-product of the imploded economy and collapsing real estate market both. Most, if not all of them were either opening shows or just open for the spill-over crowds/business. There was a LOT to see.
I confess that my first draw to RANT was my friend, Mark Dutcher’s new work – which continues to evolve in a number of new directions – most interestingly, at least recently, sculptural – painted, of course – Mark’s commitment to painting is firmly manifest, as any of his friends would tell you. But I think sculpture has become much more than simply a digression for Mark. What will be interesting in the future will be the way he ‘brings it all back home’ to the ‘two-dimensional’ painted work. He is working out problems in both structure and ‘narrative’, if you will (or perhaps more simply ‘incidental’ – I’ll elaborate at some point on). The sculptures – painted mostly in primaries – reds, blues, yellows – were vertical, allusive to the figure mostly in terms of their human scale, segmented in separate rectangular and oblong wooden blocks – a cross between a kind of Giacometti-esque David Smith and a Jenga set (does anybody besides ME remember (and MISS!) Jenga – those little odd, notched pieces of balsa-wood that you stacked and stacked and stacked until some klutz (ME!) would knock them over? A great game to play while drinking cocktails or just before sex). Many of them were topped off with what functioned almost as miniature platforms for further incident – smaller elements arrayed across the tops (capitals? – or other architectural influence).
I have to break off – YES, I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING. Just forget about it. Please. I’ll be back. I promise. It’ll be a few hours. HELLO! – it’s L.A. – it takes a while to get around this bloody town. (Oh, by the way, Paige – would you mind sending a car? My Volvo is having, uh, circulation issues. And it better be a Lincoln Town Car. Oh yeah, did I tell you the driver needs to be cute? S/He does. Preferably someone with a first name of either Jimmy or Cindy. Preferably Latino/Mexican -- black hair, chiseled features, beautiful, smoked-mirror-smouldering eyes -- someone presentable and .... Well ... my Volvo isn't the only thing that needs servicing.) (I do go on, don't I?) My first stop is the Circus of Books where Kristin Calabrese and Joshua Aster have curated a show of “itty bitty paintings” that, knowing what those two are capable of, is likely to be GENIUS. (ps – more about Josh Aster, later, too.)
I’m big on preambles, as anyone who has ever dipped into this blog knows – but I’m not even sure at this point who, or if ANYONE will be reading this – so I’ll keep this one brief. Every once in a while – and lately, oh let’s face it, MONTHS – awol goes, uh, AWOL. Well, maybe that’s not quite the way to put it. It’s more like – awol goes OVER THE EDGE. The last few months – really the last year – have been like that; and – well, do I really need to explain it? I don’t think so -- but I’ll try to sum up. It’s called LIFE; and it’s a bloody messy business. There’s the economy that’s foreground and background to all of this. There’s the tapestry of emotional turbulence interwoven throughout, but perhaps more dramatically over the past year or so. There’s politics – of the public forum, naturally -- always troubling; of the private, professional and workplace spheres (and the art world, too – but where to comment, intervene? I’m not about to jump into that unless I have my facts in order); and then, quite simply, the demands of working and making a living in this kind of environment. And there’s the stream of practical obstacles, private tribulations and everyday disasters that clutter everyone’s life.
I fall ASLEEP. Okay? It's bloody EXHAUSTING. (And here’s a shout-out: anyone want the part-time job of helping me get up in the morning? I need an assistant for this, no kidding.) So sue me – or better yet, come work for me.
Okay – Thursday night (the 24th): very hot-town-summer-in-the-city. Except, of course, it was fall. Dressed autumnally (fawn wool crepe, Ferragamo, matching suede court shoes), running late from the Black Glass Ellipse of the Flynt Publications Building, I made my way to the International Klein Blue Whale of Pacific Design Center (parking a nightmare), headed towards melt-down of course – but what a way to go. My first PLANNED stop was RANT, a group show curated by Dan Callis and Ryan Callis (brothers? Husband and wife (Ryan I think can be a girl’s name)?) – I know nothing about either of them as artists, and if their own work is any indication, I don’t have much interest for the moment in learning anything more. (I WOULD have liked to know SOMEthing about them, artistically, curatorially; but there was no printed information available at the show – or for that matter a checklist of the work, artist bios (some of whom are well enough known – e.g., Phoebe Unwin, Monique Prieto, Mark Dutcher, Alex Couwenberg), or curatorial statement – not that I really need one. I’m assuming that the title will more or less telegraph what the emphasis is supposed to be.) Touching on that last parenthetical point, I’m not sure if the show quite reached that fevered pitch, but for at least a few of the artists, you could see it moving in that direction, some more idiosyncratically than others. (Monique Prieto’s work, needless to say, fit RIGHT IN – hey, I mean that in a good way, sort of.) And for the rest – well, it added up to enough visual (maybe aural, too) cacophony to get you revved up to that point, more or less.
And I needed to be revved up – I had no idea to what extent. A good part of the third floor (and parts of other floors above and below) is now given over to art gallery space leased cheaply to any number of galleries and independent kunsthalle-type ventures (e.g., Lucas Reiner and John Millais’s space just kitty-corner from the “RANT” space) -- a by-product of the imploded economy and collapsing real estate market both. Most, if not all of them were either opening shows or just open for the spill-over crowds/business. There was a LOT to see.
I confess that my first draw to RANT was my friend, Mark Dutcher’s new work – which continues to evolve in a number of new directions – most interestingly, at least recently, sculptural – painted, of course – Mark’s commitment to painting is firmly manifest, as any of his friends would tell you. But I think sculpture has become much more than simply a digression for Mark. What will be interesting in the future will be the way he ‘brings it all back home’ to the ‘two-dimensional’ painted work. He is working out problems in both structure and ‘narrative’, if you will (or perhaps more simply ‘incidental’ – I’ll elaborate at some point on). The sculptures – painted mostly in primaries – reds, blues, yellows – were vertical, allusive to the figure mostly in terms of their human scale, segmented in separate rectangular and oblong wooden blocks – a cross between a kind of Giacometti-esque David Smith and a Jenga set (does anybody besides ME remember (and MISS!) Jenga – those little odd, notched pieces of balsa-wood that you stacked and stacked and stacked until some klutz (ME!) would knock them over? A great game to play while drinking cocktails or just before sex). Many of them were topped off with what functioned almost as miniature platforms for further incident – smaller elements arrayed across the tops (capitals? – or other architectural influence).
I have to break off – YES, I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING. Just forget about it. Please. I’ll be back. I promise. It’ll be a few hours. HELLO! – it’s L.A. – it takes a while to get around this bloody town. (Oh, by the way, Paige – would you mind sending a car? My Volvo is having, uh, circulation issues. And it better be a Lincoln Town Car. Oh yeah, did I tell you the driver needs to be cute? S/He does. Preferably someone with a first name of either Jimmy or Cindy. Preferably Latino/Mexican -- black hair, chiseled features, beautiful, smoked-mirror-smouldering eyes -- someone presentable and .... Well ... my Volvo isn't the only thing that needs servicing.) (I do go on, don't I?) My first stop is the Circus of Books where Kristin Calabrese and Joshua Aster have curated a show of “itty bitty paintings” that, knowing what those two are capable of, is likely to be GENIUS. (ps – more about Josh Aster, later, too.)
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough
26 - 27 June 2009
I hesitated to post one of my ‘quick-ones’ (thus making it not such a quick one, after all, no?) the other night (well my blasted computer and laptop had something to do with it, too); but having just come from Joshua Pieper’s opening at Rosamund Felsen (good show, by the way – conceptual/material handled with a very dry, delicate wit), where I had a conversation with Steve Hurd and friends on this very subject, I’m thinking I’m not the only person in the L.A. art world to have been similarly affected by the sudden (and still so very shocking) death of Michael Jackson – a genius entertainer and true pop superstar, whatever else you want to say about him.
Like so many of my generation (no – I can’t remember what that is exactly – (x + y + z)2, I think), I watched Michael Jackson’s career unfold practically from its inception. I listened and danced to Motown music, including many Jackson 5 singles, some of which struck me as Motown bubblegum, some which actually had an already distinct pop verve – a kind of fusion of Motown-style rhythm & blues and Lennon-McCartney inflected Anglo-American pop (“The Love You Save”; “Never Can Say Goodbye”; “Shake Your Body Down to the Ground” – which seems in retrospect like the Motown precursor to his later “Wanna Be Starting Something” – that brilliant lead track off Thriller). I think “Ben” was actually my favorite Jackson 5 single at the time simply for its sheer perversity. (I confess that my early pop music tastes leaned in the direction of hard blues (Anglo-American, alas) rock and downtown/art/underground sounds (the two poles of which I’m thinking would be somewhere around groups like the Stones and the Velvets). In other words, this was a pretty white pop culture. There were outstanding exceptions, of course: Aretha, Stevie Wonder, to say nothing of scores of black jazz artists from Miles Davis to McCoy Tyner. But jazz and the classical world stand somewhat off to the side of the mainstream pop world. And it was that world that the grown-up Michael Jackson would take by storm and utterly transform within less than a decade from his first solo records for Motown.
That said, it was an explosion heard round the globe that somehow only penetrated my very white, punk downtown world when, inevitably, it penetrated almost every style of pop music being produced during the decade that followed – with its sheer exuberance, eclecticism and irresistible rhythmic energy. That ‘force’ had ‘a lot of power.’ Within a couple years of its release, there was no escaping it – and who would want to? I recall a hipper-than-thou loft party in SoHo sometime in 1982 where the dance music mix began and ended with music from Off the Wall. Everyone there was super-smart, punk or professional – or both, hyper-educated, informed, engaged, so cool we would have turned blue if the party didn’t start heating up – and it did. We tried so hard to be detached and dispassionate, clutching our scotch and joints (and checking each other out, too, natch) – but the sound system was very good and the music swept everyone away. There was no holding back. ‘Get on the floor and dance’ the music commanded; and we obeyed. Half-way through the Off the Wall tracks on the mix, the loft was swirling with movement – jagged, lyrical, undulating, pulsating – just like the music. It was pure joy. I don’t think I had sex that night, but I definitely had an orgasm or two.
A couple of years ago, I was on my way home from a late and very frustrating night at my Flynt Building office, feeling like death and wondering for the umpteenth time how I could possibly wake up the next morning for more of the same. I was spinning the radio dial between news, jazz, classical and indie-rock stations aimlessly, not even caring what I heard from one to the next, when the first bars of “Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough” – with those urgent moans of Michael’s – suddenly began seeping from my speakers. Something compelled me to turn the volume up. And up – the music poured from the speakers as if on an ecstatic wave (I have a great sound system in my car). At that moment, it was like a musical speedball – dreamy, ecstatic, yet pulsating with energy. I was in heaven. And I wasn’t going to stop ‘til I got enough – which meant a stop at Amoeba to pick up a CD (my vinyl copy bit the dust what seems like millennia ago). (Good thing, too, huh? Amazon reported that the entire Michael Jackson catalog had sold out. They’re going to have to bloody re-issue most of the catalog. Who knows? – Michael’s $400 million debt may be liquidated a lot quicker than any of us would have guessed.)
Beyond the music, what made Thriller magical – really a kind of pop miracle no different from one of the great Freed-unit M-G-M musicals – was its conceptualization as a kind of global multi-media entertainment package. The amazing dancing and choreography that may have been born out of disco and musical theatre but went so much further. There was Astaire and Robbins in it, sure – but also Fosse and something you can only call Michael Jackson. We were witnessing the birth of a superstar and it was something to see. Something you had to be blind not to see – you couldn’t take your eyes off him.
Thursday evening (25 June), I was out with Opera Buddy – looking at an opera on film natch – an amazing 2008 Salzburg Festival production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. (Claus Guth did the production and Bertrand de Billy conducts members of the Vienna Philharmonic. The Don Gio is a very powerful Christopher Maltman, but he is almost eclipsed by his amazing – and very sexy – Leporello, played by Erwin Schrott. It’s a strange, almost surreal, very contemporary production – but I loved it; and of course the music is sublime – more on that in a second if I don’t run out of steam.)
Anyway, we almost got into an argument. “Michael Jackson dead!” – she all but cackled. Well, there was no escaping the shock of it. “ … (yawn) Oh so what … another pervert bites the dust…. What was he going to do with his career, anyway?...” Well, setting aside the probable fact that, whether his tour or new material would have been successful or not, whether he would have actually succeeded in making a comeback that, to many, seemed something of a long-shot, there would have been much he might have offered as a producer or mentor for new talent – i.e., the role that Berry Gordy, Quincy Jones and others had played for him; how, I asked, can you deny, not simply his manifest talent, but what he did actually produce. Joy, pure and simple. He brought joy to hundreds of millions if not billions of people all over the planet.
He was a strange cat – completely over-the-top-twisted, screwed up – issues for years. He did weird stuff and some terrible and probably out and out criminal things to some people (although regarding these incidents, you have to wonder: where were these kids’ bloody – more like blood-sucking – parents? – vultures.) And, come on for chrissake – nobody died. In fact they probably had a fabulous time (so they need a few years of therapy – at least we know they can afford it). Jackson was no Phil Spector – a complete menace to society who was a one-man argument for preventive detention years before he actually offed some poor girl.
Maybe Michael’s best years were behind him. Oh they probably were. But, like entertainment geniuses before him, he brought magic to thousands of millions. He brought us joy and will keep on delivering it as long as we can still hear music. No, he was not Mozart; and no we are not always in the right space, physically, emotionally, to enjoy what he offered us. But when we are – and we always will be at some point – it will seem like the amazing gift it is – a bacchant’s cry (and laugh) – a power of rapturous joy that we can never have enough of.
I hesitated to post one of my ‘quick-ones’ (thus making it not such a quick one, after all, no?) the other night (well my blasted computer and laptop had something to do with it, too); but having just come from Joshua Pieper’s opening at Rosamund Felsen (good show, by the way – conceptual/material handled with a very dry, delicate wit), where I had a conversation with Steve Hurd and friends on this very subject, I’m thinking I’m not the only person in the L.A. art world to have been similarly affected by the sudden (and still so very shocking) death of Michael Jackson – a genius entertainer and true pop superstar, whatever else you want to say about him.
Like so many of my generation (no – I can’t remember what that is exactly – (x + y + z)2, I think), I watched Michael Jackson’s career unfold practically from its inception. I listened and danced to Motown music, including many Jackson 5 singles, some of which struck me as Motown bubblegum, some which actually had an already distinct pop verve – a kind of fusion of Motown-style rhythm & blues and Lennon-McCartney inflected Anglo-American pop (“The Love You Save”; “Never Can Say Goodbye”; “Shake Your Body Down to the Ground” – which seems in retrospect like the Motown precursor to his later “Wanna Be Starting Something” – that brilliant lead track off Thriller). I think “Ben” was actually my favorite Jackson 5 single at the time simply for its sheer perversity. (I confess that my early pop music tastes leaned in the direction of hard blues (Anglo-American, alas) rock and downtown/art/underground sounds (the two poles of which I’m thinking would be somewhere around groups like the Stones and the Velvets). In other words, this was a pretty white pop culture. There were outstanding exceptions, of course: Aretha, Stevie Wonder, to say nothing of scores of black jazz artists from Miles Davis to McCoy Tyner. But jazz and the classical world stand somewhat off to the side of the mainstream pop world. And it was that world that the grown-up Michael Jackson would take by storm and utterly transform within less than a decade from his first solo records for Motown.
That said, it was an explosion heard round the globe that somehow only penetrated my very white, punk downtown world when, inevitably, it penetrated almost every style of pop music being produced during the decade that followed – with its sheer exuberance, eclecticism and irresistible rhythmic energy. That ‘force’ had ‘a lot of power.’ Within a couple years of its release, there was no escaping it – and who would want to? I recall a hipper-than-thou loft party in SoHo sometime in 1982 where the dance music mix began and ended with music from Off the Wall. Everyone there was super-smart, punk or professional – or both, hyper-educated, informed, engaged, so cool we would have turned blue if the party didn’t start heating up – and it did. We tried so hard to be detached and dispassionate, clutching our scotch and joints (and checking each other out, too, natch) – but the sound system was very good and the music swept everyone away. There was no holding back. ‘Get on the floor and dance’ the music commanded; and we obeyed. Half-way through the Off the Wall tracks on the mix, the loft was swirling with movement – jagged, lyrical, undulating, pulsating – just like the music. It was pure joy. I don’t think I had sex that night, but I definitely had an orgasm or two.
A couple of years ago, I was on my way home from a late and very frustrating night at my Flynt Building office, feeling like death and wondering for the umpteenth time how I could possibly wake up the next morning for more of the same. I was spinning the radio dial between news, jazz, classical and indie-rock stations aimlessly, not even caring what I heard from one to the next, when the first bars of “Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough” – with those urgent moans of Michael’s – suddenly began seeping from my speakers. Something compelled me to turn the volume up. And up – the music poured from the speakers as if on an ecstatic wave (I have a great sound system in my car). At that moment, it was like a musical speedball – dreamy, ecstatic, yet pulsating with energy. I was in heaven. And I wasn’t going to stop ‘til I got enough – which meant a stop at Amoeba to pick up a CD (my vinyl copy bit the dust what seems like millennia ago). (Good thing, too, huh? Amazon reported that the entire Michael Jackson catalog had sold out. They’re going to have to bloody re-issue most of the catalog. Who knows? – Michael’s $400 million debt may be liquidated a lot quicker than any of us would have guessed.)
Beyond the music, what made Thriller magical – really a kind of pop miracle no different from one of the great Freed-unit M-G-M musicals – was its conceptualization as a kind of global multi-media entertainment package. The amazing dancing and choreography that may have been born out of disco and musical theatre but went so much further. There was Astaire and Robbins in it, sure – but also Fosse and something you can only call Michael Jackson. We were witnessing the birth of a superstar and it was something to see. Something you had to be blind not to see – you couldn’t take your eyes off him.
Thursday evening (25 June), I was out with Opera Buddy – looking at an opera on film natch – an amazing 2008 Salzburg Festival production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. (Claus Guth did the production and Bertrand de Billy conducts members of the Vienna Philharmonic. The Don Gio is a very powerful Christopher Maltman, but he is almost eclipsed by his amazing – and very sexy – Leporello, played by Erwin Schrott. It’s a strange, almost surreal, very contemporary production – but I loved it; and of course the music is sublime – more on that in a second if I don’t run out of steam.)
Anyway, we almost got into an argument. “Michael Jackson dead!” – she all but cackled. Well, there was no escaping the shock of it. “ … (yawn) Oh so what … another pervert bites the dust…. What was he going to do with his career, anyway?...” Well, setting aside the probable fact that, whether his tour or new material would have been successful or not, whether he would have actually succeeded in making a comeback that, to many, seemed something of a long-shot, there would have been much he might have offered as a producer or mentor for new talent – i.e., the role that Berry Gordy, Quincy Jones and others had played for him; how, I asked, can you deny, not simply his manifest talent, but what he did actually produce. Joy, pure and simple. He brought joy to hundreds of millions if not billions of people all over the planet.
He was a strange cat – completely over-the-top-twisted, screwed up – issues for years. He did weird stuff and some terrible and probably out and out criminal things to some people (although regarding these incidents, you have to wonder: where were these kids’ bloody – more like blood-sucking – parents? – vultures.) And, come on for chrissake – nobody died. In fact they probably had a fabulous time (so they need a few years of therapy – at least we know they can afford it). Jackson was no Phil Spector – a complete menace to society who was a one-man argument for preventive detention years before he actually offed some poor girl.
Maybe Michael’s best years were behind him. Oh they probably were. But, like entertainment geniuses before him, he brought magic to thousands of millions. He brought us joy and will keep on delivering it as long as we can still hear music. No, he was not Mozart; and no we are not always in the right space, physically, emotionally, to enjoy what he offered us. But when we are – and we always will be at some point – it will seem like the amazing gift it is – a bacchant’s cry (and laugh) – a power of rapturous joy that we can never have enough of.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
