It's a constant surprise when I see modernist paintings looking so radical a hundred years on, after watching the BBC Four 'Sound And The Fury', I sought more of Schoenberg's images. It was this one called 'The Gaze', that caught my attention. The colours in and around the eyes! Poor old Schoenberg, everywhere I look he is vilified, well I rate his pictures and his music. Like John Lydon said art should always upset those that deserve to be upset, or W.S. Burroughs when he said all true artists are at war with the world.
There was this great interview with Stockhausen by Bjork, they were discussing how long it takes for new ideas to be assimilated into the wider culture. Bjork asserted that we should now abandon Beethoven and Bach, but Stockhausen said that there are still mysteries in Bach's music that are still being understood, that it can take hundreds of years to absorb new thinking. I look at so much modernist painting in this way, it was so clever in ways that we can rediscover and re-learn.
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| The Gaze 1910 |
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| Hate 1910 |
I didn't realise that Schoenberg also painted. After being tentative for years I'm only really immersing myself in classical music now, thanks to my library's collection and cheap thrift shop vinyl.
ReplyDeleteOne of my older book club members told me that Schoenberg's influence ruined 20C music!
I have fond memories of borrowing the library cds and taping them! They had some great stuff, like Stockhausen's Donnerstag Aus Licht on 3cds. The third cd was badly scratched and clicked like a metronome,but I was so bowled over I didn't care. I'd never heard anything so strange. My flatmates refered to it as a riot in a farmyard. From that time I got my kicks from so called classical music!
ReplyDeleteI think I got a handle on why Schoenberg is derided when I discovered his output changed from music of romantic tradition eg. Pelleas und Melisande which was very populist as it was inoffensive (sounds very Wagnerian), and ever since many have not forgiven what happened at the infmous String Quartet No.2 as they imagined he was insulting the romantic heritage. I see it as being the point where he broke his shackles and found his own language.
I suppose by then I had already been steeped in Boulez and Stockhausen, so post String Quartet No.2 Schoenberg made perfect sense to me!
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