Russel Drysdale

After a 41 degree day yesterday, and reports of over 80 fires raging in New South Wales alone, i realised that summer has come a little early. Summer evokes lots of memories for me, not least of all one of my favourite Australian painters: Russel Drysdale.

Like most great art, you have to see his works face to face. They glow. I went to the Art Gallery of New South Wales recently, and it's incredible how they seem to just hover on the walls, emitting an almost ethereal, other worldly radiance. The surrealists no doubt had an influence on his work, it sharing the same sense of stark desolation that you often see in the canvases of people like De Chirico and Dali, yet for all his surrealistic musings, I think of him more as the Australian equivalent to Edward Hopper; stark and beautiful paintings, that tell stories that are utterly unique to their place.

Classical Music

It's a pity that talking about classical music when you're young can lead to your dismisal as an elitist... I think it's because of this stigma that fewer people of the younger generations listen to classical, because really it's extremely accessible music. It is something i am finding out more and more frequently as i dig deeper into the genre, this often celestial, transcendental and completely spiritual art form.

In film and television classical music is everywhere, sometimes so subtle it's almost subliminal, sometimes so intense it speeds your heart to 160 bpm, the ominious opening bars of Flight of the Valkyries in Apoclaypse Now, the resonant doom of Beethoven's 9th in A Clockwork Orange...these are two of the most powerful pieces of music that will ever be created. However classical need not be so loud nor intense to be as powerful - take for instance the heart aching plantiveness of Chopin's Nocturnes, or the eerieness yet suspense of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonatas.

These pieces are immortal and yet ephemeral. They have their own souls as they dance through the air until it comes time for them to fade away, you are unsure of whether what you heard was in fact real or an illusion. No other music effects mood like classical does.

The four pieces I mentioned were of course some of the most popular works ever written, and i'm sure that people of all ages would be at least somewhat familiar with them. Yet why is it that despite being such a pervasive art form it so often goes unmentioned? Whilst any number of trite and mundaine bands are being talked about and utterly devoured, classical music is rarely talked about, despite it's popularity in film.

Anyhow, here's a few of my favourites...

Lord Byron

She Walks in Beauty
by Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

Pablo Picasso

I saw a great documentary online the other day about Picasso, and one work in particular, Guernica. Until I saw this documentary I didn't understand just what that painting meant - I suppose it pays to pay attention in class. It was a government commissioned work, and I suppose what is most interesting about it is that Picasso really pushed himself into another place when he painted it, he started to take the piss after a while with his work. The work acts as both a revelation and a prophecy. The Spanish Civil War was to only get worse when this was painted. By the end of the war everyone in Spain knew this work.

Watch the documentary...