The Covent Garden Night-Mare

The Royal Opera House Season Launch for 2019-2020 : nice and safe, revivals and new works at the Linbury.  There are a few good choices, but, like the BBC Proms, "things ain't what they used to be" On the plus side, it's a chance to save money ! So come up and see this etching - The Covent Garden Night-Mare  by Thomas Rowlandson in a colorized version of the original published 1784 . In 1782, Henry Fuseli the Swiss mystic based in Britain exhibited a painting titled The Night Mare  which caused a sensation : a woman in her undies lies stretched on a bed, possibly drugged, a demon astride her, a black stallion (symbol of dark desires) looking on.   Pretty explicit, but typical of Fuseli, who was a mystic, possibly deranged, and an icon of the Romantic (big R) sensibility with its taste for the macabre and subconscious.  Rowlandson is making a point.  Fuseli's semi naked woman is replaced by the politician Charles James Fox, naked, possibly drunk, a demon on his back, a more quizzical horse looking on.  Fox was a Whig, usually at odds with the mainstream, but the satire here isn't on his politics so much as his reputation as a roué, who hung out at Covent Garden, then the haunt of prostitutes, thieves and degenerates. The (first) Royal Opera House had been built nearly 50 years before, but Fox and his friends probably weren't that much into music.

Imperial princes, building snowmen

Winter scene in the Imperial Palace, Beijing : click on the photo and move your cursor to enlarge to appreciate the detail. The original scroll was three metres tall, painted with meticulous detail.  It was painted by Giuseppe  Castiglione (1688-1766) aka Lian Shi Ning 郎世寧;. Castiglione came from an aristocratic Italian family but became a Jesuit missionary and was sent toi China , arriving in 1715. In line with Jesuit practice, he immersed himself in Chinese culture. Unlike other missionary groups, the Jesuits believed in winning hearts and minds, however long that might take rather than conversion by force.  Castiglione served at the courts of three emperors of the Qing dynasty,  the Kanghsi, Yongzheng and Qianlong. emperors. Using Chinese materials, Castiglione painted in a blend of Chinese and western styles. He did portraits of his emperors seated on their thrones in formal Chinese style, but also posed in more western ways. His portrait of the Emperor Qian Long for example, shows the monarch astride a horse, almost exactly as if he were Louis XV, his almost exact contemporary. Indeed of the two, Qianlong probably outshone Louis.  In the painting above, we see the imperial children, playing in the palace gardens, like kids would do anywhere. They're building a snowman. But being young princes, their snowman is a Chinese lion.

Krauss Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos

IMPORTANT Broadcast ! Clemens Krauss conducts Strauss Araiden auf Naxos, Berlin, 1935. This is historically significant. The conductor is Clemens Krauss who knew Strauss well. The cast is historic too -Viorica Ursuleac (who later married Krauss), Erna Berger and Helge Rosvaenge. It's been in circulation for several years, available from several different sources incl mp3 from amazon and HERE.

The picture above is  Ariadne auf Naxos by Lovis Corinth, the Munich artist, who was part of the Munich Secession, which predated the Vienna Secession which gets all the publicity because it's more commercially exploitable. This illustration was completed 1913, the year after Strauss completed his opera, so Corinth might have known of it, at least by repute. Notice how Corinth sends up classical antiquity and the conventions of formal art.  Ariadne's lying in an explictly sexual position, but unconscious, while Bacchus and his merry band look like they're about to trample her. And that "island", geologically impossible!

Gay Salomé, 1923 film at the South Bank

The 1923 silent film Salomé is being screened at the Purcell Room, South Bank, tomorrow, with a sound  track by Charlie Barber.  Music, for a film that was conceived as silent? Perhaps it's an indication of how lazy audiences have become that they can't pay attention unless there's noise in the background. Weeks ago, audiences walked out of The Artist, a modern  film which is partly silent, which is about silent film. So why go? (read more here). Salomé was created as a visual adventure, as a direct hommage to Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations of the story. It's not about the Salomé story per se, nothing to do with Strauss Salomé, for example. The idea is that Beardsley's pictures are coming "alive".

Most involved in the film were gay, which is also an important context, given that it was 1923 and homosexuality was illegal. So it's a very bold statement indeed. Moreover, the director and brains behind Salomé was a woman, Alla Nazimova, at a time when relatively few women did projects like that. All this and art nouveau, too? The film was suppressed at the time, but now it's box office bankable. Hence the "revival" with sound.

But first and above all, Nazimova's Salomé 1923 is a work of visual art which should be appreciated for what it is and how it translates one=dimensional sketches into moving, human film. Beardsley's art faithfully adapted to "real" situations. Nothing is straight in this movie, whatever the orientation of those involved. Nazimova's film uses Beardsley's stylization to create a deliberately anti-naturalistic aesthetic that reflects the unnatural nature of the plot. Arch surtitles - "Thou wert" and "Thou rejectedest me". They reflect Beardsley's own words which twist and curl as if in feverish delirium.. The sets are spartan, lots of white space, in the manner of Beardsley's etchings, which seemed shockingly alien to a world used to over-stuffed Victorian excess. Beardsley's aesthetic is  far from Alma-Tadema's hyper-realistic orientalism, which cloaked outright prurience with a veil of fake academicism. Beardsley doesn't do veils.

At the heart of this story is Herod's unclean lust for his own daughter, Salomé. Secondary dynamic is the relationship between Herod and Herodias, his long-term wife whom he treats like dirt. The Herodias in this film is much meatier than the Herodias in Beardsley - she has hair like a lion's mane and wears a leopardskin jumpsuit. Tina Turner, but 60 years too early. Female sexuality as opposed to Herod's leering infantilism. She looks at Herod with disgust. Because the set looks so neat it makes the fundamental perversion feel even more unclean.

Interestingly, Jokanaan looks exactly like Beardsley himself, only more repellent, hawk-like features and a skeletal ribcage that looks like Christ on the Cross in Spanish art. This adds a piquant twinge to the proceedings, as Jokanaan can't stop denouncing "The Whore of Babylon", as if all the sins of the world were caused by women, not men. It's pretty significant yet strange that lesbian Nazimova really makes a point of sexual attraction between this man and this woman. "All other men were hateful to me". Before she dies, she looks like she's having an orgasm. "The mystery of Love is greater than the mystery of Death".

Wonderful minor figures - Black executioners, little black kids in headresses as tall as they are, strangely louche male attendants (nipple rings like targets). One lusts for Salomé while the other lusts for him. Attendants dressed in crazy turbans, and in the dance, women dressed as screens, surrounding Salomé as she switches from boyish androgyny to female demon (white hair cut in angles).  The Dance is magnificently choreographed - fast forward to 44 minutes. You can see the influence of Diaghilev and Nijinsky, whom Nazimova, a Russian, would have known of, even if she hadn't seen them in action. Salomé as The Afternoon of a Faun.

While the stylization is fundamental to the whole concept of this film, it makes for semaphore acting. In 1923, this wasn't such a big deal, since moving pictures were still a novelty. But we've become used to Hollywood ultra-fast action, so we need to switch off the autopilot assumption that drama has to be fast and butch. Much like we've lost the art of appreciating music that's not raucous and exaggerated. And, pertinently, we've lost the ability to appreciate a work of art on its own terms, without extras. Music was played in silent cinemas, but rarely composed for the film itself. However good the new soundtrack may be, it's a distraction from what is essentially a "silent", contemplative experience. You could spraycan the Mona Lisa and claim rights to the image.  Maybe it's "art" of a form, but it's not Leonardo. Salomé is a commercial winner, though profits won't go to Nazimova.  But it's just not the same thing, no matter how good the music might be, or what the audience might demand. View the full movie free with sound turned OFF HERE

Bacchus et Ariane

What happened to Ariadne after she helped Theseus get away from Crete afer killing her brother The Minotaur? Last chance to hear Albert Roussel's ballet Bacchus et Ariane free, online on BBC Radio 3. Ariadne's stuck on yet another island, Naxos this time, but along comes Bacchus, God of Wine and excess. With alcohol, Ariadne's frigidity dissolves and a kiss from Bacchus makes her immortal.

The music pulsates, with stamping "footprints" . Do they evoke sexual frustration, impatience or sheer physical exhiliration?  They're ideal for dancing too. The ballet was choreographed and danced by Serge Lifar in 1930, so perhaps the echoes of The Rite of Spring and L'après-midi d'un faune are deliberate in-jokes. Sets were designed by Georges de Chirico, whose painting of the sleeping.Ariadne is shown here. De Chirico's angles, unnatural lighting and surreal use of space create a curious sense of movement even though the subject is frozen immobile. Modernist art, modernist, modernist music, yet full of life and feeling.

Berlioz - Béatrice et Bénédict - full download

Nicholas Collon conducted Berlioz Béatrice et Bénédict with the Chelsea Opera Group last week at Cadogan Hall., Pleasae read Robert Hugill's review HERE. I've been busy lately, so listened instead to Colin Davis conducting Joyce DiDonato and Charles Workman at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris in 2009. Luxury casting. Listen to the full streaming download HERE in Opera Today. There's a link to the libretto, too. Enjoy!

The picture is by Artuš Scheiner (1863-1938) a contemprary of Janáček and Alfons Mucha.  It comes from his illustrations for Much Ado about Nothing, part of a series of translations from Shakespeare. Click on the photo to expand, and see the detail. (Berlioz dropped the Don Juan character from the opera)

Garsington Opera starts today at Wormsley

A new era for Garsington Opera as it moves to its new home at Wormsley Park. Garsington Opera has been visionary from the start, and the tradition continues. Part of the buzz this year is the new pavilion. It was designed to solve problems. How to build a space that enhances performance even though it's open air. How to give patrons amenities of a very high standard in a temporary structure? This isn't Glastonbury, they don't do mud. Wrecks Louboutins.

Here is what I've written about the Garsington Opera pavilion, and here is what Jonathan Glancey's written. He's an architect, I'm a patron, we're both excited. Why is it that visual arts and architecture writing is usually so much better written than music? Tickets are still available for Rossini Il Turco in Italia and for the rarity, Vivaldi La verita in cimento. The popular Mozart Magic Flute always appeals, though from what I've heard thuis time not quite as much as usual. All the more reason to stick to the others !  I heard the last Vivaldi opera, L'Incoronazione di Dario at Garsington Opera  last year's delightful, vibrant Rossini Armida. Also a wonderful Britten Midsummers Nights Dream last year that's quite different from the one at ENO. Click on links. Lots more, not all on this site.  Here's a link to the Garsington Opera site.

Glyndebourne Meistersinger - Beckmesser or Sachs?

Thinking further about Wagner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Glyndebourne I was struck by how well Vladimir Jurowski's approach worked in context.  Glyndebourne is set in glorious gardens, with a lake, woods - and a huge meadow. It feels like a place of pilgrimage because it's the oldest and grandest (so far) summer opera festival. People go back year after year to because it's more than opera, it's also social. Isn't that a lot like Act Three, where the townsfolk leave the warren of the city behind and celebrate in the open air? And one of the fundamental themes of the opera - renewal, regrowth, non-urban values.

There's always something new to discover in truly great music. Someone else's interpretation might just bring out levels you hadn't thought about. Jurowski's Meistersinger emphasized the spirit of freedom and openness that is so central to the opera. It connected to the Glyndebourne ethos, with a cheeky wink at status and pretension. Wagner's proto-socialist politics would jar in this context, but it still packs a punch when it's done with a subtle touch. Besides, stupidity afflicts all classes, not just the rich, as the opera shows.

Jurowski and the LPO brought out the energy in  the music, so it felt breezy and energetic - truly the spirit of summer and regrowth. Wagner isn't done at Glyndebourne because the hall is too small. (Tristan und Isolde is an exception because it revolves around two main characters.) Bombast would overwhelm, and emphasise the very aspects of status and display Wagner is seeking to undermine. So Jurowski turns negative to positive, with an unsually bright, lively interpretation that accesses the soul of the opera more perceptively than the image of Bayreuth 1943 that seems imprinted on many people's minds.

David McVicar's staging is woefully dull and bears little relationship to the opera. It dragged so much that it would be easy to assume it was the fault of the music. But no! Jurowski and the LPO played with alert vigour. The music around the apprentices is supposed to burst with rustic quaintness, even suppressed violence. Hence the angular rhythms, which Jurowskiu shaped well. 

Again and again, we fall into the trap of listening through a narrow prism, basing observations on what we're used to, not on what is actually happening in a performance. But no artist is an artist if he/she doesn't find something personal and original.  Always, I think, base observations on the score, separate from performance practice. We have a choice. Walther isn't full formed. But do we listen as Beckmesser or as Sachs? 

HERE is a link to the review in Opera Today. The picture above also contradicts kneejerk thinking. It's a watercolour by Rudolf Bauer (1889-1953), an exact contemporary of Hitler. Bauer was involved with Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Chagall and the Die Sturm group. The picture at first looks traditional, but it's influenced by late art deco, and  more modern values of light and energy. It's not "degenerate" modernism - Nazxis might happily have had this on their walls. In real life, Bauer's friends were Jewish and/or politically suspect. He was imprisoned by the Gestapo. But part of the reason he's forgotten today might be because he was naive in business.

Nazi Imagery, why and why not

Twenty years ago, the Hayward Gallery showed an exhibtion from Germany on "Romantic Art". The usual suspects, of course, but then something quite shocking - paintings from the Nazi period, such as this, The Sower (1937) by Oskar Martin-Amorbach (1897-1987). Ostensibly it's vaguely folksy, like a faux medieval illumination, to appeal to the regressive tastes of the time. But look carefully. The fields are angular, Cézanne translated into art deco. The farmer is supposed to be hardy and wizened but there's a crazy look in his eye. (click photo to enlarge) What kind of seed is he really planting, I wondered, what is the painter trying to say ?

In societies like Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and indeed Nazi Germany, modernism wasn't extinguished but adapted. But because art had to serve political purposes, public art had to be simplistic. It was advertising, after all.  Don't think, was the message, just act ! Which is why, ironically, there's hardly any stylistic difference between public art of the Right and the Left. The images are the same, just change the labels. This appeal to mindlessness is perhaps why Nazi imagery appeals to so many. Automatic clichés are easier to fall back on than real analysis or understanding. This shallow comic book mentality is dangerous because it replicates exactly the mindset behind totalitarianism. Using Nazi and other didactic imagery is OK when it's used for a specific purpose, such as to provoke thought. Nazi imagery as fashion statement is obscene, the fallback of a lazy mind. And it's lazy minds that swallow slogans and let totalitarianism reign. Nothing to be complacent about.

Today I've been thinking about Mel Brooks The Producers. It's a brilliant movie, even though it looks very much of its time (1968) but it was so topical that it was hilarious. The whole movie is a savage commentary on society. Two con men want to scam investors by making the worst possible movie, so they can run off with the money. So they get the worst possible performers and the worst possible storyline, Springtime For Hitler. Extreme kitsch crassness, designed to be ridiculous. Yet audiences fall for it and the show becomes a hit. Mel Brooks and his team used comedy to make serious observations. The Producers shows how easy it is to fool the gullible. Give 'em a song and a dance and they'll march in step to anyone. Even the conmen were outclassed.  Here's a link to an article about modernism in totalitarian art by Roger Griffin in 2007.

Linley Sheridan and Gainsborough mystery

Thomas Linley's La Duenna opens tomorrow at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio in a production by English Touring Opera. The libretto is by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Linley and Sheridan were the mega-stars of London theatreland in their era, and were related by marriage. Thomas was the father of Elizabeth Linley and Sheridan was her husband. Oddly, the plot of the opera replicates their real life experiences.

In 1980 my father bought a painting at an auction clearing the estate of someone connected to the Hearst family in California. The attribution was Gainsborough Dupont, nephew of Thomas Gainsborough. The painting was brought to the US by the notorious art dealer Joseph Duveen, who'd bought it from a named member of the aristocracy. Provenance possibly safe but these small pieces were never catalogued. In any case, my Dad bought it because it was a good painting.

The girl in the picture was undoubtedly Elizabeth Linley, right bone structure, recognizably a Linley. She's posing slightly flirting, eyes sparkling, a half smile on her lips. What's most interesting, though, is the quality of the painting. The face is extremely well painted, very delicate and expressive. The hair, dress and background are painted in a much looser style, almost like a sketch, fiull of movement. Often you can tell fakes because they're painted in a much more studied, careful style, and come over as cramped. This painter had a sure hand and eye.

Whoever painted the portrait concentrated on capturing personality, rather than a mere likeness. When viewed by candlelight from an angle, it comes alive in the eeriest way, as if whoever painted it knew that that was how the purchaser would use the painting.  Attributions don't mean a lot because this kind of portrait was made for private viewing, and quite probably, the buyer, the painter and the subject knew each other personally.

Gainsborough had known the Linley family from childhood, and painted Elizabeth many times over her lifetime.  It's plausible that the portrait could have been painted by his nephew since they all knew each other. But Gainsborough Dupont was exactly the same age as Elizabeth. If this portrait was made around 1770, both of them were around 17 or 18.  Dupont's later work was formal and stiff, nothing like this.

So who really was the painter? Although it's a fairly straightforward informal piece, it's obviously done by someone who is so sure he can do character that he can dash this off quickly without trying too hard. Since the owner knew the subject, and the subject knew who the portrait was being painted for, little chance of this not having come from life. Undiscovered masterpieces seem to pop up all the time. That's not so surprising since it's only been relatively recently that insurance and security has meant much closer audit.

So for all we know, my father bought a painting by Thomas Gainsborough. It's intriguing because there are portraits of her at other ages but not quite at the end of her teens when she's blossoming into womanhood.  This would have been made at about the time Elizabeth eloped with Sheridan, It was the romantic scandal of the day, two young lovers running off together, but, just as in a play, all turned out well.  I would put up a photo of the painting my father bought, he took lots and wrote a volume of notes. But they and the painting are locked up safely and I can't easily get to them.

Pre Raphaelites and Italy - Oxford Ashmolean

Special exhibition The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy opened this week at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and runs until December.  Everyone knows the famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings of blowsy women, medieval and biblical myth. This exhibition, however, shows how they came to be "pre-Raphaelite" in the first place. They wanted to be "Pre-Raphael", going back before the baroque.

Romantics went to Italy to imbibe Classical antiquity and discovered sunshine. The Pre-Raphaelites, though, differed from Goethe and Turner in that they made their art for middle class Victorian society. Craft as much as High Art. This exhibition places them firmly in a stream of idealistic 19th century thought.

Just like Goethe, John Ruskin went to Italy to study. He recorded what he saw as literally as possible.The minute detail shows his craftsmanship. Ruskin didn't do people or have real relationships, not even with men, but he inspired others who were better artists. Hence the Pre-Raphaelite thing for fancy furnishings and perfect detail. Photography's killed that kind of art. When rich hippies discovered the Pre-Raphaelites in the 1960's what drew them was the way the exaggerated reality of these painting becomes psychedlic and unreal.

But back to Italy: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, though British in many ways, identified with Dante Alighieri.  Hence numerous paintings, pen and wash sketches and writings on the theme of Dante and Beatrice. In fact,  his relationships with women were an extension of this. Rossetti liked unattainable women, apart from Fanny Cornforth, the hooker whose portrait screams out of the wall where other Pre-Raphaelite goddesses hang.

Above is Rossetti's Dante painting Angels, where the poet is seen as obsessively drawing angels that remind him of Beatrice. His friends try to distract him. Perhaps the woman is telling the priest that Dante's "got issues". Meanwhile, outside the cramped studio, nature, growth, freedom. The studio is not all that dissimilar from cramped Victorian morality.

Don't go to this exhibition expecting the usual army of famous, luminous paintings, which you can see anywhere, like on postcards and CD covers. Instead, go to the Ashmolean because this show is thoughtful and scholarly. Many pictures aren't normally on display, like the etchings and line drawings. This is your chance! Some are borrowed from Tate Britain and Italy, and some from private collections.

Oxford was a Pre-Rahaelite hotspot. Ruskin went to college here, accompanied, significantly, by his mother. Janey, the raven-haired muse Rossetti loved and William Morris married, grew up in a hovel in the narrow alley that leads to the 12th century Turf Tavern, which leads onto Holywell Street. Oxford's gargoyles and medieval corners are a part of the Pre-Raphaelite ethos.

So it's even more interesting that the Asmholean presents the Pre-Raphaelites in a wider, European context. One important group were the "Etruscans" who painted wide angled horizons, imaginging a world as people-free as an Etruscan dream. Their leader was Giovanni Costa, an Italian patriot who hung out with Garibaldi and influenced Frederick, later Lord Leighton, whose elaborately-decorated house is now a London museum.

This exhibition was curated by the Ashmolean for display in Italy, hence the Italian Connection. But here were other European art movements inspired bty Italy, too, such as the German Nazarenes, one of whose followers was Wilhelm Henschel, husband of Fanny Mendelssohn. European art was not insular. Decades before the Pre-Raphaelites, the Nazarenes were doing their thing in Rome, Berlin and beyond. Now there's another theme for an exhibition.

Fritz Lang Metropolis (1927) restored

Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece Metropolis has been restored with 25 minutes of new footage and extra intertitles, and original soundtrack (once played live by an orchestra in the cinema). This is big news because it reveals a tighter, tougher vision behind the film than the neutered version currently available.  Lang's Metropolis is not science fiction, it's a parable on modern society.How amazing those opening shots are! They're painted, sophisticated mega-cartoon, at a time when Disney was producing  primitive stuff. It's Futurist, high art like so much else at the time. Bauhaus in the movies.

The Metropolis exists as a multi dimensional, self contained world where vehicles travel in the space between art deco towers that rise endlessly upwards. The Tower of Babel, as the movie makes explicit. This glory comes at a cost. The workers who make the whole thing function are dehumanized, reduced to regimented automatons. Look for the amazing scene where naked bodies are thrown into a fiery abyss in the mouth of a gigantic Moloch. And the immortal scene where the worker has to keep turning the hands of a clock, so the whole edifice doesn't blow up.

 
One "new" scene shows the paradise the young men enjoy - quite deliberately Venusberg, where men paint black lipstick on pretty women. In this restoration, we get more of the male-female power politics that meant so much to Thea von Harbou. Now at last I understand why Peter Gay denounced the film in his seminal Weimar Culture (1968). Gay was disturbed about the feminization of the hero, who throws himself on the bosom of the Eternal Feminine, named Maria, (wehat else?), instead of being a "man".  It says more about him than was apparent to us 40 years ago. For that was von Harbou's whole point. Fredersen's son rejects his father's ways because they aren't right.  The dialectic of this film contrasts "male" power which has created militaristic, mechanized systems with "Female" power which replaced the machine with something more nurturing and positive. The theme "Between the Hand and Brain there must be the Heart" recurs throughout the film.

It's clear: uncontrolled capitalism and industrialization is not good unless it's tempered by something softer and more humane. Much has been made of Maria's depiction as a prophet in the catacombs, preaching goodness to the workers. She's not a Virgin Mary, rather a throwback to the holy mystics of the ancient European past. Lang reinforces this with images of medieval sculpture, Death surrounded by the Seven Deadly Sins.  This isn't a Christian parable by any means, it's much more complex. It's international, too. The red light district in the Metropolis is called Yoshiwara. In the mindset of the time, oriental meant dangerous and exotic. Similarly there are references to Eygptian slaves building pyramids. Metropolis is all places at all times.

One of the new scenes shows the paradise garden where the Sons (of the rich) cavort. It's Venusberg or should I say, Venusburg, another kind of factory where the women are dehumanized like the workers below, though they're more decorative.  Later the Robot Woman cavorts in the nightclub, taunting the Elegant Gentlemen.  Venusberg again, the men automatons though they wear monocles and tuxedos.  Wonderful new shots of the Robot Woman, and her disintegration.

The actresss who plays Maria is Brigitte Helm, a girl who was approached in a street in Berlin, who didn't set out bto be a starlet. In fact, after Metropolis she became typecast as a dangerous, unemotional temptress, which was far dfrom herv reeal personality. At the height of her career she suddenly quit and became a Hausfrau in Switzerland and refused ever to speak of the movies again. In her life, Helm was re-enacting an image of Womanhood from Metropolis. Spooky.

The mad scientist, Rotwang, lives in a primitive hut surrounded by Fredersen's Metropolis, another connect to a medieval past. The hut has no windows but opens onto the ancient catacombs beneath the city.  Rotwang is a strange interface between Head, Hands and Heart, an amazing character to interpret. Luckily this restoration gives us more to go on. The actor, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, was immortalized  as The Gambler and the Testament of Dr Mabuse, one of my top movies of all time. Dr Mabuse uses mind control, shaping others to his will.  The film  was made in 1933. Go figure.
Metropolis explores ideas of mass manipulation,  unquestioning obedience and mob behaviour  Though Fredersen controls the Metropolis, the workers are complicit because they mindlessly follow. Individual workers are depicted, like G11811 but they're like cogs in a machine.  Maria is a charismatic leader with pseudo-religious powers to hypnotise the workers. Thus Fredersen and Rotwang try to harness her image to control the masses. Metropolis shows how appearances can be twisted, and people easily fooled.

Freudians might find something in the fact that Fredersen's son is called Freder, a rather effeminate wimp, whose Goth makeup is extreme. The other male actors didn't need it and  by 1927 film techniques had improved so it wasn't strictly necessary any more. These hints of bi-sexuality may have bothered Peter Gay. Nowadays that's no longer an issue, so Metropolis is prophetic on one issue at least.
The deeper you go into Metropolis the weirder it gets.  Thea von Harbou was married to Klein Rogge but divorced him for Fritz Lang yet they happily worked together. Von Harbou was a feminist and ultra modernist, yet became a Nazi as soon as Hitler came to power. The film represented everything the Nazis hated, because it was so avant garde. Yet some of its themes fitted their values.The Brown Shirts were "national socialist" after all, resentful of anyone more cultivated and upper class than themselves. The triumph of the will, the power of the mob. Totalitarianism, both Left and Right. Order versus disorder. Oddly, the film with its Tower of Babel imagery, was made in Babelsburg studios  The vision isn't coherent but still powerfully evocative, asking questions, noit giving answers.  Metropolis could be interpreted in many different ways, both as commentary on its time and on ours. That's what makes it so intriguing. We still haven't sorted the dilemmas of modern society.
PLEASE see my piece on Fritz Lang and von Harbou's Die Nibelungen There is a LOT on this site about Fritz Lang, Weimar, early movies, social issues, etc and many FULL DOWNLOADS
This is also one of the few sites about early Chinese film in English. Full downloads, too.

Entartete-Technik Kugelhaus

This is the Kugelhaus, a circular building made of steel and glass, built in Dresden in 1928. Architect Peter Birkenholz (d 1961) Click on the pic to enlarge for detail.  Plans were laid to build a row of them, like a galaxy of planets in orbit. That was the spirit of the age. Very "futurist". Needless to say anything so interesting was denounced by the Nazis as "degenerate". Prince Charles would have loved the way they got rid of modern architecture!  It was pulled down in 1938. The "Arc" aka the Ove Arup building that looms over the A4 is a distant descendant. There's a glass dome in modern Dresden, too, built as a memorial to the Kugelhaus, but it's not quite the same. Read more HERE

More Africa at the British Museum

 The Ife Bronzes at the Kingdom of Ife exhibition (read here and here) is fantastic - get to it, even if you don't normally do visual art. It's important because it shows a completely different way of thinking about art history and cultures. It inspired my friend who loves Africa to take me to the regular British Museum African gallery.

Africa is a huge place with many completely different cultures, so squeezing its art into one small gallery is a bit frustrating. Imagine if all European art, from Lapland to the Azores, from Iceland to Turkey, from prehistory to the present was all crammed together on one room. But that in itself shows how little the west understands non-western cultures.

Because Africa is so diverse, in theory it's not a bad idea to arrange the gallery on themes like textiles, woodwork, pottery etc, so you can see the range of different styles.  But it's a bit like a jumble sale. This exquisite ivory piece depicts a mother goddess. It was made in the great empire of Benin 500 years ago. photo credit It's odd to see her several feet from a mass-produced modern T shirt.

It's good to see "modern" nonetheless, because it shows that art thrives in modern cultures too. One striking exhibit is a chair made from guns. After the war in Mozambique ended, people were encouraged to exchange their guns for farm tools - swords into ploughshares. Because Africa isn't wealthy, people reuse things in inventive ways. So there's a "tree" made of metal and a video of how it came to be made. Once the Museum of Mankind (now sadly defunct) did a whole exhibition of African "recycling" showing how creative ordinary  people can be.

But it is frustrating if you want to find out more about the amazing wall of bronze plaques, each depicting vivid scenes.  They were obviously important to the people who made them as they're crafted with great skill and detail. There are about 1000 of them, and apparently they can be read as a saga, rather like an infinitely more sophisticated version of the Bayeux Tapestry. photo credit   Yet they're a mystery as no-one knows how to decipher their meaning. (Click on the photos to enlarge)

That's the paradox about museums. Because the public sees them as tourist attractions, they have to cater for everyone, and for mass taste, so they can't really do comprehensive or penetrating. Not long ago there was a protest about moving the V&A's musical instruments to the specialist Horniman Museum. While I've no time for the V&A's fad for trendiness, the point of museums is that they exist to protect the objects in their collections. Museums exist for research, conservation and education. What's on display is only ever the tiniest fragment of what exists. We may not know "now" what things are, but if they're not cared for they won't be around for someone to interpret in the future. And displays change all the time, which is why it's good to revisit museums regularly, not simply as tourists.

Thirty years ago I visited a huge exhibition about Benin at the Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Nothing like it had been seen on that scale in the US before. It was magnificent, because Benin was magnificent. A whole bunch of schoolkids were being shown round. They came in antsy and fidgetty, because that museum wasn't the kind of place kids from the slums hang out.  Luckily, they had a good curator.  He explained what Benin was, and how much respect it was due. The kids were wonderstruck, their eyes wide  with amazement.  They walked into that exhibition as punks, but they walked out confident and happy.  Benin taught them that African culture and history is something we all can be proud of.

It's relevant for classical music, too. All this fuss about making it "accessible" implies that people are incapable of dealing with complex things. Those SF ghetto kids went to a serious, non-dumbe-down exhibition, and had no problem getting what it meant.

Kingdom of Ife : African sculpture at the British Museum

Kingdom of Ife: African Sculpture is currently on at the British Museum. Go - some of these figures have been brought over specially from Nigeria, where they're usually kept in pride of place as part of African heritage.

These sculptures easily compete artistically with anything in the west. They represent kings and gods, but, unlike Greek and Roman pieces, they present them in a strikingly intimate, human and individual way. Even Michelangelo marbles pale against them, for these are real people, not allegories. In comparison, even Renaissance marbles look prettified and indirect. Western artists focus on the beauty of the body : The Ife depict the beauty of the spirit. Perhaps that says something about the nature of kingship in Africa, perhaps not, but theses cultures are unique.

Ife figures are so realistic, that being with them is an eerie experience. You know they are inanimate objects, but you feel they could breathe, speak or move at any moment. How can we be sure that as we're watching them that they're not watching us?

No wonder they're reputed to have supernatural powers, like the seated man from Tada who was ceremonially taken and washed in the Niger. He's extremely famous, from photos. Live he seems surprisingly small, given his iconic reputation, but he's so intense, he seems superhuman.

The Kingdom of Ife started around 800, and still remains today. These sculptures date from 1100-1500. This was a sophisticated and prosperous nation. Technically these bronzes are so well made that there is nothing quite like them elsewhere. There are sculptures in bronze, copper, stone and terracotta, and smaller objects like votives, spear heads etc, showing that the bronze heads weren't a fluke, but came from a long tradition.

As design icons, they're amazing. For some unknown reason, many of the faces are striated vertically - nothing like scarification, but more elegant and stylized. These lines create a distance between the object and viewer but also accentuate the muscles and curves so they're even more tactile. The holes drilled in some heads may have been made so headresses and fake hair could be attached.


Look at the detail on the King in the photo. He's wearing elaborate symbols of royalty and wealth. Look at that neckplate, festooned with carnelian beads. Another kingly figure holds a horn which may have held medicinal potions. One of the women wears an elaborately woven headress, complete with jewels. These figures are meant to awe you with their regal presence. Yet the most moving are the simplest, depicting the ruler as an ordinary person, emanating serenity, calm, goodness.

Besides the amazing heads, there are other objects. Beautiful stools, for example, carved in a surprisingly modern free form. There's a flatfish of old granite, hardly carved at all. Yet in its simplicity and abstraction, it "feels" like a huge, lugubrious flatfish, lying in the river bed.

There is a lot to see in this exhibition, so take your time and make more than one visit. You'll come away with a completely different perspective on world art. Please read more HERE. Please reads Waldemar Januszak HERE

British Museum - Ife African bronzes

On 4th March a new exhibition opens at the British Museum, Kingdom of Ife: sculptures from West Africa. Ife was a powerful nation that existed in what is now Nigeria 700 years ago. This culture produced bronze sculptures so beautiful and naturalistic that they seem alive. Indeed, their haunting authority has meant they were revered as icons by the Yoruba people.

The story of Ife is shrouded in mystery. There were several extremely advanced civilizations in Africa before the European era, quite unknown to the west, even now. Sculptures like these were made by people with sophisticated artistic values, technology and the means to invest in objects like these. As a small child I used to dream about the "lost kingdoms" of Africa, albeit seen through the distorted image of Rider Haggard and Tarzan comics. The reality of places like Ife, Benin, Zimbabwe, and Nubia is even more remarkable.

And if the story of Ife is amazing, so is the story of how these bronzes ended up in the British Museum. Looted from the Yoruba people by adventurers, real-life Indiana Jones. Even Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Prize, gets pulled into a smash and grab raid to return a stolen bronze to Africa. This exhibition should be exciting, an antidote to the omnipotence of the west. HERE is an extremely well written, inspiring article from the Financial Times. Great photos ! PLEASE note, there's another post on this subject HERE. Although this is a classical music site, it's got a lot on African culture and history (and other art exhibitions eg baroque art V&A)

Vienna to Weimar -Study Day, New Directions arising

The mark of a good conference is the amount of new ideas it generates. The Vienna to Weimar study at Kings Place on Saturday 30/1 should keep anyone interested in the period busy for ages.

As Prof Erik Levi said in his opening speech, the period was marked by many new directions and possibilities. Just as society was adjusting to change, so did music. Douglas Jarman spoke about the new mood in Vienna at the turn of the last century. He elucidated the relationship between Schoenberg and Eisler. Peter Franklin focused on three depictions of Paradise in opera of the period: Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane , Pfitzner's Das Herz and Schreker's Der Schmeid von Gent. Racism is nuts because it pigeonholes composers by their origins, not their music. Then, Gudo Heldt showed clips from various films (including Kuhle Wampe) to illustrate different ways of writing music for film. Watch the bicycle symphony in part 1, where the men stand still in expectation while the music whizzes madly. Once they start off: silence. The music's not background but commentary.

What are the directions I'm thinking in terms of ? For one, the role of Munich, whose Secession movement started five years before Vienna. Indeed the very term Jugendstil derives from the radical Munich magazine Jugend. (as does the word kitsch!) More artists, designers radical social politics and writers in Munich but that's where the aesthetic developed. And remember there were almost as many articles about music in the journal of the Blaue Reiter movement as about painting. And of course Schoenberg was heavily involved. Lots of reasons why Vienna captures the public imagination but it wasn't the full story.

Over Xmas I spent ages listening to K A Hartmann's Simplicissmus. See analysis HERE. Hartmann sends up Nazism while ostensibly writing "medieval" music that should have appealed to retrogressive tastes. Subversive! This puts Carmina Burana into a different context: the jury's still not completely out on Carl Orff. And the idea of Hollywood arising from Weimar. Franz Waxman, for example who conducted The Blue Angel and went on to write the music for The Bride of Frankenstein. (1935). He was both jazz and classical: blending genres and stereotypes long before Korngold, Eisler and the post Anschluss emigration. See "David Weber". And then: the whole effect of American and Anglo culture. Brecht and his "international" names, exotic themes injected into Germanic culture. Even the hero of The Testament of Dr Mabuse bears the incongruous name of "Tom Kent". (I'll upload the movie soon as it's the best of the Lang Mabuse triology)

The photo shows Hannah Hoch's 1919 collage Cut with the Dada Kitchen knife, the Weimar Photomontage. Hoch, who was an all-round remarkable character. really unusual personality, disrupts the idea of"formal" painting. She's using the idea of disconnected images to create a new whole. Think musique concrète, think Varèse. To understand the future of classical music, it's essential to properly understand the past. And that won't happen if the 20th century is ignored. PLease see my other posts about Vienna-Wrimar, including a way of recreating the song recital for yourself, a comparison of Weimar and Chinese films and a detailed review of Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimus. PLus lots and lots of related topics -- use search facility.

No more music at the V&A ?

London's V&A Museum is closing the gallery displaying its collection of musical instruments. Other galleries are being expanded, but musical instruments don't seem to rate priority. But musical instruments are objects of great craftsmanship, even though their true beauty is only revealed when they're heard.

In any museum, what's on display is only a small fraction of what's in storage. One of the great things about the V&A collections is that they've been available for research : some objects need to be studied in much greater detail than possible in a glass case. The Music Gallery at the V&A has been open mainly by appointment for some time, and the general public doesn't know what it's missing. So in theory, it's a good idea to shift music out of central London to the Horniman Museum way out in SE23.

The Horniman holds by far the biggest collection of musical instruments in the country, so it makes sense to concentrate resources in one place where specialist curators can care for them. Violins, for example, need to be played to stay "alive". In Berlin at the musical instruments museum next to the Philharmonie there are dedicted staff whose job is to tune and play magnificent instruments, the like of which most performers can only dream of. In Oxford, at the Ashmolean, there's the famous "Messiah" Stradivarius, so named because it was kept as a curio, so its sound may or may not have come.

But why should museum pieces be treated as museum pieces? Serious music scholars would head for the Horniman anyway. But what about ordinary people? The warm veneers on these instruments are sensual and tactile for they were made to entice a player to give of his best. Many are richly ornamented with inlays of ivory, exotic woods, and gildings of gold. As design concepts, they're formidable too. How does a master craftsman turn a flat plank of wood into something so beautifully curved that it resonates with a distinctive, individual personality of its own? Often the simpler, plainer instruments have the best sound because effort goes into making them fulfil their purpose as vehicles for music rather than rich men's toys. Indeed, there's a concept that the ideal design combines form and function. Many other objects in the V&A collections don't, thanks to taste in the Victorian age when the museum was founded.

Musical instruments don't reveal their beauties to ordinary eyes. Howe many people know how the 18th century hurdy-gurdies at the V&A should sound? Or why early violins and violas have 20 or more strings, some of which aren't played but exist to add resonance? And how did keyboards evolve, responding to and influencing musical invention ? Even people who don't listen to music can get inspired if they realize what wonders of engineering these instruments can be.

The past isn't musty or dusty. There are human stories behind these instruments, which can tell us about our past. England was once a major centre for viols and guitars, so these objects illustrate the historic trade between England and Iberia. What's more, because instruments serve a purpose, they're constantly being developed to improve the music they can make. "Industrial" design before the term was created.

Perhaps most of the tourists who go to the V&A only want to see famous things with an inbuilt Wow factor. Musical instruments are never going to have the appeal of Tipoo Sultan's tiger devouring an Englishman, or the rooms of Italian marble sculpture, or even Samurai armour. But they are an important part of our heritage, nonetheless, and particularly of a design heritage which isn't confined to music or musicians.

More so, perhaps than even the Theatre and Performance galleries, which are interesting, but by nature, contain emphemera like playbills etc. which were never meant to be art

Once there used to be a gallery of ironwork at the V&A. I haven't looked for it for years but it was a striking, if unsexy collection. Things like that get pushed aside by the need to raise visitor numbers and make museums palatable to sightseers and daytrippers. Even at the Ashmolean in Oxford, the wonderful refurbishment is marred if you know that many of the great items have been relegated to storerooms. All museums hold more than they display, for good reasons, but the general trend towards "visitor friendly" is becoming too narrowly interpreted. Ultimately, a museum is a place of wonder and mystery, not just a backdrop for other acrivities.

The magic of the V&A, and the Ashmolean, the Pitt Rivers, and the British Museum is the thrill of discovering things you don't know. The Horniman will be a magnet for music people, but it won't draw the ordinary visitor who doesn't know what wonders may exist. "I don't want to spend a day looking at old pianos!" Perfectly valid observation. But old pianos, and old string and wind instruments and oddball items like glass harmonicas, can be fascinating if presented well.

There will still be music at the V&A as some items are being retained, but they'll be shown in the context of other collections, for example baroque artefacts.

PLEASE see what I've written abut the V&A Baroque Magnificence Exhibition HERE (and related posts), and the Sacred Made Real Exhibition HERE at the National Gallery (the show's still on). Although this is primarily a music site, there's lots on visual arts and design. Including Baroque in China and Japan. And HERE is the Ashmolean article.

Mole at Ashmolean, Oxford

Oppressive as it was impressive the "old" Ashmolean Museum in Oxford symbolized its period. The huge marble staircase is still there but the warren of rooms is now counterbalanced by a central atrium filled with light, with smaller staircases, more free flowing. It's like a work of art in itself - an installation of light and inspiration. On one floor, seats have been placed so you can gaze on it. For more photos see Martin Beek's photostream HERE, it's excellent and informative.

The "new" airy ambience reflects the open-minded spirit in which the Ashmolean was conceived in 1683. In the Age of the Enlightenment, the wonders of the world were collected because they were stimulating and different. Among the Dutch Masters paintings, there's a still life where tropical shells are painted together with porcelain and fruit. For the painter and his viewers, this was a window on some strange, exotic paradise. The Ashmolean brought things together in a non=judgemental way - Egyptian sarcophagi, Tang horses, Roman coins, Pre-Raphaelites. By the time the V&A was built, the ethos had shifted towards a more materialist Victorian approach.

"The British have nothing to offer the Achenese". A paraphrase of a statement by the Sultan of Acheh in Northern Sumatra in the 17th century, when the British were trying to compete with the Dutch for the Indonesian trade. The doughty Achenese were not "colonized", holding out against the Dutch well into the 20th century. The phrase greets you as you enter Room 35 where there's an exhibition "West meets East". It's a lively, alternative way of looking at the way West and East met in the baroque period.

How amazing it must have been for Europeans to uncover an unlimited supply of fabulous (in the true sense of the word) consumer and luxury goods. There are sewing boxes intricately carved in ivory, western-style dining chairs of oriental lacquer and porcelains painted in vaguely western styles, but made in the potteries of central China. No Jingdezhen, perhaps no Limoges or Dresden. Think back and imagine what it must have been like, when suddenly objects like these entered western life.

As the Sultan of Acheh observed, the flow went mainly one way. Which is why the British used opium to lever their way into China, with horrific social consequences, the extent of which cannot be underestimated, even today. But there's one magnificent example of something western that impressed the Chinese. A huge French tapestry, not dissimilar perhaps to something made for Louis XIV, adorns a wall in the Ashmolean. It was a commission woven for the Qianlong Emperor and depicts bizarre animals like a tapir, a capybara, a leopard, a crocodile. All together in a woodland setting where oaks meet palm trees. No wonder they're fighting - in the tropics, crocodiles didn't often get sheep for dinner. It reminded me of another piece in the Ashmolean, an early European painting of animals in a forest fire, all standing about looking bemused.

This tapestry was stored away in the Summer Palace in Beijing, which is why the colours are so vividly preserved. How magnificent French tapestries must have been when new! Most of those we see now are faded. But the Summer Palace was razed to the ground after the Second Opium War, when a military expedition was sent to punish the Chinese for resisting the trade. The magnificent palace, a showcase of the wonders of the world, was ransacked by soldiers who had no idea what they were destroying. This tapestry was looted too, but luckily it ended up at the Ashmolean.
Later I'll write more about the Ashmolean, including its collection of musical instruments, with a Strad that's never been played since new.

The Sacred made Real - No muzak!

The Sacred made Real at the National Gallery was an exhibition I wanted to escape because the subject matter is distressing. But I'm glad I finally confronted my fears. It's shattering, alright, but shattering in a compellingly positive way.

The fact is that most people in this world aren't Spanish Catholics, far less Christian at all, so it's valid to ask "What's in this for me?" But human suffering is universal and many people, religious or not, wonder what's the point of life. "The Sacred made Real" is for those who want to get past the incessant, frantic mental muzak of society and enter a quieter spiritual place. This exhibition, frightening as it is, is therapeutic, because it opens out a world far beyond ourselves and venal concerns.

The hyper-realism in these sculptures is meant to shock. 3D is more personal than any painting can ever be. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (attr Juan Martínez Montañés c 1628) upstages the famous Velásquez beside it. As you enter, your eyes are drawn to this glorious, golden Madonna, and you revel in the beauty of its detail. She's ecstatic because she knows Jesus is coming into the world. Then you see a disembodied head. It's John the Baptist, decapitated for spreading the news. Only when you look from the back, the horror hits you. There in realistic, photographic detail is his severed throat, blood vessels and bones protruding.

These sculptures weren't carved as decoration They're supposed to jolt you out of any sense of complacency, forcing you to think about their meaning. They're created to provoke an extreme response, but one which lifts you out of mundane cliché. If it's hard to look at these images of suffering, how much more horrible it must be to experience them? And why did John, Jesus and generations of martyrs suffer willingly for their faith?

These sculptures are rarely seen because normally they live in churches. Some, like the Dead Christ (1625-30, Gregorio Fernández), lie in tabernacles where the devout can contemplate, but others are placed high above altars. Their mysteries aren't revealed: which makes them all the more elusive. This exhibition is unique because it allows us to engage with them up close. We may never get the same opportunity again, even if we go to the churches they inhabit.

The hyper-realism is disturbing because no veil of propriety is drawn over them. St Francis of Assisi is famous for being so humble he can talk to birds. It's a surprise how small his statue (Pedro de Mena 1628-88) is, because the detail is amazing: the very textures of his roughly woven garment are depicted, so you can feel what it means to take a vow of poverty. The textures flow so well over the folds of his robe, that you're hypnotized. Then suddenly you see the wound in his side. St Francis welcomed the stigmata because he wanted to live out Christ's suffering, to come closer to the mystery of the Crucifixion. However stigmata appear, they do cause pain, but look at St Francis's eyes, limpid and moist as if he's alive, filled with compassion and love.

Why is St Francis so inspired? Shouldn't he be indignant that Christ suffered? But St Francis believed that God became man in order to experience the human condition and the pain that entails. The Resurrection shows that mankind will be saved. Suffering and death are a part of life, but can be endured because they will be overcome.

Hence the steely determination on the face of St Mary Magdelene meditating on the Crucifixion (Pedro de Mena 1664). She's wearing a robe which looks like it's woven from reeds. It's so carefully carved it's tactile, and for a reason: you're supposed to imagine why a pretty girl would want to suffer like that. Frail as she is, she holds the crucifix as if she's clinging to it for dear life. and you realize, it "is" the reason for her life. The robe is held together with delicate ropes, each thread finely carved. They look as if they might break at any time, but we know they're carved of solid wood. So the statue is saying, what looks weak is supported by a force greater than you'd expect.

Despite the realism, these painting and sculptures are surreal. The glow on the faces of Mary and the saints isn't ordinary but it's sublime light, Urlicht, that comes from a source that doesn't exist in mundane nature. They look upwards, towards something no-one can see. So you have to think, and imagine. You're engaged, not passive. In the film, outside the exhibition, the curator Xavier Bray comments on Velásquez's Christ after the Flagellation. It looks straightforward, but follow the eyes of the observer. He's looking behind Jesus, at his back, to the wounds we cannot see. The flat painting becomes four dimensional, when you engage your mind.

These objects are more than "art". Gregorio Fernández prepared himself before sculpting by prayer and fasting, and there's no doubt that for others - and their audiences - the works were a doorway to heightened spiritual experience. The statues of St Ignatius Loyola, St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Bruno depict them almost as photographic images so that we see them clearly as normal human beings, transfixed by the mysteries they're contemplating. They're not idols, nor even icons but a way of helping other ordinary people to connect to the amazing ideas behind them.

Kings and magnates want their portraits to make them look good. These images, however, show the saints warts and all, ugly old men whose voluminous garments probably weren't ever washed. Yet they're beautiful because their sprituality mnakes them glow.

Watch the video - photographs just don't come near! Click to make it full screen. Better still, get to this exhibition before it ends 24th January. Some of these things may never be seen like this again. If you like Sacred Made Real, you'll maybe like my other posts UNIQUE TO THIS SITE like those on  Japanese baroque. (and all my 20 plus posts on MACAU, Jesuits in Asia etc.