Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Looking Up...

Today the opposite of tomato is the enduring melancholy beauty of the music of The Go-Betweens


graphite & putty eraser/30x60cm (3 parts, each 30x20cm)
original source: ‘The Guardian’ 28/04/08

This image was chosen for transcription primarily for the juxtaposition of the contemporary figure with those fauns in the painting, of a European academic, ‘Salon’, clichéd, bourgeois style popular particularly during the first half of the 19th century & of a type that pioneer realists & Modernists such as Courbet & Manet sought to challenge & render redundant through their art. The art-historical combination of clothed male & naked female figures was a familiar one, & perpetuated by Courbet & Manet in, for example, ‘The Painter’s Studio’ & ‘Dejeuner sur l’Herbe’ respectively & again here in the source photograph, of Russia’s wealthiest oligarch at the Irkutsk Oblast Museum of Art (accessing the institution’s website has alas not yielded the artist & title of the painting in question). The photo’s composition might also be said to follow a clichéd convention in picturing all concerned united in their heavenward gazes.

Soundtrack:


Sigur Ros ‘Takk’
Lambchop ‘Aw C’mon’ & ‘No, You C’mon’

06/05/08



In fond remembrance of the work of the late Grant McLennan, on the 2nd anniversary of his untimely death (upon which I posted at the time), The Go-Betweens in all their glory:

‘Before Hollywood’, ‘Spring Hill Fair’, ‘Liberty Belle & the Black Diamond Express’, ‘Tallulah’, ‘16 Lover’s Lane’, ‘The Friends of Rachel Worth’ & ‘Bright Yellow, Bright Orange’

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