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Wabi-Sabi - beauty found in imperfection
Wabi-Sabi - beauty found in imperfection
POSTED JANUARY 8, 2019
“Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”
Contrary to the ancient Greece's celebration of an idealized perfect beauty, Japan's aesthetic sensibility finds beauty in imperfection. Wabi-sabi represents a Japanese world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”...READ
Poet Mary Oliver "chose to live in the moment and be dazzled by it"
Poet Mary Oliver "chose to live in the moment and be dazzled by it"
POSTED JAN 20, 2019
Contemporary poet Mary Oliver passed away on January 17. "With stark simplicity, she offered us both spiritual guidance and common sense, all of which was garnered from lessons she learned while simply meandering in the woods...Mary Oliver’s gift was her ability to marvel at the world with an unsentimental acceptance that it (and we) are temporary...includes selections from her poetry read by the author...READ
Kandinsky, Spirituality, Music and Abstract Art
Kandinsky, Spirituality, Music and Abstract Art
POSTED FEB 9, 2019
Wassily Kandinsky was one of the most influential painters of the early 20th century. He was a theorist who believed that painting was deeply spiritual and that abstract art was the ideal visual mode to express the "inner necessity" of the artist and to convey universal human emotions and ideas. He saw a connection between painting and music, which he considered the most transcendent non-objective art, and he "strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation". Beginning in 1909, Kandinsky started painting works whose titles linked his painting to musical terms: Impressions, Improvisations, and Compositions... READ MORE
Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites
Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites
POSTED FEB 21, 2019
One of the first pieces of classical music that I really enjoyed was the Peer Gynt suites. I listened to Edvard Grieg's beautiful work in a high school music appreciation class. I have never gotten over how good it made me feel when I first heard it - particularly the relaxing and uplifting "Morning Mood". What a great way to start a day!
Grieg wrote the music for Henrik Ibsen's five-act play of the same name, published in 1867. The play follows the titular character on a journey from the mountains of Norway to the deserts of North Africa. According to a 2006 review by Klaus Van Den Berg, "its origins are romantic, but the play also anticipates the fragmentations of emerging modernism" and the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones." (Wikipedia)
Grieg extracted eight pieces from his original composition and created the two Peer Gynt suites.
Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 [YouTube video below right] has four sections: "Morning Mood" (in E major); "The Death of Åse" (in B minor); Anitra's Dance (in A minor); and In the Hall of the Mountain King (in B minor).
The four sections of Peer Gynt Suite No.2 are "The Abduction of the Bride. Ingrid's Lament" (in G minor); Arabian Dance (in C major); Peer Gynt's Homecoming (Stormy Evening on the Sea) (in F♯ minor); Solveig's Song (in A minor).
A few quotes on the power of music
A few quotes on the power of music
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. - Aldous Huxley
Without music, life would be a mistake. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. - Oliver Sacks
Music, the combiner, nothing more spiritual, nothing more sensuous, a god, yet completely human, advances, prevails, holds highest place; supplying in certain wants and quarters what nothing else could supply. - Walt Whitman
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: "The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music." - Kurt Vonnegut
Antiwar Literature, Film and Art
Antiwar Literature, Film and Art
POSTED MAR 12, 2019
I have been reading Hermann Hesse's "If the War Goes On...", a collection of essays and vignettes subtitled "Reflections on War and Politics". The earliest in the collection dates from September 1914 - just after the outbreak of hostilities that were to become "The Great War." Hesse, better known for his novels like Siddhartha and The Glass Bead Game, was passionate in his lifelong espousal of pacifism and internationalism...Although there are earlier instances (such as "The Red Badge of Courage"), it was WWI that gave rise to some of the most powerful antiwar literature, including poems by soldier poets and novels by returning veterans (such as Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1928) and The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek (1923)....READ MORE at "The Arts' Antiwar Posts" page
Scenes from the original All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Piet Mondrian: Abstract art as an expression of "pure reality"
Piet Mondrian: Abstract art as an expression of "pure reality"
POSTED MARCH 29, 2019
“Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture.” - Piet Mondrian
Like Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was a pioneer of 20th century abstract painting. Like Kandinsky, he believed that art had a spiritual dimension that could best be expressed in abstraction. The two are considered to be the first artists to have achieved a truly abstract visual language in painting. While Kandinsky was inspired towards abstraction by the Impressionists - in particular, Claude Monet - Mondrian was taken with the Cubists....Mondrian was in his late 40's before he began painting in the noncolor:primary color:straight line style that he is known for and which make these paintings instantly recognizable as "Mondrians". READ MORE
Van Gogh Multimedia Exhibit at the Carrières de Lumières
Van Gogh Multimedia Exhibit at the Carrières de Lumières
POSTED APRIL 9, 2019
The Carrières de Lumières is a most unusual art museum. Lonely Planet describes it: "Inside the chilly galleries of a former limestone quarry, this peculiar but intriguing attraction is like an underground audiovisual art gallery, with giant projections illuminating the walls, floor and ceiling, accompanied by an oration and swelling music." Located in the town of Chateaux des beaux in Provence, it is about a half hour drive from Arles, and so is a fitting location for its current Van Gogh exhibit. Van Gogh moved to Arles in February 1888 with some hope of establishing an artist colony there. It was perhaps the most prolific period of his painting career. During his 15 month stay until May 1889, he executed about 300 paintings and drawings there. "The exhibition, called Atelier des Lumières or "Workshop of Lights," takes the art of well-known artists and styles and creates a totally immersive experience by blanketing the space's 75,000 square feet and 50 foot-high walls with it.
"Right now, and through January 5th, 2020, you can wander through the mesmerizing, and often chaotic world of Vincent Van Gogh." (Upworthy, March 22 link left)
Related article: How Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin Inspired 20th Century Art: From Van Gogh to Expressionism
Antiwar Literature and Film - World War II
Antiwar Literature and Film - World War II
POSTED APR 25, 2019
World War I and its aftermath gave rise to some of the world's most powerful antiwar literature (post below). WWII also produced both literature and films - from both the vanquished Axis powers and from the victorious Allies. "Das Boot" (1981) is a German film about a WWII U-boat mission. While a war correspondent observes day-to-day life aboard the U-boat, the captain struggles to maintain his own motivation as he attempts to keep the ship's morale up in the face of fierce battles, intense storms and dwindling supplies....Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, turns 50 this year. Based on his own WWII experience, Vonnegut writes of the Allied bombing of Dresden, which he survived in an underground bunker as a prisoner of war...READ MORE at "The Arts' Antiwar Posts" page
Art as Therapy
Art as Therapy
POSTED MAY 17, 2019
Art has been used for religious purposes, to instruct, to entertain, to present beauty and awe, to depict the natural world and human likenesses, to memorialize, and to attempt to express pure reality. In their book "Art as Therapy", philosopher Alain de Botton and art historian John Armstrong examine what Maria Popova calls "art’s most intimate purpose": its ability to mediate our psychological shortcomings and assuage our anxieties about imperfection. The authors write: "Art has the power to extend our capacities beyond those that nature has originally endowed us with. Art compensates us for certain inborn weaknesses, in this case of the mind rather than the body, weaknesses that we can refer to as psychological frailties." READ
The 76 Greatest Musical Works from the Past 1000 Years
The 76 Greatest Musical Works from the Past 1000 Years
POSTED MAY 29, 2019
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Sirius XM's Symphony Hall station (#76) played what they dubbed "the 76 greatest musical works from the past 1000 years." As they noted, it was a very subjective exercise. Still the final list of these classical masterpieces had many of the expected compositions - for example, nearly half of Robert Greenberg's "30 Greatest Orchestral Works" make the list. I was happy to see in the Top 76 some of my personal favorites that are not on Greenberg's list - Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 (#70), Pachelbel's Canon in D Major (#71), and Schubert's Symphony No. 8 - the "Unfinished" (#45). A surprise (for me at least) was the choice for #1. Hint: it was not Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Here's a link to Sirius XM's list of the 76 greatest classical compositions compiled by listener and blogger Kaye Spencer.
And here's a link to a YouTube video of a live performance of their #1 pick.
The Bomb and the Peace Movement: Mid-century antiwar symbols and songs, literature and film
The Bomb and the Peace Movement: Mid-century antiwar symbols and songs, literature and film
POSTED JUNE 14, 2019
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the nuclear arms race of the post-war years generated an awareness of the total existential threat that war posed in the 20th century. Peace and disarmament movements formed around the world. Artists, song writers, novelists and others produced works that captured and catalyzed these movements. Pablo Picasso's "La Colombe" ("The Dove"), the "peace sign", anti-war songs, novels and films from and about the era...READ MORE at "The Arts' Antiwar Posts" page
A Night at the Opera
A Night at the Opera
POSTED JUNE 29, 2019
A brief early history and explanation of opera's vocal and instrumental forms, and six great short YouTube videos of some opera selections...READ
The Surrealists
The Surrealists
POSTED JULY 16, 2019
Surrealism was a cultural movement that arose in Paris around 1920. It grew out of the anti-war Dada movement, but emerging as it did during a decade of peace and prosperity, had very different goals...The Surrealist poets, writers, and visual artists stage an psychological retreat from reality, either past or present, and seek what the poet, Guillaume Apollinaire, called “sur-reality,” or a realism outside and beyond perceived reality....Surrealist artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects, and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself....From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory...selections from Surrealist poets and artists...READ
Vietnam - Antiwar Protest Songs, Novels, and Films
Vietnam - Antiwar Protest Songs, Novels, and Films
POSTED AUG 1, 2019
America's participation in the Vietnam War was one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in our history, perhaps the biggest. Protest songs against the war both defined and energized the resistance during the years the war was being fought. Anti-war film and literature, for the most part, came later as the war, at least the US role in it, came to an end. Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant, Pete Seeger's "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", Country Joe McDonald & the Fish's "I-Feel-Like-I'm Fixing-to-Die Rag", Tim O'Brien's novels, American film trailers and Vietnamese movies...READ MORE at "The Arts' Antiwar Posts" page
Toni Morrison: “Something that is loved is never lost”
Toni Morrison: “Something that is loved is never lost”
POSTED AUGUST 12, 2019
Nobel-prize-winning writer Toni Morrison passed away at the age of 88 on August 5. Her novels explored black identity in America, and, as the Dallas Morning News put it: "She faced, ferociously and luminously, the horror of America’s racist sins and the waves of pain and destruction that washed over the generations that followed." Quotes, excerpts, reflections on her life and legacy...
Maria Gainza's thoroughly unique first novel
Maria Gainza's thoroughly unique first novel
POSTED SEPTEMBER 2, 2019
"Optic Nerve", the first work of fiction from Argentinian art writer Maria Gainza, is a most unique and beautiful novel - a series of vignettes from the life of an Argentinian woman, also called Maria, whose obsession is art. Indeed, Maria sees her life through the prism of art. Each story is tied to an artist whose paintings have affected her and includes anecdotes from the painters' lives, jargon-free observations on their paintings, and most importantly how the work affects her. We get insight into the art of seeing and on the relationship between art and life....READ
Symphony Hall listeners choose the 76 greatest musical works
Symphony Hall listeners choose the 76 greatest musical works
POSTED SEPTEMBER 10, 2019
Over the Labor Day Weekend, Sirius XM's Symphony Hall station reprised its list of the 76 greatest classical music works - with a twist. They asked their listeners to choose. As might be expected, there are some notable differences from the list selected by the station's program hosts for the Memorial Day Weekend. READ
A Tale of Two Antonio's: Vivaldi, Stradivari and the evolution of classical music
A Tale of Two Antonio's: Vivaldi, Stradivari and the evolution of classical music
POSTED SEP 26, 2019
Choral music. particularly in its religious form, was the dominant form of Western music until the end of the Renaissance, circa 1600... Then along came violinist, composer, and priest Antonio Vivaldi, who "merged religious melodies, opera and a new level of violin playing to launch a new era of music," an era in which instrumental music would become the dominant form. T His Italian contemporary, Antonio Stradivari, was distilling the lessons of five generations of violin makers in Cremona and improving the violin by an order of magnitude. Once the violin was capable of producing the sounds he wanted, Vivaldi put it to use. Thanks to Vivaldi and Stradivari, the violin would become the leading instrument of classical music. READ
The Realists
The Realists
POSTED OCTOBER 10, 2019
In the mid-19th century, a movement arose that dominated the art scene after the Romantics and before the Impressionists. Realism is considered to be the first modern art movement, rejecting traditional forms of art, literature, and social organization as outmoded in the wake of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution...Although the "revolutions of 1848" all ended in failure, "no European politician, for the sake of his own political survival, could ignore the masses and public opinion, and often made use of ideology that could appeal to the masses." Artists portrayed this growing democratic spirit in their paintings. The Realists attempted to depict individuals of all social classes and did not avoid the unpleasant aspects of life, which were giving rise to much of the unrest. READ
Autumn
Autumn
POSTED OCTOBER 31, 2019
Autumn says "change" like no other season. Though that change is sometimes identified with decline and loss, the Fall* is also a time for brilliant colors, intriguing mists, fruitful harvests, and boisterous festivals. John Keats' ode "To Autumn" is one of his finest poems and opens with a wonderful line ("Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness") that captures the essence of the season...As the composer Antonio Vivaldi reminds us, Autumn is a respite from the heat of summer before the winter's chill. Artists, of course, have celebrated the season in their paintings...READ
The "Five Immortals" of Venetian Painting
The "Five Immortals" of Venetian Painting
POSTED NOVEMBER 7, 2019
The Renaissance, which began in Italy in the mid-fourteenth century, was a key step towards the creation of the modern era. Developments and revolutions in the arts and sciences began with the resurgence of interest in classical Greek and Roman sources...The Renaissance saw the invention of linear perspective and chiaroscuro in painting, sculptures based on Roman and Greek prototypes, the development and spread of vernacular literature, an increased reliance on observation in science, and the development of diplomatic conventions...In her novel Optic Nerve, Maria Gainza mentions "The Five Immortals" of Venetian painting...these "five undisputed immortals of Venetian painting" are Tintoretto, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Veronese - painters whose lives spanned the Italian High Renaissance and whose works helped redefine painting in the Western world. In addition to the Renaissance linear perspective and more humanistic approach to their subjects, Venetian painters are renowned for their emphasis of color over line.
Before Bach, there was Corelli
Before Bach, there was Corelli
POSTED NOVEMBER 19, 2019
With few exceptions, the generation of Baroque composers before Bach, Vivaldi and Handel is not well known. Nevertheless, they played an important role in the development of classical music and produced beautiful, melodic music that touches audiences to this day. Among the most influential was the composer and violinist Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713). Fewer than ninety of his pieces survive. Yet as a violinist,teacher and ensemble director, he helped establish standards of form, style, and playing techniques that influenced several generations of musicians and composers. "No one understood the singing qualities of the violin better than he did."...READ AND LISTEN
Photography as Art
Photography as Art
POSTED DECEMBER 10, 2019
The first photograph was taken in 1826. Almost since then, people have questioned whether photography is art. Could anything so "literal", so seemingly uncreative, actually be a work of art? Creativity in photography is primarily one of composition, framing what is seen in an imaginative manner or arranging the elements of the picture in an unusual way. Portraits, for example, often use lighting and staging to create a dramatic effect. As in all art, the ability to move us, to engage our emotions, is an important factor. In recent decades, fine-art photography has been acknowledged (as in the National Gallery show) as fully deserving to be labeled art....READ
The Best Films of All-Time: Three Lists
The Best Films of All-Time: Three Lists
POSTED DECEMBER 30, 2019
All best lists have one thing in common - they are subjective. In the realm of film, there are so many things to consider that choosing a "best" is even more subjective ...in recent years, there have been 50 or so Oscar award categories - although just one "best picture award."
All best lists have one thing in common - they are subjective. In the realm of film, there are so many things to consider that choosing a "best" is even more subjective ...in recent years, there have been 50 or so Oscar award categories - although just one "best picture award."
Below are three different perspectives on the greatest films of all time. Only one film made all three lists "Citizen Kane." Four others made two lists ("Casablanca", "La Dolce Vita", "The Godfather" and "Raging Bull"). So of the 85 films on these best film lists, there were 79 unique entries!
Below are three different perspectives on the greatest films of all time. Only one film made all three lists "Citizen Kane." Four others made two lists ("Casablanca", "La Dolce Vita", "The Godfather" and "Raging Bull"). So of the 85 films on these best film lists, there were 79 unique entries!
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