Visual (Kiefer, Ryder, Icons), Audio (Pärt), Video (Tarkovsky), Grail Legend

Here are a number of things, some responses to previous posts, and a bunch of materials.

Jaime -

I really like the aesthetic coincidence of the middle phase Picasso with Sigur Ros. Somehow these two have always seemed similar to me and I think we should pursue this further. Recorded music is really interesting, I am somewhat opposed to using it as an environmental effect because of our space (like as if it's coming from nowhere, as part of the "mood" that the characters don't notice) but it could be really really amazing and interesting to use it as something that the characters notice and don't know the source of.

Also, that Radiohead song is gorgeous, singing together like that - that's one we could play, using the piano. It might be nice to have a good old sing along at the piano at some point, as if one character begins to play and others join. We shall see, yeah?



Okay, here is a film clip from Andrei Tarkovsky's the sacrifice:
Tarkovsky has the most incredible visual aesthetic ever. He uses houses really really well, combining the everyday and the surreal in incredibly shocking and subversive ways. Tarkovsky's work is theatrical in that he uses incredibly long takes, often 6-9 minutes, with insane detail, following characters through complex environments like houses and forests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Tarkovsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacrifice


Joseph Campbell, mythologist extraordinare, who everyone should read, says that the archetype or principle of a sacrifice is one of the great archetypes. He says that sacrifice is a metaphor for the death that occurs before rebirth, that we must sacrifice our lives and what we think we need in order to be reborn to new and more interesting possibilities. Here is a clip of the climax of Tarkovsky's film. Short backgroup - a number of intellectuals are in rural Sweden when they see an explosion in the distance that they fear is a nuclear holocaust. The film is their reaction to this event.




Here is another single-take clip, the beginning of Tarkovsky's "The Mirror". I don't know this film at all, but this is a really gorgeous clip just for aesthetic reasons.





THE GRAIL MYTH

Here is a nifty page with much about the Fisher King and the Grail Legend, including a number of images:
http://www.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/arthurian_legend/grail/fisher/

The most important book on the Grail legend is Emma Jung's, wife of psychologist Carl Jung. She spent most of her life researching the symbolism of the Grail and how it could be applied to modern life as a metaphor for the boon we all seek.

Here is something to look at regards to what a grail might look like in literal, historical form. But of course this really is a metaphor for embodied knowledge, the boon of Campbell's Hero's Journey.




Another interesting, more historical source on the Grail legend:

http://www.britannia.com/history/arthur/grail.html



RYDER:

Painting by Albert Pynkham Ryder, very interesting use of texture and light. Especialy light, with our large windows, and sunset (?), we have some really amazing opportunities to create image-tableaus in rooms, such as we have discussed with the Fisher King or with the Collegium Singers. I like Ryder's use of light mucho.




Russian Iconography, Arvo Part-




Arvo Pärt, the Estonian Composer whose setting of the 131st Psalm I sent to you all earlier this month (Called Slawische Psalmen, or Slavonic Psalm), is a really fucking big genius. One of the things that makes him this is the way he engages with text. Unlike a lot of composers, when he sets a text, and as an Orthodox Christian, he's really into setting Orthodox texts, he engages with the text word by word. He writes that he carries the text around with him, allowing it to change him and affect his world view. He then writes the music to fit and carry the text and the meaning underneath the text. For those who don't know, this is VERY DIFFERENT than the way that the art music tradition in Europe typically approaches texts. Typically, music is more important.
Pärt's approach has some correlates. In pre-Art music European music, especially Church-influenced traditions like Gregorian Chant, Corsican polyphony, and Slavic music from Bulgaria to Ukraine to Georgia, the words are typically viewed as the most important aspect of a song, because they carry the secret and inner meaning of the song, the ability of the song to transform.
This is also paralleled in the Russian Iconography tradition.


Icons were considered objects for spiritual meditation, not as art for art's sake. Art here is viewed as a vehicle for transformation. And this is the tradition that Pärt comes out of. Pärt in a way is composing ancient post-modern music.

This also reminds me of the way actors work with text. Engagement until transformation, allowing the text to play us.

Here's a clip of him speaking about the piano piece Fur Alina, and his composition method of Tintinnabuli. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintinnabuli





Anselm Kiefer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm_Kiefer

German Painter and Sculptor. Responds to themes of taboo and the holocaust. I am extremely attracted by his use of large heavy objects to represent and elucidate very "light" things. I saw a show of his "wings" sculptures in San Francisco a year or so ago and I thought that this was really the most THINGY, meaty, grounded, present, and yet incredibly light and poetic, sculptures that I'd ever seen. He has a certain presence that's amazing, a way of being THERE in both beauty and violence.







So, in conclusion, we have some really great possiblities for things to happen IN (Kiefer, that other installation that's down there, etc.) and some great materials to use to BE... text, music, etc. I really admire Pärt's engagement theory/practice, it's mirrored in traditional singing, Zen Koan work, poetry, yeah, delicious movements, yeah, well, frankly, most good art. So yeah.

That's all, mucho love, these posts look really awesome and I'm so excited!!

Asa