Character Study

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray.jpg

The Art Institute of Chicago has an actual picture of Dorian Gray — Ivan Le Lorraine Albright painted it for the 1946 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel. Working with his twin brother Malvin, Albright started with a pleasant portrait of star Hurd Hatfield and prepared three further canvases reflecting his character’s moral decay.

“For research for these paintings,” reported LIFE, “the twins made the rounds of the local insane asylums, alcoholic wards and hospitals for the incurably diseased.” Even the props in the background were corrupted — the Egyptian cat grows gray and mangy, and Ivan tore the rug and soaked it with acid.

Interestingly, though most of the film was shot in black and white, the portrait was shown in Technicolor — which may have helped the film win its Oscar for best cinematography.

| Art · Entertainment · Literature

A Guest Appearance

enigma 11

Edward Elgar dedicated the eleventh of his Enigma Variations to George Robertson Sinclair, the organist of Hereford Cathedral.

“The variation, however, has nothing to do with organs or cathedrals, or, except remotely, with G.R.S.,” Elgar wrote. “The first few bars were suggested by his great bulldog, Dan (a well-known character) falling down the steep bank into the River Wye (bar 1); his paddling upstream to find a landing place (bars 2 and 3); and his rejoicing bark on landing (second half of bar 5). G.R.S. said, ‘Set that to music’. I did; here it is.”

After the river incident, Elgar had told a friend, “You wait till we get home. Japes!” He even marked bar 5 “Dan” in an early sketch of the piece. This would not have surprised Sinclair: Elgar had been in the habit of jotting down musical ideas, which he called “the moods of Dan,” in the organist’s visitor’s book, and sometimes these would find their way into later compositions. What Dan thought of all this is unrecorded.

| Art

Progress

https://pixabay.com/photos/australia-sydney-city-port-4338882/

Letters to the Sydney Morning Herald during the planning of the Sydney Opera House:

“Faced with the nightmare illustrated in your columns, some 25th century Bluebeard’s lair, its ominous vanes pointed skywards apparently only for the purpose of discharging guided missiles or some latter-day nuclear Evil Eye, words fail.”

— W.H. Peters, Sydney, Jan. 31, 1957

“To me, the winning design suggests some gargantuan monster which may have wandered over the land millions of years ago. It certainly is right out of place beside the dignity of the Harbour Bridge.”

— M. Rathbone, Kensington, Jan. 31, 1957

“This whale of a monument to the clever ugliness of ‘modern’ art will be a constant eyesore. Its over-finished roof with many curved surfaces all covered with white tiles will be a glaring monstrosity. Could not the suffering which it will cause be more equitably distributed by constructing the fins in such a way that they will act as giant megaphones and thus keep residents on the north supplied with the dying screams of melodramatic sopranos?”

— J.R.L. Johnstone Beecroft, Feb. 1, 1957

“With all respects to so-called modern art, I feel that the design is completely unbefitting our foreshores. Perhaps the judges had in mind the installation of a Big Dipper on the peak of the roof to help the opera company balance its budget.”

— Jack Zuber, Kingsgrove, Feb. 1, 1957

In 2003 Danish architect Jørn Utzon received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s highest honour. The citation read, “There is no doubt that the Sydney Opera House is his masterpiece. It is one of the great iconic buildings of the 20th century, an image of great beauty that has become known throughout the world — a symbol for not only a city, but a whole country and continent.”

| Art · History · Society

Settling Accounts

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edouard_Manet_Bunch_of_Asparagus.jpg

In 1880 art collector Charles Ephrussi commissioned Manet to paint A Bundle of Asparagus for 800 francs.

When Manet delivered the painting, Ephrussi gave him 1,000 francs.

So later that year Manet delivered the small painting below with a note: “There was one [sprig] missing from your bundle.”

(Thanks, Jon.)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edouard_Manet_-_Asparagus_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

| Art

Extra Credit

Critic Harold C. Schonberg called Leopold Godowsky’s Studies on Chopin’s Études “the most impossibly difficult things ever written for the piano”; Godowsky said they were “aimed at the transcendental heights of pianism.” In the “Badinage,” above, the pianist plays Chopin’s “Black Key” étude with the left hand while simultaneously playing the “Butterfly” étude with the right and somehow preserving the melodies of both. One observer calculated that this requires 1,680 independent finger movements in the space of about 80 seconds, an average of 21 notes per second. “The pair go laughing over the keyboard like two friends long ago separated, now happily united,” marveled James Huneker in the New York World. “After them trails a cloud of iridescent glory.”

The studies’ difficulty means that they’re rarely performed even today; Schonberg said they “push piano technique to heights undreamed of even by Liszt.” Only Italian pianist Francesco Libetta, above, has performed the complete set from memory in concert.

| Art

Saying Goodbye

Leyland Kirby’s composition Everywhere at the End of Time depicts the progression of Alzheimer’s disease through six hours of successively degraded ballroom music:

STAGE 1: Here we experience the first signs of memory loss. This stage is most like a beautiful daydream. The glory of old age and recollection. The last of the great days.

STAGE 2: The second stage is the self realisation and awareness that something is wrong with a refusal to accept that. More effort is made to remember so memories can be more long form with a little more deterioration in quality. The overall personal mood is generally lower than the first stage and at a point before confusion starts setting in.

STAGE 3: Here we are presented with some of the last coherent memories before confusion fully rolls in and the grey mists form and fade away. Finest moments have been remembered, the musical flow in places is more confused and tangled. As we progress some singular memories become more disturbed, isolated, broken and distant. These are the last embers of awareness before we enter the post awareness stages.

STAGE 4: Stage 4 is where serenity and the ability to recall singular memories gives way to confusions and horror. It’s the beginning of an eventual process where all memories begin to become more fluid through entanglements, repetition and rupture.

STAGE 5: More extreme entanglements, repetition and rupture can give way to calmer moments. The unfamiliar may sound and feel familiar. Time is often spent only in the moment leading to isolation.

“Stage 6 is without description.”

| Art

Benedetti’s Puzzle

This is interesting: In 1585, Italian mathematician Giovanni Battista Benedetti devised a piece of music in which a precise application of the tuning mathematics causes the pitch to creep upward.

Avoiding this phenomenon requires an adjustment — a compromise to the dream of mathematically pure music.

| Art · Science & Math