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Napoleon Strickland and Cronies
In 1967, Albert Ayler plays saxophone at the funeral of his close friend and frequent collaborator John Coltrane. In the midst of this performance (a recording was made though it is impossibly difficult to get hold of) Ayler’s saxophone drops from his mouth, yet he in ‘some’ sense (what this ‘some’ means is what will be in question) continues playing. The instrument absent from his mouth, Ayler screams his funeral oration for an unspecified amount of time (time will also be in question) with ostensibly no awareness of what surrounds him. Eventually, reverie concluded, Ayler picks up the saxophone and continues to play. The terms within which music is generally thought are insufficient to consider this event.
Franticec Kupka- Amorpha Fugue in Two Colours
...After Amorpha Fugue in Two Colours was exhibited in 1912, Kupka was declared the head of a new movement known as Orphism. Orphism comes from the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, who used music to convince Hades to free his wife, Euripides, from the underworld. The only condition was that Orpheus was not to look behind to see if his wife was following as he lead her out of the underworld or she would not be allowed to return with him. Tragically, Orpheus looked, and lost Euripides forever. He expressed his sorrow of this through beautiful music he played as he wandered aimlessly. In his wanderings he came across frenzied worshippers of Dionysus, or maenads, who, lost in intoxication and enthralled by Orpheus’s music, tore his body limb from limb and cast his head, still singing, into a river. This is a metaphor for the integration of music and nature. The ancient orphic sect, to which Pythagoras belonged, taught that sound and music are the origin of all things. Modern orphic painting is based on geometric rhythms and bold colour harmonies representing pure creative energy
-- From Visualizing sound and the influence of music on contemporary painting, by Timothy B. Layden.
Werner Herzog
"Fitzcarraldo" is one of the best films I've seen and most of my initial reactions have likely already been mentioned by others, so here I'd like to focus simply on the ways in which Herzog films the oncoming night sky. Herzog's films generally have a relaxing bucolic feel to them as he patiently holds the camera upon a quiet countryside, a mountain or a pasture, accompanied by a light, swaying, pastoral soundtrack, gently allowing the viewer time to take in the scene and analyze it pensively and leisurely. This Herzogian feature abounds in "Fitzcarraldo," and the ways in which he uses this technique to film various manifestations of dusk caught my attention first, for the sheer beauty of the scenes themselves, second, by discovering the ways in which they symbolically depict Fitzcarraldo's dream of bringing the apex of opera to his jungle town of Iquitos. His dream is eccentric and grand, as sublime and gallant as it is foolhardy and questionable, and any predictions that could be made about his endeavours are etched upon the uncertainty of the night sky after having been created during the preceding, transient, glowing evening. Whether they are the predictions of the seasoned, cynical rubber barons, or dreamy, idyllic Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald himself, they are both framed by amibition and cast courageously in the darkness.
-m.c.
Dana Holst
Woebegone is a series of 80 minature portraits of abused and tortured pets painted painstakingly on victorian ivory piano keys. In the gallery these tiny tombstones are arranged evenly along a green mohair meridian that circles the gallery. Viewers are encouraged to view each minature through the magnifying glasses provided, bringing these tiny victims into sharp painful focus. A drowned puppy, a burned kitten, a garbage-fed seal, a tortured bunny look out questioningly, through the magnifying glass, immortalized in their anguish. Together they tell a human story, or rather the story of how human bonds breaks down, destroying their delicate lives.
