Monday, October 06, 2008


Full, tiring day yesterday.

Went to the Metropolitan with Carol to see the fantastic Giorgio Morandi show. If anything, it's too large as Morandi's silvery, pearly whites and browns, not to mention his exceedingly subtle placement of objects, need to be viewed at leisure. Still, certain paintings stood out and it was enough to try to concentrate on those for a few minutes in the jostling crowd. More than anything, I was wowed by the late watercolors from the early 60s. Just amazing, like miniature Rothko's. Not too much on-line I could locate, but here's another:



Museum- or gallery-going is one of the worst things for my legs. The standing around and slow moving does a number on my lower muscles. But after the Met, we walked through the park and I helped Carol with some food shopping. Then, after we parted, I went and saw "Tell No One" across from Lincoln Center, a decent if slightly slick French thriller.

From there it was out to Issue Project Room in Brooklyn to see Polwechsel. After getting more lost than I've ever been in NYC and wandering around for over an hour (don't ask), my legs were threatening to depart my hips. But I finally got there, still before the show began. It was a short set and, given my state, I wasn't complaining. Three pieces, the first and third improvs, the middle by Martin Brandlmayr. The first two were fairly pointillist, sparse events generally using one extended technique or another, sometimes overly dry for my taste, occasionally coalescing into very beautiful segments. On the final work, they loosened up a bit, playing rather loudly and maybe taking a step toward efi, but I actually preferred this approach. I did find my attention being drawn by the percussionists, Brandlmayr with his absurd level of precision and Beins so imaginative and earthy in sound generation. Overall, OK, had its moments.

Nice to see some faces that I hadn't seen for a while, including Margarida Garcia and Mattin and very nice to meet Esther Venrooy.

9 comments:

Richard Pinnell said...

After getting more lost than I've ever been in NYC and wandering around for over an hour (don't ask), my legs were threatening to depart my hips. But I finally got there, still before the show began. It was a short set and, given my state, I wasn't complaining.

http://tinyurl.com/4ts7ba

:D

Brian Olewnick said...

Goldurned, smartass young 'un!

Richard Pinnell said...

At some point over the last eighteenth months or so I've seen a few of Morandi's paintings, though not the watercolours you mention Brian.

I liked them a lot, for their peacefulness as much as anything. They have a very simple, almost musical quality to them, objects/sounds placed very carefully into clean spaces and just left to see what happens.

They remind me a lot of the English St Ives school of painters that I love a great deal, Nicholson in particular. Its just the simple, yet deliberate placement of objects and then the joy that comes from their interaction via the negative spaces between that I like. Yep, very musical.

Brian Olewnick said...

Absolutely. It took a while to gestate, but there was a point where Morandi, the still lifes of Zurbaran and that Chinese ink drawing of the pomegranates (which I still can't locate) where very important for the way I approached painting, the kind of calm, casual but focused laying out of objects in space which, at least in retrospect but also semi-consciously at the time, fed into my appreciation of music that did things "the same way", as interpreted by me, anyway.

lolabelle said...

http://tinyurl.com/4ts7ba

aaaarrrrrgggggghhhhh

Anonymous said...

Brian, I hope you don't mind, but I've put a link to this blog on mine at http://arraymusic.wordpress.com

Massimo Magee (I'm a regular reader here, even though I don't usually comment)

Brian Olewnick said...

Of course I don't mind, Massimo--thanks very much! Good to see you here.

Brian Olewnick said...

Favor returned, Massimo.

Anonymous said...

thanks, Brian!