Art, Literature, And Music Favorites September 2015

by

Mackenzie Patel

I grovel for new and thrilling music, art, and novels that have the power to saturate my ears with rhythm, assault my eyes with beautiful paints, and spin the cogs of my brain with intricate characters, foreign time periods, and the depthless emotions of fictional lives. I skipped writing an August favorites post because my life was stuck in liminality; I was stuffing my life in a suitcase to prepare for the final move to college. However, an explosion of culture detonated in September, and I’m incredibly happy that I discovered so many enriching pieces this month. Personally, not much has changed (except for the whole “college” experiment)—I rushed for a professional fraternity, lost myself under the chiaroscuro lights of a dance club, and started playing the flute again. Freshmen year of college is always an awkward, trying, and socially anxious time of life, but armed with my classical music and Anna Karenina, I grappled with the world of youth head on.

Art

I have so many art favorites this month! I am a gallery guide at my University Museum, so for five glorious hours a week, I am injected with protest art, African Kente cloth made out of liqueur bottle caps, and obscure modern art that nevertheless is thoughtfully delightful. I also discovered an amazing Eastern European artist that captured my intrigue from the beginning…I have more than three art favorites, but I knew music and literature would be livid if I didn’t include them too!

• Girl With A Pierced Eardrum, Banksy, 2014

September was the month of Banksy for me, mostly because the opening of his controversial Dismaland blew my mind with its wit, perversity, macabre elements, and twisting of Disney. Read my unusual article about Dismaland here. Banksy is a mysterious English graffiti artist, but his work isn’t just random black and red scribbles of spray paint. His art is thought-provoking, political, and so snarky in nature that he offends thousands of people just with one image. I’m a classical girl to the hilt, so Banksy’s mocking rendition of the famous Vermeer painting was hilarious. Was Banksy debunking the splendid, pretentious haze that surrounds “masterworks” of European art?  Absolutely, but it’s precisely his social cynicism that attracts me to him. Other works that have captured my fancy include Napalm (2004), Girl With A Heart Balloon (2002), and the Grim Reaper (2013).

• Tango For Page Turning, Kentridge, 2012

This short film is displayed at the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Florida. Kentridge isn’t a famous artist by any means, but his spell of discombobulated images, disembodied words, and limber charcoal dancers is unbreakable. A prominent anti-apartheid artist, Kentridge animated his charcoal drawings of South African dancers and wove them into the pages of a dusty Chemistry textbook. Seeing the faceless characters twirl across complicated equations and Greek symbols are fascinating and somewhat disturbing. The audio that serves as a backdrop to the imaginary couple was appropriated from Berlioz’s Le Spectre de la Rose. Berlioz was the trippiest romantic composer of his day (i.e. Symphonie Fantastique), which suited this unsettling composite work perfectly. Listen to Le Spectre de la Rose here.

• Waltz, Afremov, date unknown

Slashing his canvases with modern impressionism, Afremov has quickly risen to one of my favorite artists. Unreachable amounts of pure passion and vitality are communicated solely through frantic brushstrokes and brilliant colors, their heavy emotions striking the viewer with more intensity than flames. Impressionism of the late 1800s was “cutesy,” dull at times, tranquil, and bucolic. By contrast, this Russian Jew (from the same village as Marc Chagall!) creates powerful works that physically elicit strong personal reactions. I find Waltz enchanting because it’s the very blurriness and lack of a defined framework that practically beg the imagination to fill in the gaps. For some reason, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights pops into my cluttered mind when I see this, the breathiness of Katie and the boyish sexiness of Javier sending me into fits of rhythmic delight. I’m in love with the bright colors, the impasto so thick I can feel it without the bodily touch, and the classy whimsicalness that makes me wish dresses and men like that truly exist. Other explosive works worth note include Passion, Cello, and Bottle Jazz. Although Afremov is Belarusian, his paintings are tangled in the “sexy Spanish” style that evokes humid Barcelona nights and fiery olive tapas.

Literature

*Update: I am STILL reading Anna Karenina. I am 750 pages in, the Russian emotions straining me more than a calculus exam has ever done.*

• Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

Although this was a required reading for my good life class, I didn’t despise it as much as I intended to. I usually swear to loathe all books that are unwillingly shoved down my throat (i.e. The Awakening), but this novel, along with the oddities of Crime and Punishment and Les Miserables, was an exception. The ending was too religiously esoteric for me, but the diction leading up to those flowery end chapters was superb. The narrative quality was entertaining and easy to follow along, despite the unfamiliar Eastern territory. This story syntactically animated the life of Siddhartha, the Enlightened Buddha that trudges through innumerable trials to end the never-ending cycle of Samsara. Although Siddhartha was rather whiny and selfish, the intriguing characters of Vasudeva and Kamala glossed over Siddhartha’s childishness.

• Psychological Perspective on Camille Saint Saëns, Kenneth Ring

First of all, automatically disregard the boorish and poorly worded title that Mr. Ring chose for reasons unbeknownst to me. However, rather than transforming into pure melatonin and putting me to sleep, this slender read was fascinating and unique, especially for music lovers such as myself. It told the life story of Camille Saint Saëns, a talented French composer that has nevertheless been banished to dusty, unread library shelves crawling with spiders and youth indifference. He was a giant musical figure in his day, but owing to his medieval cling to “classical” music, his outdated style bit the European dust as Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel swept his scores away. Along with a biography, the author analyzed the anal man’s life from a psychological standpoint, delving into his stormy (and creepy) relationships with his mother, muse, and male students. Needless to say, although I adore Carnival of the Animals and Danse Macabre, Saint Saëns was a raging misogynist that could only express his disturbing childhood angst through hatred, criticism, and archaic music.

Music

Six months ago, I was an unaware firebrand that thought classical music was a collection of disparate notes and sounds, loud instruments and lyric-less noise that I could never relate to. The violins were strings on which to fall asleep and the names of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were only fancy proper nouns to throw around pretentiously. However, with the first chords of Piano Concert No 1 by my beloved Tchaik and the piteous notes of the violin in Scheherazade, I realized just how profound and beautiful classical music was. It is talent. It is class. It is a story. And I’m grateful to have discovered something so powerful.

• Song of India, Rimsky-Korsakov

 He is my Scheherazade man, so of course this stunning, exotic work would crawl into my list of favorites. It’s foreign, melodic quality reminds me so much of 1001 Nights—it’s addictive and brimming with beautiful emotion at the same time. It’s not as desperate as Scheherazade, but more bucolic and celebratory. The unforgettable measures were written for Sadko, an opera about the Russian adventures of a gusli player.

• Musetta’s Waltz, Puccini

Besides being attracted to his whimsical, squishy name, I’m enamored with his short piece because the tune is so recognizable, brief, and romantically sweet. I’m reminded of misted street lamps, the ornate ones that glow passionately in Paris, kissing under bridges or behind the curtains in an opera house, and velvet. It’s difficult to put into words, but the melody is a happier version of Swan Lake, the delight dripping out of the eighth notes and into my cynical thoughts. Similar to Rimsky’s Song of India, Musetta’s Waltz is from the famous opera La Boheme (1895).

• Lara’s Theme from Doctor Zhivago, Maurice Jarre

I finally watched the classic film, Doctor Zhivago, this month and found even more reasons to be in love with Russian creativity and culture. The sentimental balalaika notes are pleasing and wholesome, like a Russian peasant just served steaming whole grain bread to me. I also hear notes of tragedy and death, probably because I thought the character of Doctor Zhivago was rather selfish—he abandoned his faithful wife and child for a blond yuppity with a psychotic personality! Either way, Lara’s Theme is stunning and emotional—I again long for the Swiss Alps and valleys, the alphorns that evoke the same pastoral feeling as balalaikas, and the gut wrenching love that’s made of more bitter than sweet.

Other pieces I’ve been obsessed with lately:

• In The Hall Of The Mountain King, Grieg
• Sonatina I and II, Inghelbrecht
• Akhenaton, Philip Glass
• Metamorphosis, Philip Glass

So what did you love this month (and August)?