Post for the Christmas Season, 2021

December 25, 2021 at 3:50 am (Art, Christmas, Music)

So, this year is not ending on the upbeat, carefree note we were all hoping for. Nevertheless, there is still beauty in the world to be thankful for. I would like to share several of my favorite art works and musical performances with you.

I’ve taken several art courses over the past year, and they’ve given me many precious images to contemplate. A course in the Harlem Renaissance served to remind me how many terrific African American artists deserve a closer look.

Jacob Lawrence:

                                         Steel workers

 

This Is Harlem

Faith Ringgold:

We Came To America

 

Jazz Quilt

I was also introduced to some artists whose work was well worth getting to know.

Elizabeth Catlett:

                                               Homage to Black Women Poets

 

Playmates

Kara Walker:

Black out Silhouettes Then and Now

In May of 2014, Kara Walker created a work of public art entitled A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant. It is so…well, I’ll let this video do the explaining:

I also took a class entitled “Gustav Klimt and the Viennese Secessionist Movement.” It was a revelation. All I knew about Klimt was the The Kiss:

and Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I, also known as The Woman in Gold or The Lady in Gold:

This painting was the subject of the famous legal battle that was fought between the Austrians, claiming that the work was rightfully theirs, and Maria Altmann, a niece of Adele’s husband Ferdinand. Maria, who was living in California at the time, claimed that the Nazis had stolen the painting during the war and that she was its rightful owner.

The story is told in the book The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O’Connor. There’s also a film, Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann. Worth watching, especially to see Helen Mirren doing her usual superb work:

 

Our instructor took us beyond Klimt’s so-called gold period, to his later work which consisted primarily of landscapes. These I found utterly enchanting:

Apple Tree One

 

Farm Garden with Sunflowers

 

Slope in a Forest on Atterslee Lake

Sebastian Smee is a journalist whose writing about art combines insight with a rare eloquence. He absolutely outdid himself in a recent article in the Washington Post in which he analyzes and rhapsodizes on the subject of a painting attributed to the great Jan van Eyck: Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata:

To read Smee’s article, click here.

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And now, for music and ballet.

This performance of Mozart’s  final symphony, the Jupiter (No.41) knocked my proverbial socks off the first  time I heard it. I shall always love it. For a new kid on the block – it was founded in 1992 – the Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia has become a major player, especially under the baton of conductor Dima Slobodeniouk. This performance is a knockout. The final movement rises to a tremendous crescendo of pure joy. The audience went wild. I don’t blame them.

 

A performance of rare perfection: the Adagio from Spartacus by Aram Khatchaturian, danced by Anna Nikulina and Mikhail Lobukhin of the Bolshoi:

 

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, by Ralph Vaughan Williams. This performance takes place in Gloucester Cathedral. This is the same venue where the piece was first performed in 1903 and conducted by the composer. A writer who was present on that occasion had this to say:

The work is wonderful because it seems to lift one into some unknown region of musical thought and feeling…one is never sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new. The voices of the old church musicians are around one, and yet their music is enriched with all that modern art has done, since Debussy, too, is somewhere in the picture. It cannot be assigned to a time or a school, but it is full of visions.

 

I think many people feel that they could use a blessing at this time. (I know I do.) Here is an especially beautiful one, a Gaelic blessing entitled Deep Peace, written by John Rutter and sung by Libera:

 

At this Holiday Season, I wish everyone the best.