Hard to Live With

Posted on May 15, 2019 by JMN
monet meules

This work from Claude Monet’s “Meules” (“Grainstacks”) series set an auction high for any work by an Impressionist painter, according to Sotheby’s, which handled the $110.7 million sale. Credit via Sotheby’s.

Claude Monet’s series paintings are among the few true trophies that can generate real excitement at auctions… “They’re so evocative, so romantic and so easy to live with,” Offer Waterman, a London-based dealer, said. “That was the best of the series… It was an amazing painting. And you just can’t get them.”
…
“The longer you spend buying it, the longer you’ll spend enjoying it,” quipped Harry Dalmeny, the auctioneer… as he urged the bidders on.

(Scott Reyburn, “A Monet Sells for $110.7 Million, an Auction High for an Impressionist Work,” NYTimes, 5-14-19)

Well, yes, you can get a true trophy in a frenzy of real excitement if you’re filthy rich.

Monet did only (!) 25 of these “Meules” paintings in 1890 and 1891 in the fields next to his home in Giverny. I like to think he would spin in his grave at knowing that the fruit of his honest labor is being retailed at astronomical sums of filthy lucre by cynical
auctioneers in a philistine micro-bubble of obscene wealth peopled by a handful of hedge fund managers, petroleum potentates, and their ilk.

I join Claude in finding it disheartenening, dispiriting, discouraging, demoralizing, debasing, disgusting, and denaturing to lose perfectly decent art to gilded closets.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Guide by the Perplexed — Consolidation

Posted on May 15, 2019 by JMN
gris guitar

Juan Gris, “Guitare sur une table,” from 1916, at Helly Nahmad. Credit via Helly Nahmad Gallery.

The OO states uncover a consistency that helps learn what 8 natural notes are produced at 12 fret-based coordinates.

Let’s use a notation specifying string-fret, then note.

Example: “1-7B.”

In the example, the initial digit (‘1’) designates string 1. The next digit (‘7’) designates fret 7. The letter (‘B’) designates the note produced — note B. Thus, the symbol “1-7B” says “string 1 at fret 7 is a B.”

OOF state occurs as follows:1-0E, 1-7B, 2-8G, 3-7D, 4-7A, 5-7E, 6-0E.
OOP state occurs as follows: 6-0E, 6-5A, 5-5D, 4-5G, 3-4B, 2-5E, 1-0E.

And there you have it. It’s time to cross some eyes and dot some tees — coming next.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Parting Looks — Buck Schiwetz

Posted on May 15, 2019 by JMN

Edward Muegge “Buck” Schiwetz (1898-1984), born in Cuero, Texas. (c) 2019 JMN

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Guide by the Perplexed — Restatement

Posted on May 14, 2019 by JMN
gris guitar

Juan Gris, “Guitare sur une table,” from 1916, at Helly Nahmad. Credit via Helly Nahmad Gallery.

Here we restate and complement our OO schemes as follows:

Octave-of-Following (OOF)

*E-string-1 at Fret-0 is an E-note with OOF state re E-string-6
E-string-1 at Fret-7 is a B-note with OOF state re B-string-2
B-string-2 at Fret-8 is a G-note with OOF state re G-string-3
G-string-3 at Fret-7 is a D-note with OOF state re D-string-4
D-string-4 at Fret-7 is an A-note with OOF state re A-string-5
A-string-5 at Fret-7 is an E-note with OOF state re E-string-6
*E-string-6 at Fret-0 is an E-note with OOP state re E-string-1

Octave-of-Preceding (OOP)

*E-string-6 at Fret-0 is an E-note with OOP state re E-string-1
E-string-6 at Fret-5 is an A-note with OOP state re A-string-5
A-string-5 at Fret-5 is a D-note with OOP state re D-string-4
D-string-4 at Fret-5 is a G-note with OOP state re G-string-3
G-string-3 at Fret-4 is a B-note with OOP state re B-string-2
B-string-2 at Fret-5 is an E-note with OOP state re E-string-1
*E-string-1 at Fret-0 is an E-note with OOF state re E-string-6

*Fret-0 means the string is open — no fret is fingered. These additions make explicit that strings 1 and 6 are tuned to the same note — an E — one octave apart.

And there you have it. It’s time to consolidate the cognitive handhold on the fretboard that we’ve gained so far — coming next.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Rust in Peace

Posted on May 12, 2019 by JMN
decay11

White Bay’s turbine hall [Australia].

There’s this sense of wonder you get when looking at abandoned buildings. You try to imagine what these spaces were like when they were filled with busy workers trying to meet production targets. And why did they close?

(Brett Patman, “Beauty in ruins: the wonder of abandoned buildings — a photo essay,” The Guardian, 5-11-19)

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Kandos cement works [Australia].

The spectacle of decay and decrepitude on an industrial scale is somehow stirring.

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Women’s wards at Callan Park [Australia].

The so-called advances in how we make buildings seem to be matched by an acceleration of the rate at which they disintegrate.

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The lounge of the Kinugawa Kan Hotel [Australia].

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A former snack bar in Yubari [Australia].

It’s hard to imagine anything erected today standing — like a Roman bridge — a thousand years from now.

stans5

Residential building, 1980s, Chkalovsk, Tajikistan. Photograph: Stefano Perego.

However, …

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Residential building, 1980s, Tashkent, Uzbekistan Photograph: Stefano Perego.

… toxic, putrefying, oxidized, infested, cankerous, crumbling, melancholy, five-star has-beens…

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Aul housing complex, 1986, Almaty, Kazakhstan. Architects: B. Voronin, L. Andreyeva, Y. Ratushny, V. Lepeshov, V. Vi. Photograph: Stefano Perego.

… are fertile ground for art and piety,…

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Residential building, 1984, Dushanbe, Tajikistan. E. Yerzovsky. Photograph Roberto Conte.

… which spring from death anyway.

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Residential building, 1980s. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Photograph: Stefano Perego.

(Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego, “When Soviets met Stans: the tower blocks of central Asia — in pictures,” The Guardian, 5-3-19.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Parting Looks

Posted on May 11, 2019 by JMN

This inadvertently comical drawing by Harold J. Nichols (1924-2013) has a vigor and intensity that I find seductive. It has the top-of-head deficit common amongst us untrained drawers. The brain fools the eye somehow. I think it discounts what’s above … Continue reading →

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Guide by the Perplexed — Denial

Posted on May 11, 2019 by JMN
gris guitar

Juan Gris, “Guitare sur une table,” from 1916, at Helly Nahmad. Credit via Helly Nahmad Gallery.

I did not err in an earlier post; the post simply misspoke itself. Derived Octave-of-Following (DOOF) state was announced as coming next. The post should have intended to say: “Octave-of-Preceding (OOP) state — coming next.”

Octave-of-Preceding (OOP) state is the state in which a fretted note is the octave of the preceding open string.

This is true:

E-string-6 at Fret-5 is an A-note with OOP state re A-string-5

A-string-5 at Fret-5 is a D-note with OOP state re D-string-4

D-string-4 at Fret-5 is a G-note with OOP state re G-string-3

*G-string-3 at Fret-4 is a B-note with OOP state re B-string-2

B-string-2 at Fret-5 is an E-note with OOP state re E-string-1

*OOP state occurs at Fret-5 often enough to be useful for raising note consciousness. The exception is on G-string-3. The interval between G-string-3 and B-string-2 is the only interval that isn’t a Perfect-Fourth; it’s a Major-Third. Therefore, OOP state is a half-step lower at Fret-4.

And there you have it. It’s time for a summary of what we’ve learned so far — coming next.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Guide by the Perplexed

Posted on May 6, 2019 by JMN
gris guitar

Juan Gris, “Guitare sur une table,” from 1916, at Helly Nahmad. Credit via Helly Nahmad Gallery.

Octave-of-Following (OOF) state is the state in which a fretted note is the octave of the following open string.

This is true:

E-string-1 at Fret-7 is a B-note with OOF state re B-string-2

*B-string-2 at Fret-8 is a G-note with OOF state re G-string-3

G-string-3 at Fret-7 is a D-note with OOF state re D-string-4

D-string-4 at Fret-7 is an A-note with OOF state re A-string-5

A-string-5 at Fret-7 is an E-note with OOF state re E-string-6

*OOF state occurs at Fret-7 often enough to be useful for raising note consciousness. The exception is on B-string-2. The interval between G-string-3 and B-string-2 is the only interval that isn’t a Perfect-Fourth; it’s a Major-Third. Therefore, OOF state is a half-step higher at Fret-8.

And there you have it. It’s time now for Derived Octave-of-Following (DOOF) state — coming next.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Guide by the Perplexed

Posted on May 6, 2019 by JMN
gris guitar

Juan Gris, “Guitare sur une table,” from 1916, at Helly Nahmad. Credit via Helly Nahmad Gallery.

The Poet sat in a dive on 52nd Street “uncertain and afraid.” I sit in a shed on 3rd Street where I, too, watch “the clever dreams expire of a low, dishonest decade.” The manic hubbub of tear-it-downers and bust-it-uppers and look-at-miners washes over the world like a toxic red tide.

For respite from anomie I resort to the guitar fretboard. It supports a lifetime of soothing obsession. Full disclosure: I haven’t read Maimonides. I know him only by name and reputation. My version of his title reflects a conviction that the best guide for the perplexed is the perplexed.

And here we go:

Guitar strings are numbered 1 through 6, tuned E-B-G-D-A-E unless you learned them 6 through 1 in E-A-D-G-B-E order, as I did. For a mnemonic phrase, use “Easter Bunnies Get Drunk At Easter” or vice versa according to the situation.

With string nomenclature and tuning mastered, it’s time for Octave-of-Following (OOF) state, coming next.

(c) 2019 JMN

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“Islands of Daring”

Posted on May 6, 2019 by JMN

Any drawings that are “like letters of a foreign language” would get my attention. This is so with the drawings of Susan Hefuna.

susan hefuna drawing

“Untitled, 1994” by Susan Hefuna — ink drawings inspired by the wooden screens of Cairo. Credit Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times.

… Susan Hefuna makes ink drawings inspired by the intricate wooden screens of her Cairo childhood… done on overlapping sheets of tracing paper fastened with rice glue… a fascinating tension between clarity and ambiguity — the drawings are like letters of a foreign language glimpsed in a dream.

And the notion of repainting famous portraits of women while eerily disguising their faces, is cheeky and provoking in a thoughtful way. The painting by Ewa Juszkiewicz shows that the scariest masks don’t have horny ears and dripping teeth. They’re much closer to what we expect to see, then don’t. They creep up on us by distorting the familiar, cobbling a fiendish false face for it.

ewa juszkiewicz painting

“Untitled (after Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun)” by Ewa Juszkiewicz, 2019: one of the artist’s altered representations of classic portraits of women. Credit Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times.

… Ewa Juszkiewicz, who repaints classic portraits of women, but hides their faces with cloth, ears of corn or a backward French braid.

(Martha Schewendener, Will Heinrich et al., “At Frieze New York, Islands of Daring,” NYTimes, 5-2-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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