Modern Masters

A review of Matisse’s ‘The Dance’ vis-a-vis Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’

2011-10-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Matisse has traversed the extremes of primal depths to posh sophistication of civilization with his supernatural mastery over colours. While he excelled in uber urban ‘window’ paintings or in the crimson modernism of the ‘Red Studio’, he touched the very dawn of civilization in its entire primitive glory in, arguably, the greatest Matisse ‘The Dance’. In both the cases his sophistication as well barbarianism has one source –colour. With him, colours are the raw material of feelings, a base material to be splashed to create a wide ranging continuum of moods and sensibilities. Whether it is assault of red or ethereal hues of ‘The Dance,’ he is playing with chromatic nuances to convey his mood and underlying sensitivities that make him such a huge master. I will stick to ‘The Dance’ here as this painting has it place right in the crucible of modern art revolution that started with the jolt of ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ of Picasso in 1906-07. Art was never the same for anyone, but for Matisse, ‘the Fauve-wild beast’ the shock was more stinging and he was looking for a suitable riposte to reach his natural perch i.e. at the very frontier of the art revolution.

Ace critic Robert Hughes has termed The Dance as “one of the few wholly convincing images of physical ecstasy made in the twentieth century.” This is undoubtedly true for almost any other epoch of art. Hermitage Museum explains on its website that the painting acquired its ‘famous passion and expressive resonance’ in its final version, a reference to subdued MoMA version i.e. Dance-I where pink bodies do not unleash ‘volcano of energy’. ‘The frenzy of the pagan bacchanalia is embodied in the powerful, stunning accord of red, blue and green, uniting Man, Heaven and Earth’ continues Hermitage website.

With its cave-painting purity The Dance scores over the African origins of ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’. Break from tradition that was a whiplash in the Picasso masterpiece became a deep-rooted, ever present reality with the self contained burst of energy with Matisse painting. In one of the most exciting decade of modern art, rules were being rewritten. Fauves under Matisse had already moved away from the outside reality. They were painting what was seen by them or how it was imprinted in their fertile imaginations. Their skin tones could be of any hue, their beaches could be yellow or anything could be anything that is why they were the ‘wild beasts’. Picasso brought a new reality, a reality that was a radical reconstruction of the form. He really took the game to a different level and opened a completely new vista for experimenters. Here ferocity and distortion were the key novelties that were challenging the time honoured traditions of painting. A newly globalised world had opened African aesthetics to Europe. Picasso, the creative predator, made the most radical use of it. Shock of ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ took some time to register. Even Picasso did not display the painting for some time. Matisse along with his Russian patron Sergei Shchukin was among the viewers who understood the game-changing value of the masterpiece. Matisse clearly saw a rival and Picasso was to enter in the same mood three year later when Matisse came back with far more radical but understated mutation of the aesthetic tradition.

“Both paintings present the same number of nudes, but where Picasso painted five women who challenge you the viewer, Matisse answers him with a picture whose five naked inhabitants don't care if you are there or not” says Jonathan Jones of the Guardian. Picasso is aggressive, Matisse self-contained. Picasso is brazenly engaging you with a defiant stare. He is abrasive and violence is directed not only on the nude female bodies but on the viewer too in the equal amount. Here he is firmly ensconced in the tradition of European art, a tradition of painting pulling in the viewer with direct stare. Here the full impact of art is dependent on the reaction of the viewer. Mona Lisa does it. Even where the stare is not directed on the viewer, a clear cut stage like feeling is there, demanding reverence, lust, disgust or submission for completing the aesthetic experience. Picasso breaks many canons of the artistic tradition with his ferocity and distortion but he is dependent on viewer. He is trying to establish a dialogue with her, though from an offensive, brazen and violent perch. The Dance, on the other hand, is self contained. It is a scene that stands on its own, its own energy, its own joy, its own ecstasy. This is a private revelry whose link with the viewer is tenuous. The experience of watching this masterpiece is at once submerging and distant. It washes over you with perfect harmony of colours and it distances itself with its indifference. Its remoteness is its reaffirmation of its revolutionary provenances. Jonathan Jones puts it very aptly “Dance is modernist in a way that has not faded. When you look at it, you are unsettled as well as uplifted. It seems on the edge of emptiness.”

This ‘edge of emptiness’ is full of pure colours to use Jones again “there's nothing in any other painting quite like the chromatic miracle of Dance. Terracotta flesh combines mysteriously in your mind with those saturated blues and greens, in a poem of absolutes. Absolute red, absolute blue, absolute green - a hymn of intensity.” Matisse knew that his riposte to ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ have to be through colours as savage formal revolution of the Picasso masterpiece was beyond any riposte. It was a new realm of form distorted through the eye of the Spanish genius. It stood on its own and any competition to it would have been a meek duplication or insipid follow up. Matisse drew a different line. It was pure energy unleashed by purity of tones. Very limited but intense tones. The Master himself is known to say “"the surface was coloured to saturation, to the point where blue, the idea of absolute blue, was conclusively present. A bright green for the earth and a vibrant vermilion for the bodies. With these three colours I had my harmony of light and also purity of tone." The alchemy was complete.

La Danse or The Dance was commissioned by Sergei Shchukin for grand staircase of his palatial residence in Moscow. It was a two painting commission i.e. for La Danse (Dance) and La Musique (Music) in 1909. The Russian was hesitant about the nude dancers but after seeing the water sketch he came round. On completion, these paintings were savaged by the critics and people even doubted Matisse’s sanity. A shaken Shchukin visited Paris and surrendered to the vociferous criticism and cancelled the commission. On his two days journey back to Moscow, he reconsidered his position. The enlightened tycoon wrote to Matisse “"I've thought things over and I'm ashamed of my weakness and lack of courage. ..... I have decided to hang your panels. People may shout and laugh, but since I'm convinced that your path is the right one, perhaps time will be my ally and I shall claim victory in the end". He was the proud owner of the two masterpieces till the revolution in 1917. Westerners could see the paintings only in 1969. Shchukin had the last laugh.

****

“Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100–1900” at MET

2011-09-29T21:56:00.000-07:00

Some of the most intricate output of Indian painting talent is on display at Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) . Titled “Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100–1900” exhibition is showcasing collection sourced from royal collections, museums and academic institutions. ‘Wonder of the Age is the title bestowed by Emperor Jahangir, during whose reign Indian painting touched its zenith, on his favourite painter Ustaad Mansur.

Best thing about the exhibition is that it does not focus on a region or a patron ruler. Focus here is on painters who had remained anonymous due to various factors ranging from religious prohibition to the glory of the patron. Many of the painters have been identified by the hidden signatures and a majority by the style and other details. The exhibition will be there till 8^th January next year. Many painters from Hindu and Mughal courts have found limelight for the first time, not because of any lack of caliber on their part. The collection, it is told, would have been richer if diplomatic hurdles were surmounted to import more works fron Iran and Russia.

Economist has given a very comprehensive review here.

MET can be accessed here.

ROMANCING THE ROGUE- MICHAEL DOUGLAS

2011-09-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

It is no time to review Michael Douglas as
after one year of his battle with throat cancer he says he is fine and we all hope that this is so. His last outing was reprising the iconic Gordon Grekko of Wall Street in Money Never Sleeps. 1944 born Douglas is known to do roles which are more interesting than glamorous. He allows his characters to overpower his star persona. He relentlessly pushes the realism paddle while investing his characters with the suave magnetism of his personality. Though he never allows his charms to come in the way of his characters but he is never a ‘character actor’. Artifice of art is critical to retain the interest. This is understood by the ‘star actors’ like Douglas, Al Pacino or Robert De Nero. All of them are actors of considerable talent at the same time they are ‘presences’ also which can’t but be felt keenly. This is the core of their appeal. Realism is almost always there but it is the movie realism not the documentary realism. Douglas charms even when he is playing an unadulterated slime ball with unabashed glee. We find ourselves rooting for his character. Even when he is etching the melancholic contours of his anti heroes with great authenticity, he never fails to convey pull of a genuine superstar. Good thing is that this does not dilute the experience but enhances it. It is a joy to watch Michael Douglas to work his magic on screen.

Douglas is a serious actor. Even in his Romancing the Stone and Jewel of Nile series his goofy carelessness was unique. He had a light touch to the light moments without being slapstick about it. Fatal Attraction saw him falling for adultery and his bewilderment was genuine and nuanced when he faced the neurotic rage of the woman spurned. He claims to have done Basic Instinct just for fun but he was convincing as volatile cop with endearing flaw of violence. Man of slander physique, he managed to exude toughness in the formidable company of rampaging Sharon Stone and later in Black Rain. In Wonder Boys he played Marijuana Smoking burnt out writer. In any lesser hands the role would have ended as a bundle of clichés. However, Douglas was so alive to the nuances that he decided to convey, it became a powerful display of screen magnetism without any accompanied flamboyance. His diction and quality of voice has the gruff hypnotic quality that lures and overpowers. He conveyed the confusion, anguish and total helplessness with a relish that lent life to the character. His middle aged Professor was “such a shock because most of Douglas' previous characters are guys whose entire raison d’être seems to be avoiding the aging process… Mr. Crisis of '90s Masculinity himself”. With recent knee replacement and now cancer aging, it seems is extracting its pound of flash. That voice- it needs to be seen what remains of it after the intense chemo for stage 4 throat cancer.

Relish with which he has essayed his roles has often bordered on rakish celebration of his talent. Twinkle in the mischievous eyes and a sly smile often reaffirm that he is aware that he is pushing the envelope and audience is bound to love it. In his Oscar winning Wall Street his street smartness was conveyed with these twinkles and smiles from underneath an uber polished persona of the top wheeler dealer of the Wall Street. Similarly, in Solitary Man he is a loser who is rapidly going down. If he has any qualms about being a liar or compulsive womanizer they are well hidden. He is flawed and aware of it. He elicits our support without ever demanding it. Above all throughout he is thoroughly entertaining to watch. He has played President, President’s Body Guard, District Attorney, Drug Enforcement czar, professor, cop and almost always his character is guilty of something. This flaw is carried with great panache and verve while rooted in realism. Flaws make him human and his magnetism makes us turn a blind eye to them. We are taken in by the relish and delicious nuances. In Basic Instinct he is ‘dirty’ both from the psychological and from financial angel. He is intrigued by the pull of evil charms of Sharon Stone, almost amused, but never apologetic. Solitary Man, presents an even more unforgivable rogue a man devoid of almost any moral qualms but somehow manages to make us identify with him. A loser we want to dot on, a deviant with deeply human core. Addressing the complexity of these roles is the alchemy of Michael Douglas.

He has his share of embarrassments. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is bad film with weak performance. It was so bad that it could not prop up even the formidable screen presence of Douglas. Douglas was ill at ease and could not perform with his usual energy. As a psychologist on the edge in Don’t Say a Word he could not rise above the quagmire of the dense plot. Still he elicited these words from Pulitzer winning film critic Robert Ebert “Douglas has made roles like this his own, and redeems them by skirting just barely this side of overacting--which is about where a character in this plot should be positioned. Shame that his subtler and more human work in movies like ''Wonder Boys'' is seen by smaller audiences than his fatal/ basic/ instinct/ attraction/ disclosure movies.” This ‘skirting just barely this side of overacting’ is the mastery of an actor who is sure footed about the image he wishes to convey and has the histrionic wherewithal to do that. For most of us his ‘fatal/ basic/ instinct/ attraction/ disclosure movies’ work just fine as they are pulled above their subject matter by the fine performances by their lead actor. When after a tense harassment suit he tauntingly bids silent good bye to Demi Moore, we in our weakness feel like doing hi-five with him. There was nothing trivial about the way he dealt with his characters in ‘fatal/ basic/ instinct/ attraction/ disclosure movies.

Cancer is bound to slow him down. However, it is sincerely hoped that his recovery is strong enough and he comes out without any diminishing of his wares. Just to him create another memorable rogue with that gutsy twinkle and sly smile.

Inspector Lewis continues

2011-09-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

In the BBC crime series world, Oxford was granted second shot at having mythical law officer. Lewis stepped confidently in the shoes of Inspector Morse. World weary charms of Morse (played with poignant subtlety by John Thaw) found easy transition in Kevin Wheatley. This seemed improbable when Morse was alive. Lewis was anti thesis of cognitive, irascible oxford educated, Wagner listening, real ale drinking Morse. He was simple, but emotionally mature and competent at his work. He treated overbearing and condescending overtures of his master with grace and humour. He was surefooted enough to recognize detective genius in Morse and feel comfortable in contributing to it. He gave Morse's character a solidity that was not easy for the senior detective on his own.

The series scores with strong plots, good acting and charming solidity of the main duo. Liked the link below

Booktalk & More: Inspector Lewis continues tomorrow!

Review of British Crime Series Wallander

2011-09-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

To begin with, it sounded preposterous that BBC should adapt a running, successful Swedish series. However, the news that Kenneth Branagh will play the eponymous ‘Wallander’ in the BBC Crime series, lifted much of gloom. Gloom and melancholy was to return in spades when I decided to check out the series and went through two seasons over a weekend, all the full length movies six full length movies.

Branagh, an old war horse, tunes in rather deeply with his subject material. This is evident from his forays in Shakespeare and even Harry Potter series. Here he was made to tune in a veritable quagmire of darkness. He is down in dumps with pessimisms that life has inflicted on him. Mishandled personal life and an overhang of a father who is disappearing in Alzheimer. It does not help that he is a good detective with a sensitivity fit for an aid worker. He is deeply affected by the cruelty and wanton violence that he encounters during the course of his duty. But most of the darkness comes from his own visage and the landscape that is hauntingly filmed. Ystad, Skåne län, Sweden, from the eye of the camera becomes an active protagonist.

Overall, I liked the series. It is a realized piece of mystery. We may feel bogged down by the atmosphere and may feel that Wallander’s response to his personal problems is coming in the way of story-telling. But once you accept the premise that it’s a series where they have chosen melancholy as the chief accompanying mood for the mystery and detective work, you will appreciate that they have succeeded. There are series where atmosphere is provided by the banter between the main actor and his sidekick, (Lewis, Morse and even Sherlock Holms). Some rely on the eccentricity of the detective, Poirot comes to mind. Here, it is debilitating sadness and almost unhygienic presence of the protagonist. Branagh is well clued in and does not get irritating with the overdose of inertia causing gloom. His ability to become super cop when needed is both baffling and redeeming. His fondness for prop himself up for the charges of inattentive father, son and husband borders on unfair. His disposition, commitment to work and genuine efforts to be of some use are never taken into consideration in this regard. Acting triumphs as it is mostly Branagh and he is too solid to bungle this. He is authoritative and is a treat to watch if you sit to appreciate good acting. How he avoids clichés and skirts hamming in a very heavy-handed atmosphere is a master-class in acting.

Mystery and detective work is top notch and that is saying a lot given the high standards in various BBC series. Plots, contrived sometimes but have enough twists, horror and provide satisfaction by being sufficiently grisly.

Accompanying cast is simple and is there to play a background role. Sometimes they are made deliberately stupid. For example in the first episode of the second season his efforts to play down xenophobia meet the wall of stupidity of his colleague. However, David Warner as Alzheimer ridden painter and a father with conflicted disappointment with his son, almost manages to steal Branagh’s thunder in their scenes together.

However, there is no denying the fact that there are times when we wish to shake him up and ask him to take a bath and a nice shave and generally break out of his depression. Towards the end of the second series and the last episode, they are slowly moving towards that as the episode ended with a smiling Wallander, bidding goodbye to his father at his grave and leaving the stranglehold of his wedding ring on the gravestone. He even moves away with a potential love interest. This makes the third season worth waiting for.

ANDY WARHOL II STRING OF BANALITIES AS HIGH ART

2011-09-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

Ruminations after the first post on Warhol

The moment you start ascribing meaning to a can of soup, you miss the entire point of Andy Warhol’s art. suffixing Warhol’s work with the label of art has its issues. Art normally involves an element of sensual/sensory pleasure. A premise of expression or representation is inherent. But the soup can in question is just that- a soup can- not an act of subversion or deeply nuanced meaning. If he was subverting anything it was the time honoured tradition of high art. Warhol was not seeking an escape from the harshness of reality but accepting that as the arena of once being. He was not representing or conveying the inherent meaning of his subjects. He was only labelling them or putting them in a frame. He was foregrounding the obvious. To use his words, it was “about liking things.” You may or may not like him for that.

He was about ‘presenting’ things rather than ‘representing’ things. This allowed him to be free of requirements of unique creation. ‘Representation’ entails an exclusivity of output. It is the artist’s interpretation of some object, event or process. A representation of female form will find expression in cubist reconstruction of Dora Maar in Picasso’s work or Odalisques of Matisse or sturdy physicality of Hussain’s nudes. These are customized creations which abhor mass production. Even portraits like Mona Lisa are not free of enigmatic intimacy of exclusive creation. But in Warholian universe even serigraph prints using silk screen technique is valid art because he is not representing but presenting. His Marilyn Monroe series along with Cow wall paper, Liz, Elvis, Accidents, Chairman Mao and Michel Jackson series were mass production and high art at the same time. Marrying this breach was a monumental achievement and Warhol did it in style. Distinction between the traditional art and his art is illustrated by his failure in case of Mona Lisa where he tried his reproduction mania in serigraph prints of multiple Mona Lisas called ‘Thirty are Better Than One.’ It looked strained and populist in bad sense. It lacked the aesthetic sensations of his Marilyn or Elvis and a major part of that was the representative appeal that makes Mona Lisa an icon that it is. However, somehow his fetish for the obvious was not devoid of beauty.

Formal decor and chromatic panache of his output is timeless and is hip even today, almost half a century later. Following one of his idols Matisse, Warhol “redid the world’s palette in tart” a new colour scheme emerged after 1962, the year when he blasted into the artistic consciousness of the world. He imparted lesser explored hues like citron, burnt orange, apple green cobalt blue to the lexicon of cool. He managed to bring the kitsch and posh disarmingly close and his main achievement was that he made it all seem irritatingly valid. He achieved this by combining aesthetic sophistication with the reproducibility of the mass production. This success at combining classical core, if not the form of high art, with the vernacular psyche gave him a stature to use his intuitive éclat regarding formal beauty and very hip colour consciousness to define a new chic. As the trends go this Warhol impact has endured surprisingly long. If his blandness of devotion to the obvious made him so pervasive that his influence or presence is very difficult to deny. His rich sense of colour, which made him such a successful commercial artist in the first place, keeps him ubiquitous. Right from the bottle of Absolut Vodka to neon induced glitz of Time Square or Tokyo to illustrated children books he is everywhere. His motifs can be seen on cloths of top fashion houses, on shoes, watches, logos advertisements. No doubt his is a defining presence on the artistic landscape of the later part of the century gone by.

Robert Hughes of Time Magazine has called Warhol’s fame his most authoritative creation- “the meticulous construction of a persona vivid in its coy blandness, pervasive and teasing in its appeal to the media, and deathlessly inorganic.” This makeover of son of an immigrant Czech coal miner named Warhola in Pittsburgh, to Warhol was in line with his philosophy of ‘absoluteness of systematic banality’. In his decline- a phase after he was shot by one of his hanger ons in 1968, he was more famous for being Andy Warhol than his work. In this phase he was prolific and active but as one critic has put it ‘intensity leaked out of his works’. A trashy melodrama over took what was the genuine exhilaration of discovering something new. When surprise waned his work stopped giving the same degree of aesthetic sensation. Detachment which provided a new standing to his work started appearing forced. But even in his decline he was interesting and provocative. Chairman Mao series bears testimony to it.

He had uncanny knack of grasping the ‘ripeness of the moment’. His was a life of celebrity acutely tuned to the pulse of media space. This ability along with the ability to grasp an image and instilling it with ‘visual clout’ put him at the centre of the orgy of fame and kept him there for a long time. Originator of the phrase ’15 minutes of fame’ had a longer moment in the spotlight- a moment that still lingers.

Andy Warhol

2011-09-22T23:21:00.000-07:00

Anti thesis of traditional notion of an artist Warhol was not about passion, angst or some sort of catharsis of sufferings. In fact, art is not 'actually' about all that. We just like our artists that way. Art like poetry is about 'sweet excesses'. It is about aesthetic sensations. Artists have been purveyors of condensed sensations of all sorts which could very broadly be categorized as aesthetic. If history of art has proved anything, it is the multiplicity of sources, contexts or even paradigms of such sensations. Being orthodox about one’s fix of artistic rush may be a matter of personal choice. However, on a general level excluding anything out of it is ignorance at best and totalitarian at worst. Warhol was producing aesthetic sensations in sufficient number of people. More and more artists were being emboldened to look for alternate sources to create aesthetic sensations. His own take on the dynamics of art was to foreground the mundane or obvious. He placed a frame to Coke bottle and it started impacting aesthetically. He was serious about liking things and succeeded in communicating that.

He was about ‘presenting’ things rather than ‘representing’ things. He tested this notion and felt vindicated by the raw irritation created by his output. He was perceptive enough to realize the aesthetic stirrings that his Campbell Soup series or Brillo Boxes created in the artistic circles. And that liberated him. Once, on sure footing about his raw material (anything goes) he moved to Films and silk screen paintings. He produced films of static shot of Empire State building and people sleeping. These were long movies of 8-20 hour duration, where nothing much was happening. He was just pointing to an object long enough, allowing the innate neural aesthetic coding to do its work. His ‘screen tests’ where he asked his subjects to sit and just stare at camera were also in the same vain. Intellectuals like Susan Santog and Bob Dylan subjected themselves to this fishbowl treatment. “His better paintings, in which pure aesthetic sensation transcends subject matter, are too particular to be taken as specimens of anything other than themselves’, said The New Yorker.

Some indication of Warhols continued popularity can be gauged at the following sites

http://warhol-art.blogspot.com/

YES PRIME MINSTER: COMEDY AS IT SHOULD BE

2011-09-22T01:28:00.000-07:00

‘Yes Prime Minister’ was first aired almost 25 years ago after three hilarious seasons of ‘Yes Minister’ and unexpected rise of Jim Hacker to the Prime Ministership. Both the series depict the sweet irony of administration and governance where common sense has no role in the labyrinth of procedure and rules.

In the ‘Grand Design’ the inaugural episode of iconic British Comedy ‘ Yes Prime Minister’ the conversation between the lead characters the newly elevated Prime Minister Rt Honerable Jim Hacker his Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey and His Principal Private Secretary Bernard go like this.

Jim: So we haven't got somebody here to cater for me.

Sir Humphrey: It's the way things have been done for two and half centuries.

Jim: And that's the clinching argument?

Sir Humphrey: It has been for two and half centuries.

Bernard: With respect Sir Humphrey, it couldn't have been the clinching argument for two and half centuries, because half a century ago it had only been the clinching argument for two centuries, and a century ago it had only been the clinching argument for one and half centuries.

Those who have seen the series must be smiling on the memory of the faces of the dramatis personae. This delicious repartee is just one example of alchemy of superb comic timing, crisp script and top notch acting that created the enduring appeal of the legendary sitcom. The series has run all over the world and had many local adaptations. In Hindi we had particularly successful ‘Jee mantraji’ and ‘Ji Pradhan Mantriji’. Farookh Sheikh and Jayant Kriplani were great. Manohar Shyam Joshi’s ‘Netaji Kahin’ was another masterpiece from the genre. The original twin series from the BBC stable are timeless classic.

Yes Prime Minister was first aired exactly 25 years ago after three hilarious seasons of ‘Yes Minister’ and unexpected rise of Hacker to the Prime Ministership. Both the series depict the sweet irony of administration and governance where common sense has no role in the labyrinth of procedure and rules. Stalling has been raised to the level of art. Hacker, played by Paul Eddington is a politician, self-serving with all the flaws of his tribe (blatant corruption was side stepped). At the same time he wants to leave a legacy and do something good for the people. What he had not bargained for was Humphrey Appleby, “unflappable symbol of a machine that has no gears, only brakes.” Utterly snobbish and elitist Sir Humphrey (Nigel Hawthorne) is quintessential parody of a bureaucrat with almost frightening resonance of realism. Bernard (Derek Fowlds) is Private Secretary of the Minister he is into puns and intricacies of the language. His deadpan interjections are some of the most uproarious moments of this great series. In ‘The Tangled Web’ issue is phone-tapping and Jim is uncomfortable about it. Ultimately he too sees the virtues of it when he is told that he too is in the ‘death list’ but not before some side-splitting exchanges sample this.

Jim: Anyway, why are we bugging Hugh Halifax, is he talking to the Russians?

Sir Humphrey: No, the French actually, that's much more serious.

Jim: Why?

Bernard: Well the Russians already know what we're doing.

Irreverence is a much desired ingredient of comedy. It is achieved by not being bothered by the holy cows and finding a fresh take on conventions. However being frantic about conveying irreverence may simply bury the comedy. Yes Minister and later Yes Prime Minister hit the sweet spot where irreverence meets with the light touch of superb timing to create timeless magic. It is all the more creditable as it was achieved in the field of Politics. Ironically, a goldmine of comic situation, politics has been more successfully exploited by other genres such as crime, intrigue or thrillers. The twin series are the crowning achievement of British situation comedy- an unbelievably rich field of accomplishments. Political comedy is found to be difficult and has a tendency to degenerate into lampooning. The twin series were authentic. Nothing may have happened actually but nothing was beyond the pale of actually happening. Nothing was sacrosanct but everything was somehow believable. Once again from ‘Man Overboard’ Jim asks about the figures given to him “and all this is absolutely honest and accurate?” To which Sir Humphrey replies “It comes from the Ministry of Defence” to that Jim says “even though, it could be honest and accurate”. Irreverence is coming from comedy not the other way round.

We in India, baptised in the Westminster Model of parliamentary democracy, have much to identify with in the series. The series depends on the clash between Civil Service and politicians. They have very different moral codes and objectives, both of which have to project an image of unity, harmony and common purpose. Co-Writer Anthony Jay said later “what comedy writer could ask for more? And yet there is more. Both the minister and the permanent secretary are committed to maintaining the pretence that the minister is the expert, all-powerful boss, and the permanent secretary is the docile servant, obediently awaiting instructions. The reality, of course, is the exact opposite....It is the servant-wiser-than-master joke, so successfully exploited in Jeeves and The Admirable Crichton.” Our own Akbar-Birbal can also be fitted in this category. Not that the master does not know the reality. The more you know, funnier it gets. Jim says in one of the episodes “the three articles of Civil Service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly, it's more expensive to do them cheaply and it's more democratic to do them in secret”. Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister made this hilarity blindingly obvious to people across cultures.

Margret Thatcher was a fan. In fact she went on to script a small episode for the series with lead actors taking part. It was not a big success but indicates the cult following it enjoyed and still does. Issues like open government, University spending, environment, privacy, youth rebelliousness and austerity continue to pose enough challenge to governance. It is still providing fodder to comedy empire comprising of cartoons, late night shows and stand up comedy. Radia Tapes, Wikileaks and fee riots in Britain have exposed us to situations whose comic perspective was so vividly given to us by Hacker, Humphrey and Bernard. Anthony Jay further said “Jonathan (Co-author) and I are sometimes described as satirists, but that is not how we see ourselves. Satirists are trying to change things; we are happy just to enjoy the comic possibilities of things as they are and share the discovery with our fellow citizens.”

While Bernard is afflicted with ‘fondness for awful puns and maddening pedantry’, Sir Humphrey’s Machiavellian skills are’ often accompanied by brain-wrenching sentences designed to confuse Hacker - and often succeeding.’ This is a sample from one rare instance (from- The Skeleton in the Cupboard) where tables are turned and Sir Humphrey is at the receiving end.

Sir Humphrey: Minister I think there is something that perhaps you ought to know.

Jim: Yes Humphrey.

Sir Humphrey: The identity of the official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent discussion, is, not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, but not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whose present interlocutor, is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun.

Jim: Beg your pardon.

Sir Humphrey: It was I.

As opposed to this is Bernard at his pedantic best in ‘The Bed of Nails’-

Jim: But if I pull it off then it would be a feather in my cap.

Bernard: If you pull it off Minister it won't be in your cap any more.

By highlighting the comic possibilities of everyday politics and governance BBC has created a classic in true sense of the word. It has not dated and it has straddled the boundaries of diverse cultures. It is perpetually on air in some or the other network all over the world. A theatre version opened this year to critical acclaim in England. Diverse countries like India, Ukraine and Holland have created their local versions. It has been translated in various languages. A virtual piracy empire has been created around it on Internet and DVDs. A superbly executed piece of art, the twin series captures the gentle hypocrisy of politics and bureaucracy with unfailing grasp on the humour of it all. Therein lays its appeal.

***

FULL TILT BOOGIE: KOZMIC BLUES OF JANIS JOPLIN

2011-09-19T02:19:00.000-07:00

"All caught up in a landslide,

bad luck pressing in from all sides

Got bucked off of my easy ride

buried alive in the blues."

-‘Buried Alive’ from the posthumous Janis Joplin Album ‘Pearl’- She could not complete the vocals

As compared to cocky insouciance of Jim Morrison and voodoo haze of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin’s insecurities about her background, talent and looks were there for all to see. Ironically she was the most rugged stage performer of them all. Jimi and Jim were stage athletes but none of them went after the audience the way Janis did. Her larynx wrenching vocal antics, violent stomping and ubiquitous bottle of Southern Comfort created a tough Blues-mama shell around her. However, her need for appreciation and acceptance was transparent to all. Footage of the Monterey Pop Festival (which also marked introduction Sitar Maestro Ravi Shankar to the West and triumphant home coming of Jimi Hendrix) bears testimony to this naked need. At the end of epoch-making performance we see her milking the applause with all too visible hunger. One can sense her radiance grow by the moment. Everyone loves appreciation but for her it was affirmation of something deeper. "When I go on stage to sing, it's like the 'rush' that people experience when they take heavy dope. I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me. Sex is the closest I can come to explaining it, but it's more than sex. I get stoned from happiness. I want to do it until it isn't there anymore" She said in 1968. Very soon there wasn’t any more of it. She died alone in a cheap Hollywood Motel of heroin overdose on October 4, 1970 and was discovered hours after her death. She died within three weeks of Jimi Hendrix’s death, like him and Morrison later she too was 27.

Rolling Stone Magazine calls her “perhaps the premier blues-influenced rock singer of the late Sixties, and certainly one of the biggest female rock stars of her time.” She remains a towering presence through her lasting legacy. Her redefinition of Blues and her unique rendition of average songs in her booze and dope ravaged voice are pioneering influences on musical firmament that was developing during her time. Fact of her being prima donna of rock cannot be taken lightly. She was the most visible female singer to front a major band. She endures not just as singer but as an archetype of longing and ambition. Her exalted iconography was sealed in that cheap motel room. Well-timed Photographs by Jim Marshall and strategic video footage added to her aura. She is frozen in public memory as those photographs of free spirit with hovering vulnerability. She looked like that very rarely but these photographs continue to portray the core of the phenomenon that Janis Joplin was – energy, ambition, longing and above all nihilistic lust for death. “People seem to have a high sense of drama about me. Maybe they can enjoy my music more if they think I'm destroying myself” She was quoted in her obituary in Time magazine.

Many of her self doubts may have their origin in her growing up years in the sleepy town of Port Arthur in Texas. It is a refinery town where her father worked. A loner and misfit by the time she entered teens, Janis developed a taste for poetry and painting. She was attracted to blues and folk music. She was to become ‘first hippie’ of the town which was a result of bewilderment on her being rejected as outcast and a rebel. The town and the peers found it difficult to come to terms with her bizarre world view. She often described herself as a ‘weirdo among fools’. She escaped to West Coast when she was 17. Thus began a period of drifting with pot, booze and music. San Francisco was perfect place for her gypsy soul. She was at pains to explain that she was a beatnik not a hippie. Hippies believe the world could be a better place. "Beatniks believe things aren’t going to get better and say the hell with it, stay stoned and have a good time", she propounded. Her links with home were never broken. Her letters to her parents and younger brother and sister reflect a caring person who wanted to remain a part of a nurturing whole. Her pleas to her parents regarding not giving up on her and her intention of continuing her education and advice to her sister portray a surprisingly ‘normal’ Janis yearning for simple order and care of a household- a far cry from a stomping yelling rock diva.

By the middle of 1966, Janis was called by old San Francisco friends who had cobbled together a promising rock band called Big Brother and the Holding Company. They adjusted well to each other. After initial tuning in, Monterey Pop festival happened. She, the quintessential vagabond hooked the appreciative crowd with her ‘formless blues’ belted out in shrieking, rasping and energetic style. The motley group of experimenting youngsters got Bob Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman. Grossman proved an important enabler for the charged expansion of Janis Joplin myth. Their first record ‘Cheap Thrills’ went Gold in 1968. The Album had ‘Piece of My Heart’ which made the critics say that Janis does not use blues conventions to transcend the pain but to ‘scream it out of existence’. ‘ Ball and Chain’ and ‘Turtle Blues’ from the album further cemented her reputation as a singer to reckon with. Uniqueness of her voice and hysterical grandiosity of her performance is captured best in a piece about her in Vogue magazine in May 1968 “Janis assaults a song with her eyes, her hips; and her hair. She defies key. shrieking over one line, sputtering over the next, and clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave. When it does leave anyway, she stands like an assertive young tree, smiling breathlessly at the audience, which has just exploded. Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener.”

Janis Joplin overgrew her band within a year. Big Brother and the Holding Company came unglued and Grossman who could visualise glorious future for Joplin allowed the process of disintegration go unhindered. Joplin came out taking only guitarist Sam Andrew with her to form the Kozmic Blues Band. The new band enjoyed commercial success but it could not recreate the creative garage band type of ambience of Big Brother. Joplin, one of the highest paid stars of her time, was without a band. Her last and most realized (though unfinished) Album ‘Pearl’ was with her new band Full Tilt Boogie Band.

She became fairly regular on TV shows of that time. Her appearances on shows anchored by Dick Cavett, Tom Jones, and Ed Sullivan still remain the fodder for enumerable biographies and documentaries. TV appearances are another part of her fascinating iconography. Her views on her child hood, music and stage antics come most clearly in these shows and many of the insecurities were also addressed squarely in these shows. She appeared on the cover page of almost all major magazines like Time, Newsweek and Rolling stone. Newsweek’s cover story was on ‘Return of Blues’ and they found Janis to represent the trend in May 1969. In 1988 Time magazine came out with an issue on ‘1968- Year That Shaped a Generation’ and Janis was there alongside Vietnam and Robert Kennedy. This was an indication that she was a representative figure of phenomenon of Rock. She told Time “"We’re not dispassionate professionals. We’re passionate and sloppy. I’m untutored native folk talent- I like that phrase, it’s so pretentious." Generations have responded to this earthy charm of a mercurial talent in sync with the desperation and anarchy of her time.

Ironically, this desperation and loneliness was on wane when her turbulent life was cut short by the heroin overdose. Recording of Pearl was going very successfully. Producer Paul A. Rothchild was a dependable name and he ensured that some serious discipline and hard work went into the project. Janis was involved and enjoying the experience. She claimed to have kicked the drug habit. On personal front she found love and was going steady with Seth Morgan. . Paul Rothchild said later "During the sessions, I had never seen her happier. She was at the top of her form, having a great time. She said over and over again that this was the most fun she had ever had in a recording studio. Before, recording had always meant a lot of tension and fighting." This seeming revival makes the sense of lose even greater.

Unfulfilled potential remains a lingering pain in such untimely demises. However, appeal of such lives is, in fact, rooted in the abruptness of their end. Myth building is a complex process and it certainly appears that sense of loss and aura of death take a place of pride in this dynamics. Who knows how Jimi Hendrix would have looked and felt like at 60. Morrison might have turned out a cranky megalomaniac and Janis a nutty old hag. But when we look at the contemporaries like Ravi Shanker, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones and Carlos Santana we can’t but think about the lost promises. However, that is very calculative view of some extraordinary lives. They lived fast and died hard, therein rests the key to our nostalgia for them.

***

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE GOLDMINE - DEATH LUST OF JIM MORRISON

2011-09-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

"This is the end, beautiful friend.
It hurts to set you free,
But you'll never follow me.
The end of laughter and soft lies.

The end of nights we tried to die.
This is the... end."

-From The End by The Doors

Jim Morrison shares his final resting place with the likes of Chopin, Oscar Wilde and hundreds of poets, aristocrats and geniuses. However, only his grave in Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris is watched over by a round the clock cop as it is not only the busiest site of this extra ordinary place but generates a different type of hysteria that would have amused Oscar Wilde into one of his most caustic witticisms. Morrison wanted to be known as a poet and had a flair for words. He saw himself as a poet trapped in a Rock Stars body. His band, mythical ‘The Doors’ faced the classical paradox of the day - gains from the allure of a dangerous persona and downfall brought by the same. A ravaged Morrison died in Paris on July 3, 1971 at the age of 27 like other two ‘Js’ Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin. Whatever nostalgic fans (most of them from the generation after his death) may say, it was a diminished icon who suffered the heart attack (as per official version) in his bath tub. However, death is integral to his enduring legend- a cacophony of mysticism, sexuality, poetry and psychedelic haze. "He's hot, he's sexy and he's dead" shouted the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine ten years after Morrison’s death, It was correct then it is true now.

Later half of sixties was a good time for Morrison to be alive. The raging counter-culture with its angst ridden yearnings, primal sexuality, unhinged drunkenness and a wildly seductive notion of enlightenment- was ready for him. He came and lent a veneer of sheer sexiness to the excesses of his era. Continued popularity of the music of the period owes a great deal to the hankering for the nostalgia for a richly complex experience imbued with rage, lust, spirituality, freedom and an unapologetic flirtation with death and destruction. It was youth’s way of gaining access to unimagined possibilities- a vision of hope and deadly charms of anarchy.

Morrison remains a key figure on the cultural landscape of the century gone by and still looms large. James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was born in the family of a ranking navy officer on December 8, 1943. He met Ray Menzarek a classically trained pianist, while doing a Film course at UCLA Graduate School of Film. Morrison’s poetic potential were evident to Menzarek and they decided to collaborate. Manzarek met John Densmore, who brought in Robby Krieger. The band’s christening was done by Morrison. ‘The Doors’ came from William Blake through Aldous Huxley’s book on mescaline, The Doors of Perception. Blake had written and Huxley had quoted "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." That was 1965 and in 1966 they were fired from Whisky-a-Go-Go club where they were the house band, for oedipal explicitness of ‘The End’. Thus began the firming up of ‘Lizard King’ persona of Morrison. In a poem that appeared on the sleeves of their album "Waiting For The Sun" Morrison pronounced "I am the Lizard King, I can do anything." The moniker stuck. The band is credited with hot albums like The Doors, Strange Days, Waiting for the Sun, The Soft Parade, Morrison Hotel and L A Woman.

Morrison’s aura of unpredictability and dark potential gained in strength very quickly. His ‘inspired exhibitionism’ made sure that ‘whatever he did was seen as brilliant or brilliantly calculated’. In December 1967 he was arrested for public obscenity at a concert in New Haven, and in August 1968 he was arrested for disorderly conduct aboard an airplane en route to Phoenix. All that added to the dangerous appeal of his poisonous charms. But he was riding a tiger and he was slipping. His March 1969 arrest in Miami for exhibiting “lewd and lascivious behavior by exposing his private parts” finally managed to dent Morrison’s sense of invincibility. The singer was restricted to Miami for the good part of the year for the court proceedings. The charges were never proved but the tension brought home the realization of harsh realities. It affected concert schedules and many performances were cancelled.

Soon after L.A. Woman was recorded in 1971, Morrison informed the group that he was leaving. A depleted Morrison both physically and emotionally moved to Paris. He was accompanied by his long time companion Pamela Courson. In his estate controversy later, Courson was legally treated as his wife. Jim also had a Celtic wedding with Patricia Kennealy which was never recognized by law. Morrison led a quite life in Paris and tried to write poems. Days of raunchy taboo-bending were over. As per official version He died of heart failure in his bathtub in 1971 at age 27. His death gained a mysterious aura partly because news of his death was not made public until days after his burial in Paris’ Père-Lachaise cemetery. Many conspiracy theories were floating. Many fans still refuse to believe Morrison is dead. Sam Bernett, former manager of the Rock 'n' Roll Circus nightclub of Paris, claimed in his book that instead of dying of a heart attack in a bathtub Morrison overdosed on heroin on a toilet seat in the club. He claimed that he was dissuaded by Morrison's drug dealers from calling the police. He and some other people brought the body to the apartment Morrison had rented, and staged his body in the bathtub. Whatever the circumstances, the death was in accordance with the tradition of high-profile demises- contentious, mysterious and above all sudden. Courson, one of the few people who saw Morrison’s corpse, died in Hollywood of a heroin overdose on April 25, 1974, she too was 27.

If Jimi Hendrix was raw talent, Jim was structured for fame with that elusive characteristic that lures without any obvious reason. His appeal was much more natural or, more accurately, animal. Hendrix was a master of improvisational panache, Morrison’s voice has been referred to as a “beautiful pond for anything to drown in.” While Hendrix was ‘vodoo child’ Jim was ‘Satan’s Seraph’ who epitomized sexual nirvana with his hint of spirituality, moody burst of creativity and difficult to contain rebellious streak. Creator of memorable lines, Hendrix was pathologically inarticulate while Jim was able to give intellectual crust to his views with great communicability. Though, he was main poetic force of the doors, all the songs are attributed to the band. His interviews and one-liners stand testimony to his deliciously absurd poetic sensibilities. His poems, did not find many takers among critics but they have a charm of their own. His devastating antics and relentless chase of chaos could not obscure his avant-garde sensibilities. Unlike many of his lyrics, Morrison was capable of unexpected tenderness in his poetry.

She looked so sad in sleep

Like a friendly hand

just out of reach

A candle stranded on

a beach

Contrast it with the absurd beauty of these lines from ‘Rider on the Storm’

There's a killer on the road

His brain is squirmin' like a toad

Take a long holiday

Let your children play

If ya give this man a ride

Sweet memory will die

Killer on the road, yeah

One is captivated by hints of other realms of consciousness when The Doors sings ‘Swim to the moon’ and ‘penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide’. They are at their at their drunken best with ‘L A Women’, sex drips through ‘Come on Baby Light My Fire’ ‘Roadhouse Blues’ can set the tone for any rock party. ‘The End’ is a poetry of oedipal jolts, an odyssey that seeks to shock with casual profanity. ‘Break on Through (to the Other Side)’ is one of the anthems of rock. An absolute favourite is ‘Riders on the Storm’. In the song silken barbarism of that sexy beast Morrison’s voice gains its full grandeur along with the searing poetry of the absurd. Metallic texture of the shivery tones, throbbing keyboards of Ray Menzarek, the fluid lyrical guitar of Robby Krieger and the supple drums of John Dansmore make the sultry, languid and soothing experience of the song which is also full of violence and alienation. Sublime music masks the edginess which encapsulates the tortured zeitgeist of an epoch. Remove the hoopla created by wild antics of Morrison’s flirtations with chaos, you get some really solid music. Howsoever romantic this flirtation may sound but lingering regret remains- a regret of losing out on many more such gems as mentioned above.

When Oliver Stone’s eponymous movie on The Doors came in 1991, it was not subject to normal cinematic scrutiny deploying usual parameters of reviewing a movie. The movie was viewed and castigated through lens of the nostalgia. Learned critics were ‘wincing at infidelities like absence of hope and light’. They saw in its failure a ‘grim reminder of that we (Americans) have lost our pioneering cultural influence’. The New Yorker lamented the ‘mean spiritedness that kept breaking through’ the movie- the ‘bad faith’ and tabloid like sensibility’. Time Magazine was no less caustic, Richard Corliss wrote “Kilmer (Val Kilmer played Morrison) is just conventionally good-looking; he can't prowl like Blake's Tyger or pose with the sultry arrogance of a Beat poet. Nor does he have the intellectual seductiveness that made Morrison a toy of the hip literati. In short, Kilmer is not Jim, and his casting denies The Doors the chance to be a meditation on the lure of sexual power.” Yes you get the idea, sixties counter culture evokes extreme responses and rock was a religion with those who lived through the period and icons like Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin were its presiding deities.

*****

JIMI HENDRIX: VOODOO CHILD IN A ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS

2011-09-19T02:10:00.000-07:00

<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-IN X-NONE HI MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past
And with his crutch, it’s old age, and it's wisdom
It whispers no, this will be the last
And the wind cries Mary

-‘The Wind Cries Mary’ from the album ‘Are You Experienced’

In the first album of ‘Jimi Hendrix Experience’- a band built around the emerging phenomenon called, well, Jimi Hendrix, Jimi shouts ‘manic depression is a frustrating mess’ in the microphone, then picks up his guitar and shows us the howling twisted abyss of the torment. Not for nothing, often he is rated as the greatest guitarist of all times. With dizzying level of glossy showmanship daring chutzpah, it is easy to be suspicious of the label of genius. However, in Hendrix we are dealing with the real thing. His voice (as well as sounds) were original and he created a repertoire that has strands which still define popular culture. He is revered by psychedelic scene, his folksy songs have a status of a benchmark (remember ‘Little Wing’), his blues have given rise to veritable industry of cover versions (please hear ‘Voodoo Chile’). He was unsure of his singing skills but listen to any of his songs and senses his vocal dexterity competing with extremely expert guitar. Shorn of all psychedelic haze, stage antics and above all untimely mysterious death (he died at 27 supposedly suffocating on his vomit under the influence of barbiturate), Jimi Hendrix was a truly gifted artist who could realize astonishing successes in a short span of four years when he achieved stardom.

Jimi Hendrix forms part of the tragic troika of ‘Js’- Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimmy Hendrix. All three created something that has endured and more or less epitomized the music of their time. However the tragic shortness of their creative journey (Janis died 13 days after Jimi and Jim died less than six months later all of them were 27) is also indicative of the uneasy relationship between direction of their creativity and a life sustaining way of living. Some of the fellow travellers survived (Rolling Stone, members of Beetles sans Lennon, Clapton come to mind among others). Despite the short time period when three J acquired centre-stage, their legacy survives and many tributaries of popular western music continue to echo their throbbing intensity and improvisational guts.

Jimmy (James Marshall Hendrix) was born in Seattle on November 27th, 1942. His father was serving in the army and got to see his son quite late and is responsible for ‘James’ in the name as the mother Lucille, originally named him Johnny Allen Hendrix. Hendrix got his first guitar at the age of almost sixteen (remember he was dead at twenty seven). A self taught guitarist, Jimi Hendrix was shaped by the forces of blues like B B King and Muddy Water. In fact, he played behind quite a few of them such as Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Ike and Tina Turner, and B.B. King. As a club musician in New York he was part of a varied lot like the Isley Brothers, King Curtis, John Paul Hammond, and Curtis Knight. Before that he played in high school bands before enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1959 only to be discharged on medical grounds in 1961.

In 1965 Hendrix formed his own band, ‘Jimmy James and the Blue Flames,’ to play at Greenwich Village coffeehouses. He was noticed by Chas Chandler of the Animals who took him to London, capital of cool at that time, in 1966. London was the proverbial turning point. Within a week of landing there he jammed with Eric Clapton, created a stir for his new sounds and soon had his most productive partners in Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. ‘Jimi Hendrix Experience’ was born. Hendrix literally lit up the London music scene with his edgy rock performances. His blues that were theoretically placed in the definitional parameters of the genre rebelled silently just at the most game-changing points. Generous English pantheon (Beatles, Clapton, Pete Townshend to count few) not only accepted him but turned into ardent fan. Townshend was to write later “It was a high form of eroticism, almost spiritual in quality. There was a sense of wanting to possess him (Hendrix) and wanting to be a part of him, to know how he did what he did because he was so powerfully affecting. Johnny Rotten did it, Kurt Cobain did it...... he had a kind of alchemist's ability; when he was on the stage, he changed. ”

His return to the US in 1967 is part of folklore. A neglected side artist of yore came to rapturous applause in Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 (Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar was another artist introduced to the West by the festival). America was charmed, overwhelmed 24 year old Jimi set his guitar on fire as a gesture of gratitude, “I'm gonna sacrifice something here I really love. Don't think I'm silly doin' this, because I don't think I'm losin' my mind .... But today, I think it's the right thing .... There's nothing more I can do than this" he is believed to have said. He was dead within three years of Monterey. It is difficult to believe that he was famous and alive for less than four years and cut only three proper albums officially. His shadow looms very large and virtually every note he struck has been commercially exploited.

His early singles "Hey Joe," "Purple Haze" and "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" flowered into one of the most influential albums of all time ‘Are You Experienced?’ The music of late sixties has an appeal and the era evokes a nostalgia. Sometimes smell of self-destructive creativity masks the incredible beauty of the musical output of the period. ‘Are You Experienced?’ has the force and even naked destruction to showcase the nihilistic brutality of the period but above all it is an anthem of creativity, vitality expanded genius that flourishes at a particular epoch of history without any rational explanation. Want to experience the sixties without feeling smug about advancement in music and narration-‘Are You Experienced?’ can be a revealing as well as humbling experience. His next album –‘Axis: Bold As Love’ was low on sonic flourishes but nevertheless equally adventurous in scope and intended impact. ‘Little Wing’ is one of the most loved songs in the formidable Jimi repertoire. Fiery ‘Crosstown Traffic,’ ‘Voodoo Child (Slight Return)’ soulful ‘Rainy Day, Dream Away,’ ‘1983...(A Merman I Should Turn to Be),’ ‘Moon, Turn the Tides...gently gently away’ yes you get the picture of consolidation of a hyper ambition. The third album ‘Electric Ladyland’ was most completely his work as he had better creative control due to changed circumstances. Hendrix was a technical virtuoso who could understand and exploit the hidden potential of musical gizmos and create new sound in a most hauntingly sustainable way.

If studio liberated him to conjure uncontrollable sonic universe, stage was his natural home- he was a performer of hypnotic magnetism. His cool was totally his own and survives in the enduring rock iconography. He was a ‘Voodoo Child’ capable of creating unimaginably alluring atmosphere with his stage athleticism, antics that bordered on bizarre and tricks that endeared him to the crowd. The sexual overtones were heightened by his mannerism and lyrical eroticism of his music. His death contributed to his mystique. A lesser artist would have been swamped by the hoopla but his music survives. He said he wanted to be taken seriously as musician and did not want to clown any more. ‘Genius of doubt’, a phrase used for artist Cezanne is aptly applicable to him. Jimi’s articulation both verbal and musical was tentative in appearance as if something unruly has been let out without a proper plan. Rough texture and unfinished feel added to the wild confusion. However, the end product is almost always unalloyed beauty. In fact the hint of slight anarchy is integral to many interesting pieces of modern creativity but very few had the wherewithal to goad the torrential chaos into enduring beauty as Jimi Hendrix has done. Protean persona of the genius continues to define cool, making it hard to believe he is dead for almost four decades.

****

Comtemporary Music lover should visit http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/

CONDENSED SENSATIONS: ART OF HENRI MATISSE

2011-09-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

Whosoever does not have a low opinion of joy is a likely connoisseur of Matisse’s Art.

Henri Matisse defies slotting. He emerged on the art scene of early 20^th century as ‘fauve’ – the wild beast- demolishing every rule of formality and use of colour yet his grounding in tradition is beyond doubt. He never painted or signed a political resolution. Epoch-making world wars, violent ideological struggles, Nazism, Fascism, nuclear arsenal have no trace in his work but he claims that ‘painting is life by other means’. His is the most soothing and colourful repertoire but in it are the most drastic experimentations in the history of art. He has been derided as ‘beautiful’, ‘interior designer’ even as suffering from ‘mental illness’ for his art. At the same time in his life time and later he remains a ‘paladin of modernism’. It may sound fanatic but we may safely say that whosoever does not have a low opinion of joy is a likely connoisseur of Matisse’s Art.

Socio-political prism is a wrong parameter to apply to Matisse. He is undoubtedly a painter of luxury, comfort and refuge. His aesthetic sensibilities are more inclined towards pleasant. His oeuvre exudes calm and luxuriant beauty. However, from this universe of balance and pastoral bliss, his relentless confrontation with the rules of the game comes shining through. His instinctive grasp of the form and emotions surrounding his subjects along with his natural talent for visual communication enabled him to create high art out of seemingly trivial and occasionally childlike output. He once remarked “one must study an object for a long time to know what its sign is.’ He was able to catch the sign with its inner most depth and communicate it in terms of forms and colours which were entirely his own. One of his most famous paintings ‘The Dance’ (1910) is the case in point. Dubbed as ‘one of the few wholly convincing images of physical ecstasy made in the twentieth century’ the painting captures the rapture and energy with very simple anatomical details of five dancers ‘deliberately gauche and childish’. Saturated blues and greens of painting along with terracotta flesh do their mysterious alchemy to give us the complete and fully realized product where his sublime reading of the sign ties flawlessly to the basic physical details. Result is a painting ‘modernist in a way that has not faded.’

Matisse could say ‘Exactitude is not truth’ and prove it by conveying emotions and ‘the inherent’ truth of human situations. His Conversation (1910) shows the painter in his pyjamas having conversation with Mme. Matisse. This very basic rendition looks unskilled but somehow manages to impress as a masterpiece evoking a complex interplay of sight and imagination. Great art has that liberty.

A logical corollary of ‘the quest for depicting the inherent truth’ was capturing the core by chiselling out the surplus from the ultimate form. Starkly unequivocal form, devoid of any ambiguity was his quest. His achievement is in accomplishing that within the broad and pleasant ambit of decorative formality. In his work this minimalist approach never compromises the monumentality of the output. His painting like Blue Nude: Memory of Biskra (1907) was precursor to the ultimate distillation of form in his paper cut outs- the definitive chromatic and rhythmic improvisation. He said his life was ‘a constant struggle for complete expression with a minimum of elements.’ He achieved this in his cut outs with sculptural richness. His La Danseuse (1949) Nudes in cut outs especially Zulma (1950) exemplify an exhilarating economy of contours with maximum articulation. Not only with regard to formal distillation but they were also the pinnacle of his audacity of colour. These cut outs are testimony of his gift of creating beauty with any medium. It was a prolonged hurrah of an aging giant. ‘Everything that is not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful’ he said in 1908, He fulfilled that in the evening of his life.

The ‘modernist’ was a creature of tradition. Influence of Courbet is evident in the greens of Large Landscape, Mont Alban of 1918. Manet whispers from the tantalizing ambience of Fish and Lemons, 1921. Distinctness of black as a colour in its own right not just a darkness induced by the absence of colour recalls the earlier master. Emergence of photography had rendered faithful recreation reality a less exalted pursuit. Impressionist started exploiting the formless sensations of art with disappearing laws of perspective. Gaugin, Van Gogh and Cezanne stretched the vistas of colour. They deepened the role of colour in communicating the mental state and emotions.

It was left to masters of 20^th century Matisse and Picasso to take the process to a different level. They did it by making the act of painting the supreme end in itself. This was a liberating foundation as it allowed them to have a virgin template to work out their own rules. Their prodigious talent and gigantic genius made them a worthy bearer of the mantle of the prophets of new art. Picasso’s phenomenal talent was directed at torturous reinterpretation of perspective. He was a protean giant shattering the form and imposing his will through his lines. Matisse called himself a ‘slave of form’ and was dedicated to convey it with purest economy of strokes. His primary vehicle was colour and lines were subservient to it. His were not abstract paintings but pure forms that conveyed luxury. Matisse’s creative space has been called a ‘boudoir’ where as Picasso’s brutal intelligence made it an ‘operating theatre’.

Matisse was a genius of colour. His chromatic panache is perhaps unsurpassed. Van Gough’s yellow is there but Matisse took colour as the very condensation of emotions. Art critic Robert Hughes has wondered “what other artist could handle those deep, resonant cobalt blues those fuchsias and oranges, those velvety blacks and soprano yellows, without producing an effect akin to coloured gumballs?” His intuitive grasp of colours was, like music, equated with nuances of feelings. His lines were not ‘the container of his colour but the edge produced by its expansion.’ He said that colours must react to one another to avoid a cacophony. To achieve this he professed, ‘let colour be the force in a painting’. His infallible gift of creating hues, though at odds with nature, was able to produce the most ‘right’ experience. This he achieved through uncanny juxtaposition and inherently rebellious harmony. His ‘The Red Studio’ of 1911 can be seen in this context. A crimson drenched canvas, the painting is an aggressive testimonial of Matisse use of colour as a vehicle to scream fictitiousness of art. An artificiality that is a potent device to convey the most deeply felt feeling with utmost force and precision. It is not an easy painting to watch as it does not allow you to enter from any one point but forces you to take a plunge. Objects do guide the eye but this is done not to give you a feel of plasticity of the studio but the emotion that it perhaps induced in Matisse. No wonder ‘The Red Studio’ has been admired for proving that ‘art can form its own republic of pleasure.’

‘The fauve’ was a law student who took up painting rather late and in his day-to-day life he maintained a formal profile with staid tweeds, professorial visage and fierce protection of his private life. However, He is all about passion and emotions. He sought condensation of sensations. Once ignited by the passion his pictorial intelligence was capable of taking him to any length on the path of greatness. He wrote in Notes of a Painter (1908) “I prefer, by insisting upon essential character, to risk losing charm in order to obtain greater stability. Underlying the succession of moments which constitutes the superficial existence of beings and things, and which is continually modifying and transforming them, one can search for a truer, more essential character, which the artist will seize so that he may give to reality a more lasting interpretation.” He accomplished that but the bigger achievement is that he did so without compromising on beauty and formal decor. This is the core of his appeal.

*****

CREATIVE PREDATOR: PICASSO’S WOMEN AND HIS ART

2011-09-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

Most of Picasso’s women could not recover from the intensity of their encounter with him. "When I die," Picasso had prophesied, "it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it."

Picasso’s defining influence on 20^th century painting is evident from the impact his experimentation had on all areas of the art world. His monumental talent, absence of definite theory of art, continuous reinvention and very long life led in the fast lane of emotional upheavals have created myth replete with conquests both as an artist and as a seducer. His prolific output amply reflects the presence of countless women in his life as lovers, enchantresses, wives or simply art dealers. These are intense encounters, their portrayal is relentlessly real, unabashed and invariably creative. No wonder the most expensive work of art in the history is a Picasso. "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust", was sold to a telephone buyer at Christie's New York auction for $106.5m. The 1932 work was a portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, his mistress during one of his most creative phases.

Picasso’s myth is basically a masculine saga of creativity. He had an amazing capacity to translate his feelings on the canvas. His execution of his vision was resolute assured and quick. Succession of women was central to his life and his work. Earthy and sensuous Oliver, delicate Eva, his ballerina wife Olga, beautiful Marie-Thérèse, photographer Dora Maar, companion who ‘survived Picasso’ Françoise Gilot and his wife during the last three decades of his life - Jacqueline provided enduring themes to his painting and acted as a muse to trigger his talents.

Known as “la belle Fernande” Fernande Oliver was the artists’ first real love and her presence is often credited with bringing out Picasso from the melancholy of ‘Blue Period’ to ‘Rose Period’. She was his muse during the heady days of birth of Cubism and continued her reign till 1910 they broke up finally in 1912.

She stormed in Picasso’s life on the afternoon of August, 04, 1904, when he blocked her way to a shelter where she was running to escape from an unexpected thunder storm. Drenched to the skin she was offered a kitten, which was saved by Picasso from the storm. She could not escape his laughter and magnetic black eyes, he was besotted by her statuesque charms. She was four months older to Picasso and had a history of two failed major relationships. Gertrude Stein, Picasso’s major buyer for a long time has written " For good or for bad, everything was natural in Fernande." She has been described as naturally beautiful, naturally intelligent, naturally creative, and naturally lazy. In the same naturally lazy way she naturally surrendered to possessive passions of Picasso. It was an encounter of a worldly-wise woman and a creative genius whose sexual horizons were limited to traditional initiations in the local whorehouses. He took some time to adjust to challenge of adult sexuality and an enduring relationship. He was a jealous lover and did not allow her to go out alone. She was satisfied in her Bohamian settings and her lethargy and unbridled sexuality suited Picasso’s requirements admirably. Her exuberant beauty and robust figure had a positive impact. The vitality of companionship kept depression away from her pampered lover. Her memoir gives a glimpse of Picasso before he became the demigod of modern art. Due to her influence he achieved a level of maturity where “he could take delight in sadness without sympathising with it”. She left Picasso for the Futurist painter - Ubaldo Oppi. Picasso, the master of regeneration seduced Eva (Mercelle Humbert) from her Polish painter-lover within 24 hours. His devastation at the loss of first real love of life is evident from what he wrote to Braque, the co-founder of Cubisun, “Fernande left yesterday with a Futurist painter... What will I do about the dog?”

Fernandes’ place was gradually taken over by Eva. Eva & Fernandes were a study in contrast. Eva was a delicate being in need of protection, while Fernandes was a natural survivor. To demonstrate how precious Marcelle was to him, Picasso renamed her Eva.

Eva was deeply loved by Picasso but that did not stop him from flirting with Gaby Lespinasse a beautiful twenty-seven-year-old Parisian during hospitalisation of Eva and coming out with sensual paintings of naked Gaby. Eva’s poor health proved fatal. On December 14 1915, Eva died. "My poor Eva is dead," he wrote to Gertrude Stein. "It was a great sorrow . . . she was always so good to me”

Picasso met Olga Khokhlova, his first wife when Jean Cocteau, the “frivolous prince” and Picasso’s passport to the high society, took him to design costumes and stage sets for Sergie Diaghilev’s new ballet –Parade. Olga was one of sixty dancers in Diaghilev’s troupe. Her restrained manners, traditional beauty coupled with hint of nobility of descent caught Picasso’s attention. Her normalcy was a positive attraction for Picasso who had led a life abnormal romantic encounters, a life which at the time was not proving to be very happy one for him. Olga saw a safe prospect in the painter who was important enough for being given a substantial position in the production of Diaghilev. For Picasso it was an escape to “luxurious ordinariness”. They got married on 12 July 1918, first at a civil ceremony than in elaborate Russian Orthodox Church marriage. She ruled his paintings from 1917 to throughout 20’s. In this period, neoclassical images were challenged by Cubist abstractions. During the beginning of their relationship, Olga's portraits were marked by tenderness and sacred esteem with which Picasso treated her. However. by the end of their marriage, these classically inspired portraits are gone. Now, Olga has a skull-like head with jaws; her image emerges from mechanical and animal forms as in ‘Seated Bather’ of 1930. A savage distortion of human form was all too evident. Olga marks a clear-cut break from the bohemian lifestyle of Picasso’s previous incarnation and introduced him to the life of traditional respectability. Her lethargic but obsessive resolve to keep her marriage alive, could not stop Picasso from moving towards new relationships.

In 1927 he saw athletic blond, beautiful and almost thirty year younger than him- Marie- Thérèse. She wrote later “ he simply grabbed me by the arm and said ‘I am Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together….I resisted for six months but you don’t resist Picasso. You have ……understood me a woman does not resist Picasso.” It was a great sexual odyssey unfettered by age, taboo and responsibility. Marie- Thérèse’s appeal lay in her submissiveness and willingness to fulfill any whimsical or sadistic demand of Picasso. He used to see in her proof of his power and sexual magnetism. He experienced the thrill of a forbidden relationship as she was too young and he kept Olga in dark about her existence. Marie-Thérèse the secret companion is depicted soft, round and youthful. Her laughter appears unburdened and she exudes lightness of carefree spirit. Yet, years later, in the dusk of their relationship, she confessed that Picasso did not want her to laugh and was always telling her to "be serious." In his later works of the 1920s all of Picasso's visual references of Marie- Thérèse were veiled, a decade later it seems that he no longer wanted to be secretive about his new lover. It is through Marie-Thérèse's image we get most explicit depiction of Picasso’s sexuality, reflection of a boundary less unrestrained relationship between the Master and his willing sexual and emotional slave. Her several portraits such as The Mirror (1932), Sleeping Nude (1932),Girl Before a Mirror (l932) and Nude Asleep in a Landscape (1934) allude to highly passionate nature of their relationship.

In 1935 Olga left him, Marie-Thérèse gave birth to a girl and Picasso met Dora Maar. Dora Maar was a model, photographer and a reasonably talented painter herself. She was an intellectual companion who even co produced a painting, signed ‘Picamaar’. It was a period when he had a wife, a concubine and an official mistress. Dora photo-documented the creation of ‘Guernica’, Picasso’s most celebrated painting and arguably the most potent anti-war piece of art ever created. There was reportedly one incident During the period when ‘Guernica’ was being painted, when Marie-Thérèse and Dora Maar came to blows while quarrelling over Picasso. All this time Picasso calmly went on creating his greatest statement against human conflict. It is said that Picasso enjoyed having power over people by setting them in competition with each other. By the time Second World War entered its second year Marie-Thérèse was reduced to an emotional pulp quivering in anticipation of Picasso’s next dose of physical and emotional solace. Even Dora was brutalized. In his painting there was once again, complete transformation of womanhood. He painted dog-faced portraits of Dora Maar while turning her into a servile animal in real life also.

In 1943 he met the woman who “survived Picasso” Françoise Gilot was young enough to be his granddaughter but she was a perfect match for the wiles of the monstrous sexual predator. Picasso’s seduction of her was a game between two evenly matched players. An outwitted Picasso found himself loving a precocious young lady who had fallen in love with him with her eyes wide open. Dora Maar, smug in her intellectual superiority, refused to believe that she could be replaced by a new young thing in Picassso’s life, “may be in bed but never on table” she once remarked. Very soon she was falling apart and developed neurotic craving for regaining Picasso’s attention. Whereas Picasso’s relationship with Françoise fell into a pattern where he avoided her when she softened while ran after her when she neglected him. She left him twice to come back She bore him two children. Françoise was intelligent and independent enough to wanting to escape from Picasso. Despite her emotional miseries she kept her talent alive and by the end of forties, a time came when she was being feted for her costume designs and other artistic works, while Picasso waited for her. She also had relationships with other men. Françoise Gilot’s controversial l964 book, ‘My Life with Picasso’ became a source of inspiration for several feminist writings on the artist's misogynist personality. Her relationship with the icon was theme of successful movie “surviving Picasso” Academy Award winner Sir Anthony Hopkins played Picasso with remarkable verve and authenticity. In 1953 she finally left Picasso in 1953.

From 1954 onwards begins "l'époque Jacqueline" Jacqueline was his second wife and final companion. It was after a season of violent artistic creations, loneliness and endless womanizing, in the wake of Françoise’s desertion, Picasso allowed Jacqueline to realize her infinite devotion. She was fiercely protective of and fanatically devoted to Picasso, his health, his peace, his need to remain productive were supreme for her. Françoise Gilot had pointed out that Picasso's women started as goddesses and ended as doormats. Jacqueline reversed the process. Her association with Picasso was the longest among the main feminine influences in the master’s life. Her patient nursing kept him productive till the ninety-second year of his life. Her longevity made her the most widely used model who was explored more deeply than perhaps any model in the history of art. It is her vulnerability that gives a new intensity to the combination of cruelty and tenderness that endows Picasso's paintings of women with their pathos and their strength. The dedications on the countless drawings reveal that Picasso became more and more besotted as he became more and more reliant on Jacqueline. She developed the most varied skills, acting in turn as secretary, interpreter, agent, cook, poet, driver, nurse, photographer, model, and trouble-shooter. She gave Picasso his space and kept herself busy with other things while he worked. Her contribution is evident from the last coherent words of dying Picasso to his doctor, he said “You are wrong not to be married. It is useful”.

Most of his women could not recover from the intensity of their encounter with Picasso. "When I die," Picasso had prophesied, "it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it." On October 20, 1977, in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of their meeting, Marie-Thérèse hanged herself in the garage of her house in Juan-les-Pins. “She couldn't bear the thought of him alone, his grave surrounded by people who could not possibly give him what she had given him."

Just after midnight on October 15, 1986, Jacqueline shot herself in the temple. She had left behind a list of everyone she wanted at her funeral.

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