Monthly Archive for July, 2009

Harry Clarke, National Gallery


published in Column 2
on July 31, 2009
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In 1913, Harry Clarke was commissioned by George Harrap, of Harrap Publishers in London, to provide forty illustrations to accompany Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, sixteen of them in colour. Clarke had just graduated from the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin (now the National College of Art and Design (NCAD)). He completed this commission in April of 1915, and the book was published in 1916.

Sixteen of these forty drawings – six in black-and-white and ten of them in colour – are on show in the Print Room in the National Gallery in Dublin. These are the only remaining originals – the other twenty-four are believed to have been destroyed during the Blitz – and these sixteen original images are in excellent condition (the techniques used in this preservation can be read about on the National Gallery website). They are wall mounted and well lit, behind glass, in a U-shape, around the room. The black-and-white drawings are shown together on the left wall. They are extremely detailed and intricate. The colour images continue along the rear wall and the right. The colours in these are beautiful, lurid, and vivid.

I read on some information panels that Clarke spent a year in France, on a scholarship, in 1914, and visited many French cathedrals and churches; here he was taken by their stained glass art. The influence on the colour in these pieces can be seen with his rubies, oranges, blues, and yellows. Subsequent to completing this project for Harrap, Clarke went on to receive many stained glass commissions throughout Ireland; examples of his work can be viewed at the Hugh Lane’s Stained Glass Room.

The drawings on show, at the National Gallery, suggest a mix of the gothic, rococo, and the macabre. There is no effort on Clarke’s part to portray realism – no perspective or foreshortening or any of these kinds of image-making technique. The picture planes are flat – perhaps so that the viewer would not be distracted from the detail – and the dimensions of these images are uniform and small – 200mm wide by 300mm tall.

The level of this detail is such that, I noticed, at about head height, in front of each image, there were smudges on the protective glass panels, most likely formed by people leaning in, to gain a closer look, and banging their noses or heads. I also read, with regard to the colour images, that Clarke usually spent about seven days applying the colour once the outline inking was done.

In the centre of the room, a vitrine houses an original copy of the book published by Harrap.

The show is open daily. Its run has been extended to September 20 and admission is free. -Adrian Duncan

The Some Blind Alleys Thursday Morning Classical Music Deathmatch: Tchaikovksy v Beethoven


published in From the Editor
on July 30, 2009
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250px-Porträt_des_Komponisten_Pjotr_I._Tschaikowski_(1840-1893)250px-Beethoven

I hope you enjoy the mid-morning classical music deathmatch. Most people know both these pieces, though they might not be able to name them.

It’s Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1, from the first movement, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5, “Emperor,” third movement.

The Kissin/Karajan version of Tchaikovsky is very good. I think Kissin looks like he’s about ten years old, which is rather sickening for anyone who hasn’t an ounce of musical talent. The Tchaikovsky is one of my favorites, since I imagine that the pianist has to jump up and down on the piano in order to batter it adequately.

You must, however, have a good audio recording to appreciate how loud the piano is. A great deal is lost in the below recording.

The Beethoven version also combines two masters, but I have always been astounded that Barenboim could be a brilliant pianist, since he looks like he must have very small hands.

Anyway, enjoy the deathmatch, and vote if you like. If you think you’ve got ten minutes (ish) of music that is worth a deathmatch, send an email.

Vs

Down by the old Motor Tax Office

Donald Mahoney
published in Essays
on July 29, 2009
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Down by the old Motor Tax Office
The River House, known to most as the old Motor Tax Office, has been empty for almost three years now. There are grand plans to replace it with something bigger and bolder, but those plans are on hold. The economy has provided a reprieve. The building awaits the wrecking ball with an ugly splendor and is being reclaimed by the drunks and junkies of the north inner city.

It is my feeling that it should be listed, protected, treated like a Georgian bathhouse. River House is a tacky declaration of modernity. The least it deserves is a slow and public death.

Continue reading ‘Down by the old Motor Tax Office’

The Dublin Theatre Festival 2009 Programme is out


published in From the Editor
on July 28, 2009
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Kamp
The one about the puppets in concentration camp – Kamp … that one is certain to be genius or so bad it will melt your eyes. One hour, no sound, and an entire model of Auschwitz. No actors. Puppets. The Holocaust.

From the Theatre Festival website:

An enormous model of Auschwitz takes up the whole stage with crowded huts, a railway line, and a gate with the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei”.

The model of the camp comes to life with thousands of 8cm high hand-made puppets, representing the prisoners and their executioners. The actors, like colossal war correspondents, weave through the scene with hand-held cameras. They film the atrocities. The audience becomes witness.

Not a word is spoken, the audience only experiences the sights and sounds, which transcend the powerlessness of the figures into much more than a mere reporting of events.

That’s the one that jumps out of the programme, and obviously Chekhov’s Three Sisters, performed in Russian.

I went to a Spanish production in Dun Laoghaire last year and just barely decided not to kill myself during it. Some of the options on the programme look suspiciously similar. Yet the majority look worth a visit, and the nightly illumination of Liberty Hall is a really nice way to draw attention to the good work done inside the ugliest building in the world.
PlayHouse

Watch the world’s most famous opera festival online


published in From the Editor
on July 28, 2009
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Cosi Fan Tutte
The Salzburg Festival 2009 will offer Così fan tutte (dir. Claus Guth) via web stream for €7.90. You can watch it live starting July 30 at 09:00 p.m. (+2 GMT). And you’ve got it on-demand for seven days after the actual performance.

The Met has been screening opening nights and special performances in cinemas around the world for years. In the cinema, you at least have the feeling that opera is, as it should be, a communal experience – a stage experience. But I suppose you could argue that the internet is also those things.

The advantages are that people in places like Santa Fe, New Mexico (e.g.), have a chance to see world-class talent in great productions. The disadvantages… well, there are many.

But I can’t help feeling that if I had the choice to watch Così fan tutte online from Salzburg or go watch Così fan tutte at the Gaiety, I’d choose Salzburg in a second.

I went to see Don Giovanni in the Gaiety earlier this year. People were opening wrappers and bags of crisps and twisting open fizzy drinks in the middle of the acts. Men and women were getting up to go to the toilet during the performance, causing whole rows to have to stand.

The man in front of me farted loudly. Stragglers came in late – up to ten minutes late. Many left early – the production was not bad enough to walk out on, except maybe if you had paid $500 at the Met.

At the interval, the fattest Chinese man I have ever set eyes upon screamed, about three minutes after I had bought my quarter bottle of rancid wine – PLEASE FOLKS! GO BACK TO YOUR SEATS! PLEASE … incessantly, right in my ear. People clapped before arias stopped. Mobile phones went off. A man two rows back sent a text message. I became aware of this only because the dark air above me suddenly went very blue.

But back to Salzburg: In the opera:

an experiment is designed to reveal the truth about women’s supposed lack of faithfulness. An ambiguous game begins, exposing deeper and deeper layers of feeling. The clear-eyed view of the confusion of human relations opens up an abyss that seems to go far beyond the framework of a Dramma giocoso. This stage work – in some ways Mozart’s most radical – is not so much a “School for Lovers” as a continuous dissection of hearts. In the tension between love and passion, security and selfnegation, faithfulness and betrayal, the couples get lost in emotional chaos. Mozart’s music traces the inner contradictions of his figures without ever betraying them, and suddenly makes us doubt our confident belief that we can separate playfulness from earnestness, dream from reality.

Banksy vs. the Bristol Museum, The Bristol Museum


published in Column 2
on July 28, 2009
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Banksy is a semi-anonymous satirical artist whose work grew from the Bristol underground scene and has now reached worldwide acclaim. Banksy vs. the Bristol Museum is his largest show to date.

I got a €20 Ryanair flight from Dublin and had to stand in a queue outside the museum drinking Erdinger for ninety minutes in the sunshine. Under the entrance and a partially deflated blow-up Ronald McDonald, I was a little apprehensive it might not live up to the hype. Though I have been a fan of his work for some time.

The centre of the main foyer was taken up with a burnt-out ice-cream truck, which also served as the information desk. Around this stood five marble statues that fit rather well with the museum’s interior. They included a six-foot version of Michealangelo’s David strapped into a suicide bomber’s jacket and a circus lion that had eaten its tamer. Behind the ice cream truck a robotic policeman in full riot gear rode a child’s fairground pony.

Animatronics seem to be Banksy’s welcome new foray. The far section featured work from the pet shop he opened in Greenwich Village last year and filled with mechanised “animals.” I passed chicken nuggets feeding from barbeque sauce, swimming fish fingers, a featherless and very depressed Tweety Bird and a beret-wearing monkey painting a beach. The highlight, at this point, was a family of nesting CCTV cameras. Banksy was inspired by a chihuahua wearing a diamante necklace he saw walking past a homeless person and wanted to make a point how we spoil some animals and turn others into hot dogs.

Banksy’s work always has a point. I am an amateur critic, like most. For me art must have beauty or meaning. One reason Banksy manages to draw such a massive audience is his ability to slice right through, as well as mock, pretension. Later in the exhibition we’d see an actual Damien Hirst piece of coloured spots defaced with grey paint and a rat holding a brush.

There was also an installation of his work area, complete with stencil templates with a radio debate of his work in the background and blurred-out self-portraits. Most of this was excellent, but there were those that bore worn-out messages or were just plain bad.

This is a large, accessible, and very amusing show. Bristol is a decent arty town with good markets and nice harbour area. However, in the evening it tends to get overrun by hen parties and chavs. There were only a couple of bars (Start The Bus and The Woods) we found that were immune to this and quite cool. It runs to August 31 and admission is free. -Bryan Butler

Fish freezing plant

Lucy McKenna
published in Visual Art
on July 27, 2009
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Artist’s note: Fish Freezing Plant was created during an artist’s residency I undertook this year, in Northern Iceland, sponsored by the Arts Council. The residency took place in a small fishing village called Skagastrond, situated on a northerly peninsula close to the Arctic Circle. I have projected images of my work onto an abandoned fishing plant at night. The village has many derelict buildings and factories due to the disappearance of the fish shoals during the 1980s. The work is also influenced by Icelandic mythology and the Northern Lights. The audio contains sounds I recorded in Iceland and also features a sample from Icelandic band Múm.

Lucy McKenna lives in Kilkenny

Book buying in the future – on demand and one at a time


published in From the Editor
on July 27, 2009
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Espresso Book Machine
I found a story from about a month ago on the Boston Globe about something called the Espresso Book Machine – which is a very bad name for a potentially interesting device.

It’s not a brand new machine, but the company is “planning for dramatic growth in 2009.”

The concept is simple (if expensive): Customer (or attendant) walks to computer console and chooses book from catalog. Presses button. Book appears.

(You can watch the video via the link.)

Alice Munro (b. 1931), from “Images”


published in Plugs
on July 26, 2009
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Alice MunroThen we went along the river, the Wawanash River, which was high, running full, silver in the middle where the sun hit it and where it arrowed in to its swiftest motion. That is the current, I thought, and I pictured the current as something separate from the water, just as the wind was separate from the air and had its own invading shape. The banks were steep and slippery and lined with willow bushes, still bare and bent over and looking weak as grass. The noise the river made was not loud but deep, and seemed to come from away down in the middle of it, some hidden place where the water issued with a roar from underground. – Alice Munro

Beauty from disposable music

Tom Colton
published in Essays
on July 24, 2009
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Beauty from disposable music
Exit, the music festival in Serbia that began as a rebellion against the isolationism of the Milošević regime, is based in a Roman fortress in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second largest city, which still isn’t large enough to sustain an airport.

Belgrade is just an hour’s bus journey away, but to fly there is prohibitively expensive, so most western Europeans get a plane to Hungary or Croatia and train it the rest of the way.

Except for me. My journey was murkier, involved the city of Graz, a lost sixteen hours, then an abandoned train station in a provincial town in the dark, where I was unsure what country I was in.

I finally boarded a train with some fellow festival-goers. I got talking to a Slovenian from Ljubljana. “In the nightclubs now, there are the homosexuals. They come to me and say ‘You are nice. I like your bottom.’ But I am tolerant. I do not beat them. The girls do not like it if you beat.”

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