#Sam Gilliam was a genius

[karapaints]

I had forgotten how delightful it is to go to a museum and look at art.

#Milwaukee art museum #Sam Gilliam was a genius #georgia okeeffe

[despicablemeats]

Suddenly using a social media that doesn't have a word count means I can talk more about the all time movie of movies Brazil (1985)

Firstly Terry Gilliam 🙏 we're in thanks for being here we have the most director, he blended so much enjoyable shit into this movie y'all 🤌🤌🤌 the COMEDY, the DRAMA, the ORWELLIAN VIBES - like this man acknowledged 1985 was a thing and decided to base a movie on it?? A genius? Homie didn't even read the book we love to see it AND HE JUST NAMED IT BRAZIL JUST BECAUSE? INCREDIBLE HILARIOUS!

I just love him a lot BC he fought so much for this movie but didn't give a shit to give it a proper name it's stunning, and the ended I fucking loved I won't spoil but it's my favourite type of ending I have so much feelings about it (please someone talk to me about it)

And Sam Lowry? My beautiful baby girl I love him so much he's such a guy going through it, he just wants to fly and kiss a pretty woman - a relatable king! ALSO ANY SCENE WITH JILL AND SAM IN THE TRUCK WAS MY FAVOURITE!! Sam is just so baby 😭😭

But the world was high-key amazing like it was so shitty and I loved the higher-ups really doing the whole 'we never make mistakes' thing like bro that's so real and the 24/7 services that close and record you when they say they're not recording and also the plastic surgery takes man that one scene (iykyk) that was so well placed and ah Sam's mum she was so good -also gave me Bernadette Peters vibes idk why

But idk there's so much more to say, I'll post more about this dumb movie later bx now I'm post convention brain fog yet I'm still thinking of the movie I saw a week ago,

#noahs movie thots #Brazil 1985

[barcarole]

Hi! I am such a huge fan of your blog and admire your vast knowledge of classical music. I wanted to ask you if you have any recommendations for books on Bach? I started reading Peter Williams’ “A life in music”, but while enjoying it, I find it a bit too biographical for my needs, as I want to read something that analyses his music in depth, rather than focusing primarily on his life. Also, if you have any non-fiction classical music books to recommend, that would also be very helpful. Thanks!

Hello! I haven’t read A Life in Music, but these are some of my favorite Bach books that focus on his work:

Bach’s Musical Universe, the Composer and his Works, Christoph Wolff

Bach’s Major Vocal Works: Music, Drama, Liturgy, Markus Rathey

Bach and the Patterns of Invention, Laurence Dreyfus

Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint, David Yearsley

The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach, Richard D. P. Jones (Vol. I, II)

The New Bach Reader, Christoph Wolff

Below, there are some recommended texts. I’ve still yet to read Swafford’s newest Beethoven biography, Fischer’s book on Mahler, a definitive Schubert biography, Debussy’s complete collection of letters and many others, but I enjoyed and learned much from these. In most cases, they don’t require a technical knowledge of music. I tried to cover various areas, depending on which composer/period may interest you more. I hope I’ve helped!

Music Appreciation

The Joy of Music, Leonard Bernstein

Music Here and Now, Ernst Krenek

Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, Igor Stravinsky

Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide, James Keller

What to Listen for in Music, Aaron Copland

A Composer’s World: Horizons and Limitations, Paul Hindemith

Biographies

Mozart: His Character, His Work, Alfred Einstein

Monteverdi, Paolo Fabbri

Handel in London: The Making of a Genius, Jane Glover

Beethoven: The Music and the Life, Lewis Lockwood

Schubert: A Biography, Elizabeth Norman McKay

Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, R. Larry Todd

The Life and Music of John Field, Patrick Piggott

Robert Schumann: The Life and Work of a Romantic Composer, Martin Geck

The Schumanns and Johannes Brahms: The Memoirs of Eugenie Schumann

Brahms: A Biography, Jan Swafford

Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, Alan Walker

Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years | The Weimar Years | The Final Years, Alan Walker

Memoirs, Hector Berlioz

Wagner: As Man and Artist, Ernest Newman

Debussy: A Critical Biography, François Lesure

Ravel: Man and Musician, Abbie Orenstein

A Great Russian Tone-Poet: Scriabin, Arthur Hull

Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland, Glenda Dawn Goss

Mahler: A Life, Jonathan Carr

Alban Berg: Music as Autobiography, Constantin Floros

Writings on Music: Russian and Soviet Music and Composers, Nicolas Slonimsky

Theme and Variations, Bruno Walter

Sergei Prokofiev: Diaries

Shostakovich: A Life, Laurel, E. Fay

Theory/Analysis

Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, C.P.E. Bach

Schumann on Music: A Selection from the Writings 

Berlioz on Music: Selected Criticism 1824-1837

Treatise on Instrumentation, Hector Berlioz (rev. Richard Strauss)

Principles of Orchestration, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemann’s Instrumental Works, Steven Zohn  

The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Charles Rosen

Mozart and His Operas, David Cairns

Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies, George Grove

Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas, Boris Berman

Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, Theodor Adorno

Retracing a Winter’s Journey: Franz Schubert’s “Winterreise”, Susan Youens

Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul, Erika Reiman

The Songs of Hugo Wolf, Eric Sams

Gustav Mahler and the Symphony of the 19th Century, Constantin Floros

A Study of Wagner | The Wagner Operas, Ernest Newman

Sound Figures of Modernity: German Music and Philosophy, Jost Hermand, Gerhard Richter

Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok

Style and Idea, Arnold Schönberg

Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link, Theodor Adorno

A Mammal’s Notebook: The Writings of Erik Satie

Richard Strauss and His World, Bryan Gilliam

Rounding Wagner’s Mountain: Richard Strauss and Modern German Opera, Bryan Gilliam

Olivier Messiaen: Journalism 1935-1939, Stephen Broad

Letters

Mozart: A Life in Letters | The Letters of W.A. Mozart: Vol. I, II

Beethoven’s Letters, Vol. I, II

Chopin’s Letters

Letters of Robert Schumann

The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann

Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Vol. I, II

The Life and Letters of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Tchaikovsky

Antonín Dvořák: Letters and Reminiscences

Intimate Letters: Leos Janáček to Kamila Stösslová

Debussy’s Letters to Inghelbrecht

The Mahler Family Letters 

Theodor W. Adorno & Alban Berg: Correspondence 1925-1935

Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman

History

Music in the Middle Ages, Suzanne Lord

Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque: A Collection of Essays, Nino Pirrotta

Music and the French Enlightenment: Rameau and the Philosophes in Dialogue, Cynthia Vera

Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera: A History, Rebecca Harris-Warrick

Beyond Bach: Music and Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century, Andrew Talle

Chamber Music: An Essential History, Mark A. Radice

Music and Literature in German Romanticism, Siobhán Donovan, Robin Elliot

Music in Vienna: 1700, 1800, 1900, David Wyn Jones

German Modernism: Music and the Arts, Walter Frisch

Debussy’s Paris: Piano Portraits of the Belle Époque, Catherine Kautsky

On Russian Music, Richard Taruskin

Russian Music and Nationalism: From Glinka to Stalin, Marina Frolova-Walker

Schönberg & Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, Konrad Boehmer

Women and Music: A History, Karin Pendle

#Music #Ask

[filmcave]

Cannes can

The indomitable, cantankerous, criticized, brilliant, controversial, cinematic visionary Terry Gilliam, like the Phoenix immortalized by Pliny, Ovid, Herodotus et al has risen - yet again - to finally (perhaps) tell the story he has been subverted from telling for nineteen years.

The tale of Don Quixote in his soon to be premiered The Man who killed Don Quixote at the 2018 Cannes film festival is a film that has been besieged by sickness, flooding, insurance and financial difficulties, the comings and goings of numerous A list actors. And still Mr Gilliam has been persisting through eight attempted efforts since 1998. Its fateful history even catalogued by the documentary Lost in LaMancha.

If there was ever a sign of the apocalypse locked in conquest against the “will to survive” then TMWKDQ is that sign. But after such a treacherous journey are we now finally at that point where Mr Gilliam genius is again unveiled in what seems to be his life work. Maybe his Magnum Opus.

So now it seems fair to ask: Is this a cap to a long, successful cinematic career or the beginning of a new direction?As is celebrated in the jewish holiday of Pesach - “it would have been enough”..

Had he only made the brilliant dystopia universe of Sam Lowry in Brazil - it would have been enough

Had he only defined a new style, aesthetic and essentially oeuvre of film, Gillianesque as it were, - it would have been enough

Had he only crafted stories, themes and subplots which embodied both eternal social commentary and topical hypocrisy, political intrigue and human foibles - it would have been enough

Had he only created marvelous, curious, frightening, compelling characters, at once greek archetypes, at another time funny, genuine and oh so human - it would have been enough

But he has done all these things and more (see my other voluminous posts on him) and all the while continued to persist. Unless Paulo Branco and his Alfama Films Productions pulls the coup to, yet again, thwart Mr. Gilliam you should mark Saturday May 19th on your calendar.

On that date: The world will not stop rotating. Famine and disease will not be eradicated from the earth and most people won’t notice it but it will be the first official screening, to conclude the Cannes International film festival., of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote!

[tagsmarthq]

Tagsmart was here: Adrián Villar Rojas, Soul of a Nation and Dreamers Awake

From the Series ‘The Theatre of Disappearance’ Adrián Villar Rojas

Adrián Villar Rojas calls into question the supremacy of any particular artwork. For his first exhibition in London since 2013, the Argentinian artist presents a life-size marble reproduction of the legs of Michelangelo’s David. The simplicity and beauty of the replicated 15th-century sculpture contrast with two adorable kittens smooching by his feet.

This piece is concurrent with exhibitions on the rooftop of The Met in New York, the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria and the NEON Foundation in Athens, Greece. 

Marian Goodman Gallery, until July 21 5-8 Lower John Street, W1F 9DY

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power

“The biggest achievement of this exhibition is the recovering of the talented legion of artists who have been kept out of the American canon of genius in a way that is utterly unjust,” says Jonathan Jones of The Guardian. Art from the 1950s is predominantly represented nowadays by American icons such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. 

Above is a painting April 4, which marks the first anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King with a cascade of purple tears. This piece is by Sam Gilliam whose artistic genius was forgotten until only recently, now in his 80's. But Gilliam’s art is not the only artwork to come out the woodwork, there are copies of The Black Panther magazine to self-portraits of Barkley Hendricks entitled Brilliantly Endowed and Frank Bowling’s unforgettable paintings. 

Tate Modern, until October 22 Bankside, SE1 9TG

Dreamers Awake Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Lee Miller, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, Francesca Woodman, Hannah Wilke, Louise Bourgeois, Rosemarie Trockel,  Kiki Smith, Paloma Varga Weisz, Mona Hatoum, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas, amongst others

This exhibition of more than 50 contemporary and emerging artists, as well as well-known Surrealist figures, artfully riffs around what it means to live inside rather than gaze upon a female form.

The show explores surrealism through the eyes of women, such as Mona Hatoum who subverts the objectification of the female form with Jardin Public (1993) or Claude Cahun who plays with gender identity as a fluid construct in her iconic black and white self-portraits from the 1930s.

White Cube Bermondsey, Until September 17 144-152 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3TQ

#Marian Goodman Gallery #Adrian Villar Rojas #Exhibitions #London #New York #Athens #Austria #Michelangelo #Argentinian Artist #Sculpture #Painting #Collage #Photography #White Cube #Bermondsey #Linder Sterling #Feminism #Surrealism #Mona Hatoum #Claude Cahun #Tracey Emin #Louise Bourgeois #Sarah Lucas #Punk #Politics #Identity #Self Portrait #The MET

[kyukurator-blog]

HOORAY FOR THE RED, WHITE AND BRITISH

The most typically American movie opening this Fourth of July weekend is Baby Driver, made by a quintessentially British auteur — Edgar Wright, of Shaun of the Dead fame. 

It’s no secret that we’re anglophiles here at The Thread (even though one of us was born in Ireland). And when we see American culture reflected back in a British mirror – well, sometimes it seems like those English directors love America better than we love ourselves. 

This week — definitive American movies that were made by UK directors. 

  BABY DRIVER (2017)

Edgar Wright had barely finished his genre-steeped, culty, and ultra-British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004) when Universal offered him a big-budget job directing comic book adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs The World(2009).

Wright enhanced his homeland cred by going back repeatedly to finish his UK-set “Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy” (Shaun, Hot Fuzz (2007), The World’s End(2013).   But he was also dating Anna Kendrick and co-writing The Adventures of Tin-Tin and Ant-Man, anchoring him firmly in LA

Baby Driver is a hybrid heist movie/romance, softer-edged than Tarantino but equally soundtrack-driven and film-buff referential.

Baby-faced Ansel Elgort (The Fault In Our Stars) plays a moody savant getaway driver whose tortured genius is fueled by an iPod for each mood and occasion.  He owes his soul (for at least one last job) to boss Kevin Spacey.  But things are complicated by a whack-job thug (Jamie Foxx) and a waitress named Debra (Lily James) who reminds him of his mom.

P.S. – if you happen to be in NYC this week, Edgar Wright has curated a series of Heist Films at BAMcinématek

    NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)

By the time he made North By Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock was an American citizen, a huge TV celebrity, and had been making movies longer in Hollywood than in England.

Hitchcock loved iconic settings; Cary Grant’s smug but charming ad man Roger O. Thornhill flees from The Plaza to the UN to Mount Rushmore – stopping along the way at a deserted, treeless Midwestern landscape.

Thornhill is being hunted by foreign agents who mistake him for a spy – who in the end doesn’t even exist.  The cool Hitchcockian blonde is Eva Marie Saint, who despite working for the enemy ends up in Thornhill’s arms.

This just may be our favorite Hitchcock film, but we’re hard pressed to say why.  Maybe the Americana, maybe the simplicity.  Maybe it’s just that in his mid-50s he was at the height of his craftsmanship.

And on a run…the film before this was Vertigo (1958), and the next would be Psycho (1960), which Hitchcock made on a TV budget and went on to be a global blockbuster, making him extremely wealthy and allowing him to eventually own a third of MCA Universal, the studio he worked for.

    THELMA AND LOUISE (1991)

 Even after he had become passionately attached to Callie Khouri’s script, Ridley Scott was not his own first choice to direct Thelma and Louise.  Scott had years of highest-end commercials under his belt, and was famous for his darkly stylish sci-fi flicks –blockbuster creature shock-fest Alien (shot in London), and the considerably less-successful Blade Runner (L.A.).  He was also seen as pretty macho — for a Brit anyway.

Eventually he realized that he was so invested in the project that he had to direct it himself.   And when he did, the result was yet another  cinematic landmark.  But rather than being set in a shadowy future, it was set the sun-drenched cutting edge of the present.  The result was a feminist road moviestatement that redefined a classic American genre, redefined the kind of characters that women could play, and took Scott’s career new heights.

    AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999)

 Sam Mendes is really a theater director.  But a theater director who won an Oscar for his first film (American Beauty) and is one of two directors ever to have done two James Bond films.  Go figure.

Alan Ball wrote American Beauty as a spec script to get himself out of the sitcom business.  He never thought it would get made, but it did, and empowered him to become the moving force behind HBO series like Six Feet Under and True Blood.

At a young age Mendes was a founder of London’s Donmar Warehouse theater; after his Broadway success with Cabaret (Alan Cumming version) he took a trip to Hollywood, was offered the chance to direct, and pulled American Beauty out of a pile on an agent’s desk.

Even though it’s not a pure genre piece, American Beauty taps a well-mined vein in American film: the struggle to find yourself when you’re lost in the existential desert of the suburban American Dream.

  FEAR AND LOATHING IN LOS VEGAS (1998)

 Both Scorsese and Oliver Stone tried and failed, but Terry Gilliam was born to make this movie.  And, like the two leads — Johnny Depp and Benecio del Toro — you can’t imagine anyone else pulling off Hunter Thompson’s this drug-fueled, gonzo tour de frenzy.

For us, this movie captures the Vegas zeitgeist in a way that no other film has: utter chaotic decadence.  Even though it relates more closely to real life than any of Gilliam’s other movies, the result is less structured and tenuously tethered to reality.

Fear and Loathing was widely panned upon release, but with every year that goes by it becomes more beloved.  Beloved may be a weird word to use about a movie this debauched; but it’s clear from fan reviews that for those who have been there – in body or in spirit — it’s an irreplaceable document of a certain state of mind.  The film’s even gotten a Criterion Collection release, which is akin to being accepted into the Library of Congress – but more exclusive.

    THE GRIFTERS (1990)

Like songs, some movies mark a very particular moment in time.  My Beautiful Laundrette is one of those movies.  For us it marked the first moment when a broader definition of racial and sexual identity became an ordinary part of cultural discourse — for the first time not as some special case, but just as everyday facts of life, like hair color or eye color.

So for some strange reason we’ve always been happy that Stephen Frears found Hollywood a nice place to visit but never really came to live there.

The word “grifter” is a mashup of “grafter” and “drifter”, American circus slang for the smalltime con artists who followed circuses in the early 20th century.  It’s a person who lives by being smarter and more charming than their marks – and yet is temperamentally unable to think any bigger than one move ahead.

It’s an amazing, bright, bleak movie, our most favorite of many favorite Anjelica Huston performances, and with John Cusack (they do look alike, don’t they?) and Annette Bening, a near perfect three-hander.

  HOORAY FOR THE RED, WHITE AND BRITISH was originally published on FollowTheThread