Friday, August 22, 2014

Art is Sensuous


Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto
  1. Art is cross-art by nature
  2. Art is always autobiographical
  3. Art is sensuous
  4. Art is synesthetic
  5. Art is never completely original
  6. Art has value
Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:
My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects. This is the third of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto.



Touch

Nicholas Cage as Seth and Meg Ryan as Maggie in `City of Angels (1998) have a moment at the library.  She feels him hold her hand and run a finger on her palm.  She had questioned his feeling that she was an excellent doctor, and had tacitly dismissed such praise from the stranger.  In one regard, this beautiful, poignant film is her story, she who is first baffled and skeptical, then shifts from science (analytical and skeptical) to art (experiential and authentic).  At the end, she glides on a kind of ribbon of religion, where she lives life fully, with the wind in her hair and the sun on her face.


Taste
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste... as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy. 
From a passage in A Moveable Feast, by Earnest Hemingway, which Seth reads.

Sight

There is quite a lot in the following clip from `A Beautiful Mind (2001), where Russell Crowe as John and Jennifer Connelly as Alicia go a first date.  The visuals in general are arresting.  But if we believe that God is truly an artist, then the visuals of a Marc Chagall painting are as transcendent as Alicia sees it and also as stunning as she is.  At her behest, the geeky genius John sees a certain artistry in the cosmos. 


Self Portrait with Seven Fingers (1913), by Marc Chagall
Sound

Charlotte Church sings `All You Can Be, as the love theme, in a hauntingly beautiful voice.  In fact, the soundtrack James Horner is in and of itself sensuous. 


Scent

`Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is an unfortunate title for this lush and lavish 2006 film.  Indeed Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille does kill, in an effort to capture the intoxicating but elusive scent of a woman.  But his killings are simply one part of a rich story about his ungodly heightened sense of smell.  In reality, of course, we as the audience do not smell what he smells.  But through the filmmaker's craft and our imagination, it was quite easy for us to smell all that captivated Jean-Baptiste.


Finally, my poem on a stunningly fragrant, long lasting Casablanca Lily:


Not all pieces of art will engage our five senses equally.  But if we give free reign to all of our senses, then art as a whole rewards us with an inviolably sensuous experience.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Art is Always Autobiographical


Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto
  1. Art is cross-art by nature
  2. Art is always autobiographical
  3. Art is sensuous
  4. Art is synesthetic
  5. Art is never completely original
  6. Art has value
Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:
My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects.  This is the second of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto.



Art draws from experience

The 2006 film `Open Window stars Robin Tunney as Izzy and Joel Edgerton as her fiance Peter.  Theirs is a down-to-earth, genuinely loving relationship, but when a stranger enters through a window she left ajar, and rapes her, their lives turn inside-out and upside-down.  The film was so disregarded that there wasn't even a Wikipedia entry, but nevertheless I found it emotionally powerful and artistically compelling.

   

Here is the story of its writer and director:
One night in 1989, Mia Goldman awakened to find a menacing stranger sitting on top of her, ordering her to keep her mouth shut or he would "shoot [her] brains out" with a gun he had placed on a nightstand.

At the time, Goldman, a film editor, was living in a two-story condominium in rural Virginia, on location with the film, "Crazy People." Her assailant revealed that he knew she was working on the movie, that he had been stalking her and that he had entered the condo through a downstairs window she had left open a crack for air.

Over the next five hours, he brutally raped, tortured and beat Goldman, covering her body with bruises and injuring her neck. In the aftermath, she developed a heart murmur, endured cervical surgeries, experienced flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome and lost her boyfriend, who had tried to be kind but ultimately could not deal with his own feelings of trauma and violation.

Goldman says it took her six years to work through her depression and to heal, which she did with the help of her psychoanalyst, her family and her growing spiritual connection to Judaism. She drew on her experience to write and direct her debut feature, "Open Window," which premieres on Showtime July 16 at 8 p.m.

The intense, intimate drama revolves around Izzy (Robin Tunney), a struggling photographer, Izzy's fiancé, Peter (Joel Edgerton), and how their relationship unravels after she is raped by a man who enters her studio through an open window.

Both Izzy and Peter are devastated by the rape: "I wanted to show how the act violates not only the woman, but also the man -- and how it creates circles of pain that may extend to the entire family," Goldman says.
Reference:  Mia Goldman’s film is an ‘Open Window’ into trauma and recovery.

Art draws on empathy

I first heard of Rodrigo García as the director of the mysterious 2008 film Passengers, starring Anne Hathaway as Claire and Patrick Wilson as Eric, among unlikely survivors of a horrific airplane crash. It was a box office bomb, but I found it to be a well-scripted, well-acted, imaginative albeit creepy story of the after-life.

Breaking new ground with award-winning scripted dramas for the digital age

When I stumbled on the WIGS channel on YouTube, I was already acquainted with co-creator García.  I found myself enthralled with the fine, sensitive, empathic portrayal of women.  In fact all of the WIGS films are titled simply by the names of the women who lead a range of stories.  My favorite among all of them is the story of `Blue, with Julia Stiles, who struggles with a turbulent past of addiction and a double-life now as a mother and a call girl.  García's writing and directing are just brilliant.  Though it isn't a perfect effort for him, I'd definitely vouch for the fact that he nails these women roles:
Glenn [Close], whom we interviewed after our chat with Rodrigo, theorized why the director excels in creating absorbing female characters: “Rodrigo has a wonderful mother and had a wonderful grandmother. I think he has a very strong wife (Dawn Hudson, executive director of Independent Filmmaker Project/West) and he has two daughters. He’s surrounded by women. He probably would say he has no choice. I’ve been in his first two movies. He writes fantastic roles for women. He’s a man who understands the feminine side of life and revels in what all that means.

When he was told that actresses he has directed often talk about his great insight and sensibility toward women, Rodrigo cracked with a smile: “I hear my wife laughing right now.”

But he admitted to having “What feels to me like a very strong imagination. I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, but when I imagine the women characters that I write about, I feel them very strongly in my head. I’m glad that so many women respond to them. If they didn’t, I would have given it up a long time ago. One of the things that feeds me to keep writing women is that a lot of women connect with them. But it’s always a bit of a prayer. I am not saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to nail this one. This is what this woman is like.’ I have to go with my instinct and, like I said before, I just assume she has to be a little bit like me. She must. She wants things.

He said that one of the best things he has read on this topic was when Gustave Flaubert was asked who was Madame Bovary. Rodrigo said, “Flaubert said, ‘Madame Bovary is me.’ We make movies about other men. We make movies about people in other periods, people in outer space or who’ve gone to space, fired a gun, been on a horse. Imagination – you have to have that as storytellers. Plus empathy to feel that everyone else is me and that I am everyone else. There’s a particular set of circumstances around Nobbs. She had to hide to survive but everyone hides an aspect of themselves in order to fit in and survive.”
Reference: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s son on the art of storytelling

All men have been around women in one way or another, of course. So while Close's theory sounds quite reasonable, García probably draws on more than just personal experience.  I think he also taps his empathic understanding of women to make such breathtaking, compelling art. It is empathy - psychologically putting yourself in others' shoes - that he draws from most, and his films speak to his personal instinct, grasp and imagination. 

Art draws on imagination

Vincent Van Gogh is one of my longtime favorites, and more than three decades after my university days, impressionism as a genre still draws me.  The story goes that his friend and fellow painter Paul Gauguin advised him to paint from his imagination, that is, instead of reality.   While Van Gogh admired him, and paid lip service to his mentoring, he demured.  The deeply talented Dutchman preferred instead to paint scenes he saw in front of him, such as the following:

Bedroom in Arles (1888)
Then while in an asylum in Saint-Rémy, he didn't have his usual access to places that inspired him.  But inspired, he still was.  While there was an identifiable view of the following painting, that is, outside the east-facing window of his room, he apparently painted it during the daytime and in a different place at the asylum.  He painted it from memory, in other words, and the idyllic village in background and the bold fire strokes of the moon, stars and sky were his imaginative rendition.  

Starry Night (1889)
Bedroom in Arles and Starry Night are among the things that Van Gogh saw.  They speak to his remarkable ability not just to paint, but also to keep his dysphoria, delusions and torment under artistic control.  Besides imagination, there is emotionality to these paintings, which, pat psychiatric diagnoses notwithstanding, speak to a far greater complexity, richness and talent.

So just as Madame Bovary is Flaubert, and Blue is García, so Arles and Saint-Rémy are unmistakably Van Gogh. 

The foregoing works of art tell remarkable stories about the personal experience, empathy and imagination of the artists behind them.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Art is Cross-Art by Nature


Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto
  1. Art is cross-art by nature
  2. Art is always autobiographical
  3. Art is sensuous
  4. Art is synesthetic
  5. Art is never completely original
  6. Art has value
Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:
My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects.  This is the first of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto.



 

I take umbrage at those who define art only as paintings.  Certainly what painters render from their imagination, onto canvas, is a work of wonder. But they aren't the only artists we can speak of.  Poets and novelists | playwrights, filmmakers and actors | dancers and musicians | even martial artists and fashion designers | and so many more | belong in this enormous circle, too.

Art speaks to a wide range of creative talent, genres and expressions.

Moreover, they all have a play on that canvas, which I see as a metaphor for any art creation. That canvas can be a video, a book, or a stage.  Social media is the wide-ranging, modern day platform we have come to know, but the tried-and-true media of TV, radio and print are very much alive and kicking.  Not just one, then, but multiple avenues, through which inspired artists can express themselves and also through which art aficionados can enjoy their work.

Art can play on a diverse set of media platforms and channels.

Consider the following:


  

You see, these two videos aren't just dance, but also an intimate, intricate coming together of music, drama and cinematography.  There is something supreme to experience, when we watch ballet live, which makes theater so much more of a draw than any other media.  Yet, that stage production cannot account for the creative versatility of film.  The cuts from Polina Semionova gliding in the air, to her sylph legs and feet; or from the pas de deux, to the tight closeups of Amelia in Edouard Lock's choreography, raise the artistry of these pieces.

What is art anyway?

Just in case you weren't sure:


  

  

Art may be very difficult to define, because to define something is to take an objective view and to arrive at a description that many, if not necessarily all, can agree on.  But by nature, art is subjective, and because it is so varied and people are arguably each unique, it defies conventional definition.

That subjectivity, uniqueness and defiance are all why I love art.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Immersive Experience for `Macbeth Audience







I am even more enthralled and curious about this production, after watching these interview clips of Kenneth Branagh.  The notion of an immersive experience for the audience gives me ideas about how I might stage Shakespeare, well down the road of course.  Elsewhere some attendees bemoaned the small, uncomfortable theater of the Amory, and complained about not being about to use the washroom, even after the play, as everyone was shuffled out the door.  But now I see that this was somehow all part of the experience.  This is where I might do it differently and do it better.

Also, I had this insight, as I wrote about this production.  It ran from May 31st to June 22nd in New York City, so I missed it entirely.  But watching these clips, reading about it, and scanning others' comments, I forge a vicarious experience.  I can feel the rain and mud, hear the clash of swords, and altogether imagine that immersion.  Years ago, Karen and I watched this play on stage on DePaul University in Chicago, and what I remember most was the stirring drumbeat, as Macbeth approached his tragic end.  I can still feel that drumbeat in my chest, as I recollect it now.  The internet brings a host of things that some may dismiss as secondary, relative to what we might see in person.  But I can tell you that these things, and the experiences we have, are real indeed.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Kenneth Branagh in Bold `Macbeth



Kenneth Branagh as Macbeth and Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth

Just as the Marion Cotillard-Michael Fassbender `Macbeth toils in post-production, this stage production with a long-time Shakespearean favorite apparently had a fine run in New York City earlier this summer.  Lady Macbeth is positively vicious toward, and emasculating of, Macbeth, especially when he wavers so agonizingly about killing King Duncan.  While Macbeth becomes bolder over time, he does so mainly out of fright and dread and, in the end, fatalism.  In other words, he seems more wimpish than boldish.

But from the sounds of Thom Geier's review, Branagh's Macbeth is truly bold.  In the following image, for example, he seems to attack Lady Macbeth:

(image credit)
As the tragic end draws near, Macbeth finds out that his wife has died:
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
It is one of the most harrowing set of lines in literature and stage, and it is the final straw that breaks the back of any semblance of life and love that Macbeth had.  I had the pleasure and fortune of performing this monologue on stage, at the end of an acting class in Dubai six years ago.
In his moving final soliloquy, he inserts a lengthy pause before spitting out the word idiot as if he has only just realized the folly of his strutting and fretting upon the dirt-clumped stage. In that brief speech, the actor manages to signify just about everything about his remarkable Macbeth.
Reference:  Macbeth (2014).


Monday, August 4, 2014

Marion Cotillard in Tough `Macbeth


Marion Cotillard Talks Macbeth

I am eagerly awaiting this Marion Cotillard-Michael Fassbender `Macbeth, now in post-production and set for release in 2015.  Cotillard is still an underrated talent and beauty, even though she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in `La Vie en Rose and even as Hollywood has cast her in blockbuster films: `Inception, `Contagion, and `The Dark Knight Rises.

It was very nice of her to give us a take on her experience of the filming:
The new Macbeth movie edges closer and Marion Cotillard, playing the fearsome Lady Macbeth, has spoken for the first time about how filming is progressing. 
Speaking to BBC America, she said that she was finding the experience, “Tough, very tough”. 
She continued, “The reputation [that] these characters and this play [have] is that it’s really, really hard - really complex - and it’s the right reputation, because it is, but the director Justin Kurzel [is] really, really an amazing director..and it’s his second movie and I guess he’s going to be around for a while.” 
She also described working with co-star Michael Fassbender saying that, “He surprised me, which is something [very] special on a set. Sometimes I didn’t know what he would do and I was surprised many times.”
Reference: Marion Cotillard Talks Macbeth.


Lady Macbeth and Macbeth

The William Shakespeare page on Facebook posted this article on June 5th, and there are rows of commentary.

Friday, August 1, 2014

Sonnet 100, by NY Shakespeare Exchange


Where art thou Muse that thou forget'st so long,
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,
And make Time's spoils despised every where.
     Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,
     So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.
Sonnet 100, from The Sonnet Project, by the New York Shakespeare Exchange.

Wow, what a beautiful short film and a reverberating score.  Shakespeare deftly personifies the Muse, as the writer at once criticizes him (or her) for misjudgment and neglect, yet pleads for his or her return and salvation.  The director situates the writer in a kind of prison, a solitary and sparing sort, who struggles against anonymity and irrelevance.  He suggests that at the end of it all, however, it is too late: Time has wasted life.  Or has it?  Perhaps, too, the Muse managed to come back in the end, and the writer is forever enshrined in the library.