Notwendig - averting destitution

(literal translation of notwendig - necessary)

"Hang There Like Fruit, My Soul,...

Till the tree die." William Shakespeare


















When She Comes Down (1/20) from Flo_Stoep on Vimeo.

"......Be what it is,

The Action of my life is like it, which I'll keep if but for sympathy."  William Shakespeare

Remembering and Feeling Slightly Shamed

Once in a seminar Raimund Stecker asked us if we would kneel down before a stone and marvel at the wonder/beauty of this earth, which made everybody present laugh. Today I'm definitely sure that the approach of marvel and wonder to my surroundings is the appropriate one for so many reasons. Especially when watching The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the film), which never fails to make me weep at the sheer beauty of this earth as depicted in the final scenes.

Just a Thought

To every trap there might be a trap-door, if you are clever enough to find it...









 

Slow Emotion Replay

 

The Really Great Artist

...when faced with a great challenge of his art, grabs his beard, smiles a rather uncertain smile and then delivers the (fucking best) performance of a lifetime .... Proficiat!

It's Absolutely Charming

to see somebody pray with his feet...

Sharing Some Insight

...that in some great and wonderful flash revealed itself to me when looking at some painted contemporary portraits. What they all had in common was the fact that the way they were executed showed to me in this sudden flash that the executors' perception depended a lot on photography and photorealism...Quite a pity for I believe painting and drawing might be able to render some different perspectives than the indirect technical one of  camera - but then who would really venture to have a live model nowadays anyway and even if you do what do you know about this person to portrait him/her?!...I do understand that a portrait of a person could be and is the hardest thing to achieve anyway ;)

"Herz-Schmerz-Eichhörnchen" and else also Herz-Schmerz on the weekend...

On Friday night my husband and me went on an outing to Aachen to attend a concert of The Miserable Rich at the Raststätte in Aachen. Though our lovely daughter Debora, now living there, was to join us, this spitefully did not happen... Still like last November in Duisburg a wonderful live performance by a bunch of great musicians and a wonderful audience. What will remain as special memories about this one for me apart from the performance is the ice-cold almost freezing red wine - "I'm sorry for it, but we store the bottles outside" (at the time -7 degrees C ;)), but never mind so I drank three glasses and the effect only revealing itself very slightly. The cold coffee, the remains of the band, my husband was treated to for free, and of course the expression "Herz-Schmerz-Eichhörnchen", relating to the following song and video, though it all takes a rather graphic turn - something to do with the fact that the animator had split up shortly before ;). And the rather awkward pronunciation of "Kater" after so many German words with "ch" - Aachen-Herz-Schmerz-Eichhörnchen ;)!


The second take on Herz-Schmerz, heartache, was left to Saturday evening when I treated us to watch the final episode of Sherlock season 2, The Reichenbach Fall (notice even there a lot of "ch" and since Johann Sebastian Bach also featured, as Grimm and Hänsel und Gretel, a lot of German stuff indeed). Spoilers ahead so if you have not yet watched it and intent to do so, please do not read on...

I must admit that I've been sort of warned because of the hysteria this episode evoked on the internet - even before it had been broadcast, kindled by several people. Yet somehow funnily though I often can hardly hold back my tears during emotional, or better even sentimental scenes, this one did not provoke so many tears like for example the scene in Nightwatching where Mijnheer van Rijn realises that inspite of his art he cannot revive Saskia. What  nevertheless made it special is its great humour, its being so hilariously old-fashioned (eg when it makes the viewer believe that in a chase featuring car(s) and pedestrians, the pedestrian is able to win). The revelation that Moriarity is more as the criminal mastermind is also a great illusionist, taking on this way down the illusion that the world can be destroyed by a superweapon or a superkey (in fact I despise all the movies where the least thing the hero has to do is to save the world, big, bigger, biggest, megabig). And then of course there remained "The Final Problem", which turned out to be: "What shall I do, sacrifice my life or sacrifice the lives of the people I love?" Yet indeed it was not even that simple because to sacrifice my life would also mean to make the life of the one person, who really loves me, quite miserable. And the answer is not yet worked out - a perfect fix indeed.

What I love about Belgian Hip Hop

is that they also know a good tune either in French


or in Dutch

Skeletons

This is what a current exhibition at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg reminded me of. It was on display at the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne during the exhibition "Joseph Beuys und das Mittelalter" (Joseph Beuys and the Middle Ages) and appears to be part of the museum's collection.

Contemporary Art

Thinking about Damien Hirst recently brought back to me memories of a seminar on Young British Art back in the 1990s and how at that time the question of contemporary art was raised, implying that YBA was indeed contemporary. Even then I felt that being contemporary is not an issue that would interest me in art. Thinking about the possible implications today I get the idea that contemporary rather transports the view of something that is up-to-date, can be understood by anybody and therefore could be inevitably dull as an outcome. It is possible that it offers no further vision than just a place in time, maybe interesting for some historian. So from the viewpoint of a possible art history - if there was something like this at all :D - inhabiting just this historic point - and probably nothing else...Yet some decades before we had the idea of an Avantgarde in art...


My answer at the time on the question of contamporaneity was with Thierry de Cordier: "I'm not interested in the 20th century." And the artist I felt obliged to discuss - though he was not part of YBA and had been regretfully dead already - was Derek Jarman and above all his garden, something that from the outset would be liable to change its look constantly.

What remains to be added?!

When one of the greatest artists of all time talks about art?! Just take your time and listen carefully and then go and meet him in his works. And maybe read some of his writings, they are more than worthwhile!


PS: Thanks so very much Raimund for sharing this one ;)!

PPS: Newman is btw in a way the namesake  for this entire blog, for when talking about the creating of Art he stated that it was a impossible (unmöglich)!

Opening Fire II

  "I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him--only to bring him t life."  G K Chesterton

Amateurish

Yesterday I've come across a review of Damien Hirst paintings and the reviewer described them as being amateurish. Although I must admit that I was also slightly underwhelmed by the paintings - because in my eyes they were too academic btw - I did not like this approach a lot, for this word "amateur" stems from the Latin "amator", which means paramour. What annoyed me was the reviewer's depreciative use of this word, for if you love something or doing something for the love of it, your heart and soul is involved, and I cannot picture that paintings made with heart and soul can be depreciated. If anything nowadays paintings are regretfully lacking this characteristic - as can be seen from my reaction to the same paintings-, thus what I am craving for is more "amateurish" art.

For whom it may concern Michael Pennington will play Antony in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, co-starring Kim Catrall, in Chichester in September. I at least do feel the urge to go there ;).

Sometimes it...

to see some quality, now I've torn it up - some months ago - I love it. Just like Max Imdahl, only the other way around ;)!

An interesting fact from a radio programme...

There is a game called "Weetjes Orloog" (approx "Interesting facts war") on my favourite radio station, the contestant gets to hear facts and he/she has to decide whether they are true or a lie, you have to get 7 facts right within one minute btw. One of the true facts was that it appears to be that most creative ideas do not get carried out because people simply discard them. So it seems to be that whatever distinguishes the creative person  is not necessarily his/her creativity , but the daring. Interesting indeed.