Thursday, September 3, 2009

Two Approaches to Art - The Sane Yet Visionary vs. The Insane Yet Blind

I. Two of my lifelong favorite creative artists are the English poet, illustrator and printmaker, William Blake, and the German composer, Ludwig van Beethoven. Both had a profound impact on later artists, helped define the beginnings of Romanticism, and were sometimes thought to be batshit crazy by their contemporaries.

They both died in 1827. As biographers have looked back upon their immense influence on 19th and 20th century art, most have come out to defend what these two artists' contemporaries had thought to be insanity. Blake's Swedenborgian spiritual references throughout his work, thought to be beyond bizarre when he created them, are now revered by people from backgrounds as diverse as Zen Buddhism and Kabbalistic Judaism. Beethoven's ethereal late string quartets, believed to be unplayable, unneeded and unhinged when he composed them, are now regarded as the pillars which supported the expansion of Classical forms into larger areas of time and space.

II. Jocelyn Clark, the creator, director and producer of the Juneau-based CrossSound Music Festival, has had to deal with people thinking her idea of a moving feast of freshly created new music to be more daft than deft. Who would have thought that what some insiders now regard to be the Pacific Northwest's best kept new art experience would annually seek out such venues as Haines, Wasilla or Sitka?

Beginning last Friday, 2009's iteration of this wondrous set of concerts is underway. This Sunday, September 6th, at 8:00 p.m, at the University of Alaska Anchorage Fine Arts Recital Hall, the festival's instrumental ensemble, KnikKlang, will present six recent works by three composers, all with Alaska or Pacific Northwest roots:

  • Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
    Kuik (aria) (2006)
    for voice, percussion, computer sound and video
  • John Luther Adams (Fairbanks)
    Make Prayers to the Raven (1996/98)
    fl, vln, hp (or pno), vlc, percussion
  • Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
    Broken Drum (2003)
    automobile brake drum and computer
  • Owen Underhill (Vancouver, B.C.)
    Sakalaka (2007, CrossSound Commission)
    vln, vcl, fl, cl, tbn, pno
  • Metasax&DRUMthings + ThinkThank, Mindcam (2006)
    metasax, drum kit, computer interaction, snowboard video
  • Matthew Burtner (Anchorage/VA)
    Portals of Distortion (1999)
    version for tenor saxophone + 8 prerecorded tenor saxophones

I can't emphasize enough how exciting CrossSound's concerts are.

John Luther Adams is perhaps Alaska's greatest living non-Native artist. Make Prayers to the Raven was one of the defining works in his odyssey to, as Beethoven did for early 19th century music, create new approaches to time and space for the early 21st century.

Matthew Burtner, who grew up in Naknek and on the North Slope, now teaches at the University of Virginia. His works explore different aspects of time and space than does that of Adams, though they sometimes intersect.

Owen Underhill, who directed the premiere of one of his two works in this concert, in Sitka two years ago, teaches at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C.

The ticket price for Sunday evening's UAA concert by KnikKlang, will be $15.00 general admission, $10.00 for students, which is insanely cheap!

Be there!


III. Speaking of insane - blindly insane - takes on what art is, here's the most dangerous man in America on that notable communist/fascist/liberal/progressive, John Rockefeller:


Whoa.....

Keep praying for this dangerous hack to drive himself totally fucking nuts.

It seems to be working.

19 comments:

justafarmer said...

why do I get the feeling that Edvard Munch's "The Scream" should be prominently displayed on the Fox building?
Has Beck taken on the "scary stuff" on the dollar bill, yet?

Philip Munger said...

justafarmer,

When I was 21, I was caretaker at an abandoned hot spring resort in California, Harbin Hot Springs, when some flying saucer believers bought the place and moved in. They invited me to stay. I did, for eight months. I learned a lot about some of the strange things people believe and do, to say the least.

There's no end to the weird material Beck seems to be attempting to tie together now.

justafarmer said...

ha, flying saucers!
reminds of the "Monk" episode where the UFO enthusiasts were convinced he was an alien.

Anonymous said...

How bad can communism be if John D. Rockfeller was one? Just asking Glenn?

Anonymous said...

At least the Leninist doctrine included full equality for women -- unlike Beck "or your wife".

And since I'm an architecture wonk, and have already ranted about everything else on this video elsewhere, can I just say that the International Style -- think big box -- used for some of Rockefeller's NY buildings was called that for a reason; and how ignorant do you have to be to claim that in 1932 there were no buildings in NYC that were "American" in style?

Final yelp: That Rivera mural he's waving at is at the opera house in Mexico City, and wasn't commissioned by Rockefeller. Also, the men in gas masks? Not capitalists. Really. Fool.

Philip Munger said...

This post is also supposed to make you really want to come to the Sunday concert at UAA. It will be awesome - I guarantee.

jim said...

One could devote an entire career to how Blake influenced 20th century art, but an obvious connection was with (perhaps my favorite caucasian artist who spent time in the North), Rockwell Kent. It takes about a half-second glance at one of Kent's wood engravings to see Blake's influence. I guess I'd call it (for both of them) the graphic idealization of the human spiritual form. Like Blake, Kent wrote "a lot," and Kent was well aware of Blake's art and writings. Kent (and Blake) also influenced Canada's Group of Seven (perhaps especially Harris).

As I'm sure you're aware (but for your readers), Kent was one of the very best American illustrators of the 20th century. I love his northern books-- Wilderness, North by East, and Salamina.

He got blacklisted by the McCarthy crowd. As a consequence he was too bitter to leave his paintings in this country and he gave many of them to the Russians. If you want to see some of the best Alaska landscape paintings ever produced, go to the Pushkin or the Hermitage.

Kent is known for his beautiful illustrations, but his paintings, especially his northern work from Alaska and Greenland, are a colorist's revelation of the uniqueness of the north.

My grandfather was in Seward when Kent went through to/ from Fox Island en route to/from producing fabulous ink drawings, writings, wood engravings, watercolors, and (often later) oil paintings. My grandfather died in the 1930s and I'll never know if he ever met Kent. My grandmother, who arrived in Seward within a year Kent's departure, corresponded with him over several decades. Somewhere my mom has some letters stashed-- thanks for the reminder; I need to launch a search.

Now I have to go back and reread Kent and get further immersed in Blake. Kent was totally intrigued with pristine "primitive" indigenous cultures, and what our own "culture" could learn from them. (Our culture could still learn but we're too stuck up). For Kent, the North was both a natural and human wilderness.

BluCowgirl said...

Amazing to even contemplate what must rattle around in that head of Beck's at night..... Conspiracy EVERYWHERE!

Really spooky part to me is the thought of the minds already broken that he preaches to day and night with the rantings of a madman to some even more mad than he is...

When he causes some freak to lose it completely and fully break with reality he will claim he had nothing to do with what occurs, as these whacko insighters always do. We will be left to clean up the shattered pieces of the madman's work from shouting fire!

Philip Munger said...

Jim,

Yes! on Rockwell Kent. Fred Machetanz had some good Rockwell Kent stories.

I imagine Glenn Beck as similar to William Blake's Nebuchadnezzar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nebuchadnezzar.jpg

jim said...

Beck is similar pictorially, although his bio isn't as good.

I've got good friends who were good friends of Fred but I never met him myself. I hear he was a great guy; smart, kind, a wonderful technician, and of course a great artist. I paint with transparent layers and he was truly remarkable with his transparently layered paintings, patiently working on many at once and on various stages, sometimes taking years to get one done, drying them under his heat lamps, waiting weeks for each separate layer of oil to dry before applying the next. My mind wouldn't manage to accommodate so many simultaneous projects at once. You can stare at one of his paintings at the museum all day. I can stare at a square inch of his art all day. He must have told you how Parrish influenced him. The sad thing about art history is you wonder about all the stories that have been silenced by the passing of generations. Wish I could have met him. You're lucky you knew him.

Anonymous said...

Funny to see the wackos that inhabit the "progressive" fever swamps call Glenn Beck "crazy". Hypocrites, much ? BTW How's that Hope 'N Change working out for y'all ?

Anonymous said...

Why are you praying for him to go insane? Shouldn't you, as one of those full of love progressives, be praying for his sanity instead?
That is like a comment I heard the other day from a lefty who with hate in his/her eyes claimed to have seen Eddie Burke at the Fair and referred to Burke as a hater. Actually the person he/she saw was not Burke but Fagan...which made the remark even funnier considering he/she wasn't even sure of who he/she was mad at! You people constantly keep me entertained! Thank you for the laughs.

Philip Munger said...

anon @ 3:38 pm -

To me, the scariest thing about Eddie Burke is that he recently told me, "Phil, I think I really like you!"

I've known Eddie now for 21 years. Back when he was hitting up on female employees at his Chevron station, I prayed for him to change his ways. Some say he did.

As far as Beck is concerned, I'm only hoping his inner self comes out more and that people see it for what it is.

mary b said...

I think Beck is already past dangerously insane. I am also quite convinced that he poses a threat to himself as well as others.
Why this man hasn't been court ordered for a full mental evaluation is beyond me. It has been ordered for people much more sane than Beck.
Is it all Murdochs power and money? What will Murdoch do when Beck is responsible (outright responsible) for violence, as I believe he already is?

mary b

mary b said...

To the Right Wing Poster who is Anon,

We progressives do not hate people. We do, however, point out facts, something you probably are not familiar with.
Remember one of Jesus' sayings about hating the sin but loving the sinner? Well, we progressives tend to believe that saying. As well as a lot of other things that Jesus said. We don't scream Christian at the top of our lungs. Another thing Jesus taught. We love our neighbors, even if they are whack jobs. But we do hate the way hypocrites, liars, grifters, etc, treat other people. Also, the way they think that rightousness means self-rightous.
Those who are without sin may they cast the first stone.
So don't be splashing your hate at progressives. If you had the capacity to want to be part of brotherhood of man, then you would understand.
I think the republicans and neo-cons have the market on hate.

Yusef Asabiyah said...

You've got to admit it was odd for JD Rockefeller to commission work from Diego Rivera. I have no doubt the mural Beck is describing has an anti-capitalist pro-marxist meaning. I've never seen a Diego Rivera mural which didn't (if it had any political message at all--most did.)

That Rockefeller commissioned such work doesn't mean Rockefeller was a progressive of course. Or that he was trying to surreptitiously convince the masses to revolt. What Rockefeller's intention was--can someone explain this to me?

The most striking thing about the discourse of men like Beck is the extreme confusion of ideologies-- they are saying such things as Nazis were socialists, communism is Al Qaeda, Obama is Hitler AND Stalin...I can't tell whether they truly think this way or their rhetoric is overwrought. This does seem to be confusion bordering on insanity.

That the image of beating swords into plowshares is communist imagery is related to this terrific confusion. As most of us know, this imagery is Biblical. Maybe Beck will have the brainstorm of tracing this back to christianity and realizing Marx had an alien time machine and used it to go back in time to contaminate the Jews and Jesus with his evil omnipotent influences.

Don said...

It must kill you "progressives" to see this "crazy guy" exposing the Communist radicals that the president has surrounded himself with.

Anyone who supports cop killers (Mumia) should NEVER have a job in the White House. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for Mr. Jones.

And you can badmouth Beck's assessment of the 1930's Progressive Art all you want, but the fact is it was highly influenced by Soviet/Communist themes. A hammer and sickle? How much more blatant can you get?

Does this art mean anything? Absolutely not. It's a distraction from the real problem, but it's an interesting distraction just to show that this infiltration isn't anything new.

And I'm anything but some "Anonymous" right wing nut.

By the way, how's the character assassination on Gov. Palin going? You idiots are going to bash her right into the White House. And I'm going to laugh the whole way there.

Yusef Asabiyah said...

"...but it's an interesting distraction just to show that this infiltration isn't anything new."

If so, it also shows the "infiltration" doesn't have the kind of effects you poor, whining, hysterical "men" think it does.

This stuff has been hanging in NYC for 70 years or so, and much of that 70 years was prime-time for the USA.

And besides, Beck's cameraman said he'd been walking by the one piece for more than 20 years and never even noticed it. Yeah, that's some really significant, dangerous stuff infecting our collective consciousness.

Go ahead and be a victim of fear mongering if you want. Just don't try to impress me with afterwards with how big and tough you are, "trucker don."

Go ahead and take out a mid-level WH staffer in a vicious smear and payback campaign and try to look brave and patriotic, "trucker don."

Anonymous said...

mary b blabs
"
To the Right Wing Poster who is Anon,

We progressives do not hate people. We do, however, point out facts, something you probably are not familiar with.
Remember one of Jesus' sayings about hating the sin but loving the sinner? Well, we progressives tend to believe that saying. As well as a lot of other things that Jesus said. We don't scream Christian at the top of our lungs. Another thing Jesus taught. We love our neighbors, even if they are whack jobs. But we do hate the way hypocrites, liars, grifters, etc, treat other people. Also, the way they think that rightousness means self-rightous.
Those who are without sin may they cast the first stone.
So don't be splashing your hate at progressives. If you had the capacity to want to be part of brotherhood of man, then you would understand.
I think the republicans and neo-cons have the market on hate."

I hate to tell you this mary but your are nucking futs and why do you clowns always bring up Jesus when blathering about the love you DON'T HAVE?
Just a reminder here...Jesus was a Jew and his real name was Yehoshua and I would bet he was more like one of the kick ass Jews you see on movies like "Defiance" as opposed to some whimpy old gag me type with watery eyes I see attending the Unitarian churches.

The only difference is your kind smiles in a person's face while one of your weird watery eyed friends sneak up and hits the person over the head with a baseball bat.
Yes, you are filled with hate sweety whether you want to admit it or not.