The World is All Bending and Breaking from Me
Speaking of glamour-spending, if any one has a spare five thousand Euros kicking around, they can buy me this one particular Hundertwasser print from an exhibition of his lithographs currently on display in Neukoelln-Berlin. I guess that's the good thing about lithographs - since they're printed in bulk, one can buy copies of the things you see on the wall - if you have five thousand Euros (several were way more expensive, but the one I liked most also happened to be one of the cheapest to buy (once again demonstrating that my taste is better than most other peoples'). Though I do like Hundertwasser, in some actual way (as opposed to a oh-that-crazy hippy bullshit way (though some of his art really fails to conjure anything but the later reaction (one of the downsides to being prolific, one supposes, is that you produce more, and therefore more shit too))). But Friedensreich Hundertwasser (and, incidentally, did you know that he change his last name about a decade before he changed his first name? interesting), much like the song-version of Lord Baden Powell, is up when he's up.
Since I didn't have the thousands-upon-thousands needed for splurging on an actual print, I compromised and bought an exhibition poster. Up to this point in my life, I have never wanted to buy an exhibition poster. Something about me is different. In fact, though I only ever bought... (counting)... two prints of works of art ever (a Kandisky and a Van de Velde (the Younger) - both at tender young ages (13 and 17)), both of those were particularly sought having no museum-of-origin markings. And I've definitely, since then (it's been well over (er, well, three years over) ten years since I was 13) there've been times where I would have bought some painting-poster if it hadn't been labeled MoMA or whatever. But today, suddenly I found myself thinking "that would be nice to have hanging on my wall." I guess I'm, like, getting older, or something?
Last night I went to the Komische Oper's production of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Thought it's only the second KO production I've seen, I'm prepared to make a generalization and state that they sacrifice singing-ability for acting ability. Which is okay, but kind of a disappointment, for more sonically-oriented folks like myself. Though speaking of being visually interested by operas, this was about as a good a staging as one might hope for for Mahagonny. It being Brecht allows for all kinds of meta-opera kind of touches, but I thought this was pulled off pretty well.
A very minimalist stage, the first act featured a large box (about the height/width of the whole stage) wrapped in brown paper on an otherwise empty stage (the full backstage was also visible (the first sign of a Brechtian we-are-making-an-opera kind of gesture (though the massive void behind the stage probably didn't help the already struggling acoustic of the house (I was sitting, FYI, front and center of the first ring)))). The libretto calls for a sequence of projections, so this particular staging just projected Brecht's own words on the box, and occasionally stage hands would walk out and paint words on the box too. The box is unwrapped at the end of the first act to reveal a weird party room that featured the kind of clear-plastic slats that car wash entrances and exits are made from.
After the hurricane that destroys Pensacola doesn't hit Mahagonny, the party really gets going, and there were actually projections and lots of money falling from the sky. I really like this opera, actually. The music is fantastic, and as heavy-handed as Brecht's theses about Opera are throughout, they're the kind of theses about Opera that I find to be incredibly interesting (the threatened hurricane that never actually shows up and the failed Deus ex machina ending in particular). Not a mind-blowing performance in any way, but it's an opera, at least for a person like me, that can pretty well play itself (and the orchestra was quite good and the chorus I think better than average relative to the KO). That actually winds up being something artistically unifying for my past 48 hours, in that both Hundertwasser and Brecht were strongly ideologically driven in their artworks (though those ideologies probably wouldn't be all that copacetic with one another). Though I guess most art is ideologically-driven anyway (since even art-for-art's-sake is just another artifact of Enlightenment), so maybe the distinction is false. Or I just need to find a better way to state what I mean.
Since I didn't have the thousands-upon-thousands needed for splurging on an actual print, I compromised and bought an exhibition poster. Up to this point in my life, I have never wanted to buy an exhibition poster. Something about me is different. In fact, though I only ever bought... (counting)... two prints of works of art ever (a Kandisky and a Van de Velde (the Younger) - both at tender young ages (13 and 17)), both of those were particularly sought having no museum-of-origin markings. And I've definitely, since then (it's been well over (er, well, three years over) ten years since I was 13) there've been times where I would have bought some painting-poster if it hadn't been labeled MoMA or whatever. But today, suddenly I found myself thinking "that would be nice to have hanging on my wall." I guess I'm, like, getting older, or something?
Last night I went to the Komische Oper's production of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Thought it's only the second KO production I've seen, I'm prepared to make a generalization and state that they sacrifice singing-ability for acting ability. Which is okay, but kind of a disappointment, for more sonically-oriented folks like myself. Though speaking of being visually interested by operas, this was about as a good a staging as one might hope for for Mahagonny. It being Brecht allows for all kinds of meta-opera kind of touches, but I thought this was pulled off pretty well.
A very minimalist stage, the first act featured a large box (about the height/width of the whole stage) wrapped in brown paper on an otherwise empty stage (the full backstage was also visible (the first sign of a Brechtian we-are-making-an-opera kind of gesture (though the massive void behind the stage probably didn't help the already struggling acoustic of the house (I was sitting, FYI, front and center of the first ring)))). The libretto calls for a sequence of projections, so this particular staging just projected Brecht's own words on the box, and occasionally stage hands would walk out and paint words on the box too. The box is unwrapped at the end of the first act to reveal a weird party room that featured the kind of clear-plastic slats that car wash entrances and exits are made from.
After the hurricane that destroys Pensacola doesn't hit Mahagonny, the party really gets going, and there were actually projections and lots of money falling from the sky. I really like this opera, actually. The music is fantastic, and as heavy-handed as Brecht's theses about Opera are throughout, they're the kind of theses about Opera that I find to be incredibly interesting (the threatened hurricane that never actually shows up and the failed Deus ex machina ending in particular). Not a mind-blowing performance in any way, but it's an opera, at least for a person like me, that can pretty well play itself (and the orchestra was quite good and the chorus I think better than average relative to the KO). That actually winds up being something artistically unifying for my past 48 hours, in that both Hundertwasser and Brecht were strongly ideologically driven in their artworks (though those ideologies probably wouldn't be all that copacetic with one another). Though I guess most art is ideologically-driven anyway (since even art-for-art's-sake is just another artifact of Enlightenment), so maybe the distinction is false. Or I just need to find a better way to state what I mean.
2 Comments:
The Grand Old Duke of York was the one who was up when he was up. Lord Baden Powell, in contrast, had many friends; I am one of them, and so are you. Come on, weren't you an Eagle Scout?
Well damn. Losing my touch. (Did I ever even have a touch to lose?)
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