Classical Music, Poetry and stuff

[Prospero]

Got to disagree... and this is the best example of a powerful and influentail body of work.

[Stavros]

I am not denying Hamilton's influence, but it does nothing for me; and I have seen it enough times. If anything, it pre-figures post-modernism's decentering of the subject and in doing says: everything is of equal value, which is why nothing is important. It also integrates branded products into a frame of reference that cannot decide if it is public or private, further promoting the chaos of post-modernism. Avant-garde indeed!

[runningdownthatdream]

Got to disagree... and this is the best example of a powerful and influentail body of work.

Maybe i'm a Philistine but that looks like pretentious, bourgeois garbage.......work done by someone with too much time on their hands........time no doubt spent trying to come up with something 'radical'.

[robertlouis]

Changing tack briefly, has anyone else been watching Mark Cousins' new series on More4 Saturday evenings, about the Story of Cinema?

Once you get over his curious and I'm afraid highly mannered slow northern Irish commentary, I must say I'm finding the whole thing quite mesmerising in the positive sense of that word. It's beautifully written, with marvellous and rarely seen clips (he's coming up to episode 4 and we're still in the 20s) and I find I'm learning a great deal too, especially about masters from all across the world during the silent era.

15 weeks of 75 minute episodes, each with a link to a film that exemplifies the period and style of the previous Saturday's programme on the following Monday on Film 4. We've already had Griffith's glorious silent masterpiece of the French Revolution, Orphans of the Storm, Carl Dreyer's Ordet, and next Monday we'll get Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.

Thank you Channel 4.

[Prospero]

The Cousins series is brilliant as is his book on the history of cinema which came out a few years back. But by - I nearly switched it off during the first episode because of his weird sophorific delivery. Get past that - or get used to it - and its terrific.

Re Emin et all - I tend to think that they're paler and paler spins on Duchamp rather than in the lineage of Warhol, Hamilton, Lichtenstein etc.

[Prospero]

And if anyone is in London and likes dance go see Grupo Corpo, Brazilian contemporary company at Sadlers Wells this week. The beet ciontemporary dance I've seen since I saw them at last year's Edinburgh Festival. A glass of wine beforehand enabled me to push the intellect aside and revel in the sheer physicality and mesmerising spectacle f wonderful human forms offered in the two pieces they're performing.

Also saw a terrific new film not yet released here - Habemus Papem (We Have A Pope) - an Italian film all about a crisis in the Vatican when a newly elected pope decides he cannot do the job. Very funny, original and ultimately quite moving.

[Stavros]

Story of Cinema sounds interesting, does it cover Japan and India or is it mostly Europe and America? I can't get much on tv now so I assume it will make it to C4 sometime in the future. Potemkin is so over-rated; Ivan the Terrible is Eisenstein's masterpiece. Vertov's The Man with a Movie Camera must be one of the best silent films ever made -? Did anyone see the restored version of Abel Gance's Napoleon?

If I think about it, I don't like clutter in paintings, not detail, but unnecessary stuff thrown in to fill the canvas: there is a famous Poussin in the Wallace Collection, A Dance to the Music of Time which would look better if the top third was cut off and thrown away; also in the Wallace Collection there are two paintings by Rembdrandt or his pupils which show a father and son and a mother and daughter where there is gorgeous detailing of their clothes and enough small items to give symbolic meaning to the paintings (parents giving their children moral lessons) but no unncessary frills; and there was the Genius of Rome exhibition at the Royal Academy in the 90s where hideous Caracci paintings festooned with sickening cherubs were shown alongside the dramas of Caravaggio whose plain sometimes menacing/haunting backgrounds made so much more sense. Hence my dislike of Hamilton, but Prospero's point about Emin is well made; except maybe Duchamp and Miro are at least amusing at times, Emin is so depressing.

[Stavros]

Another question on films, or more accurately film festivals: there seems to be a rich crop of interesting films at Toronto this year; it makes me wonder if Toronto is emerging to match Sundance and the TriBEca as the most interesting festivals in the calendar -I haven't been to the London Film Festival for years, but it always seemed to me to be a cull from others rather than a showcase for new material; and Cannes is more a market than a festival -?? Any ideas on this?

[Prospero]

Stavros - It's on More4 - odd programming decision suggesting C4 don't exect much of an audince. (They are too full of reality TV these days). Yes it ill be covering india, china etc... has already featured the best japanese silent movie (in Cousins' estimation). he is passionate about world cinema - not just the west.

So if you don't like clutter you don't care for Breughel?

Gance - yes. I was there he was alive and was telephoned in France so he could hear the applause for the restored print. A shame they won't be showing that.

And I concur with your judgement on Eisenstein. Potemkin is darn good for all that, though.

I would not edit any of the dance to the music of time - painting or book sequence. Both are masterpieces IMHO

[Prospero]

Venice film festival is a biggie.