Inate Artistry

We have just been to a most beautiful concert at the Telfair Museum, in the Savannah Music Festival series of chamber music concerts with Daniel Hope and Friends, Accompanied and punctuated by huge claps of thunder from a dramatic storm, the musicians, playing Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, created beauty and elegance that was soul-moving.

Yet, in the midst of all their amazing skill and the thrumming on the roof of the pelting rain, I could not help but marvel at their obvious delight and seriousness of enjoyment of making beautiful music. I was reminded of Picasso's statement that "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Whether in visual arts, ballet, music, singing, or whatever art form, the hallmark of a successful artist, it seems, is that the person remains childlike at some level. That sense of delight, of inquiry, of inquisitiveness and openness seems so necessary. It goes along with a sense of humour and an ability not to take oneself too seriously. Picasso, of course, embodied the impish and playful aspects of art amongst his many characteristics. Certainly his art bespeaks a childlike delight in the simple, the direct and the playful aspects of life.

The quiet camaraderie and sense of humourous enjoyment that showed in flashes between the musicians we heard today spoke to the same ability. Patrick Messina, the wonderful French clarinetist, or the cellist, Eric Kim, Daniel Hope with his extraordinary ability on the violin, or pianist Sebastian Knauer... all combine musicality with an obvious delight that Picasso would approve of. They have remained artists from childhood onwards. We all, in today's audience, were the richer for such artistry.

The Frequent Juxtapositions of Beauty and Terror

The adage about beautiful art being created against a backdrop of terror and upheavals has always fascinated me. I was thinking of its ironies recently as I sat listening to utterly lovely chamber music, of the most civilised and uplifting, and realised that I was facing a huge and dramatic Julian Story 1888 painting of "The Black Prince at the Battle of Crecy" hanging on the wall of the Telfair Museum of Art Rotunda Gallery. I looked further around the walls and there was another savage battle scene, also painted in 1888 by Josef Brandt, simply entitled "A Battle".

The Battle of Crecy, Julian Russell Story, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of the Telfair Museums, Savannah, GA)

Granted that the chronologies of all these contexts were totally unrelated. The Savannah Music Festival concert featured a wonderful Mozart 1785 Piano Quartet in G minor and Dvorak's 1878 String Sextet in A Major being played by violinist Daniel Hope, pianist Sebastian Knauer, violists Philip Dukes and Carla Maria Rodrigues and friends. The subject of Story's monumental painting was the 1346 Battle of Crecy, a pivotal battle during the Hundred Year War when the Black Prince Edward of Wales killed King John of Bohemia. The 1656 battle depicted in the other painting recorded a skirmish between Swedes and Polish troops. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition for me, during that concert, reminded me that innumerable musical masterpieces, so much visual art, so many other kinds of artistic creation, are produced at periods of huge strife and stress, whether of war, economic distress or personal illness and suffering. To me, the capacity to create beauty and uplifting art at such times is one of mankind's most admirable characteristics.

Daniel Hope has programmed a very special concert on April 1st, in Savannah's Temple Mickve Israel, which perfectly illustrates this capacity to create beauty in the face of unspeakable suffering. Called "Forbidden Music", the programme features music created in the Theresienstadt concentration camp north of Prague by young Jewish musicians before they met their death. Daniel Hope and his wonderful musician friends will be playing a String Trio composed in 1944 by Gideon Klein. Klein was born in the present-day Czech Republic, deported to Theresienstadt (where he organised concerts with his fellow prisoners) and thence to Auschwitz before meeting his death in Furstengrube concentration camp in January, 1945. Another work featured in this programme again underlines this juxtaposition of beauty and terror: Siegmund Schul's Two Chassidic Dances, Opus 15. Schul, a young German composer, was deported to Theresienstadt with his wife in 1941. Whilst there, he composed this and other compositions, testaments to his strength and resiliency. He died in Theresienstadt in 1944, victim of tuberculosis.

The list of works of art of all description that we inherit from men and women of enormous talent and courage is huge. I think it is good to remind ourselves always that whatever our personal travails, we can find inspiration and encouragement from others that - yes, despite everything, we can still be artists and produce work that can be of value to others.

Art and the Mystery of Personal Taste

I am always fascinated by the mysterious forces that impel each of us to make choices, in all sorts of realms, but especially in music and visual arts. For instance, you arrive as a visitor in a new city, and in deciding what to do and what to see, there is frequently the choice first of which museum to visit, and then, within that museum, which type of art to see. It is often an easy series of decisions if you are used to doing it, but even then, the way one chooses is often a subliminal, almost instinctive affair.

Experience helps. The more one visits museums and other places where art, two or three-dimensional, is displayed, the more one refines one's choices. The decisions often boil down to seeking to widen one's knowledge or wanting to see types of art which are already generally known and appreciated. I personally find that I will always head for an exhibition of drawings, if possible, because I am utterly enthralled by the directness of the dialogue with an artist who uses a drawing medium. There is nowhere to hide when you draw - you show yourself as an artist, warts and all, particularly when you are using a medium like silverpoint which precludes any erasures. Most drawing media - graphite, charcoal, ink, silverpoint, etc. - allow a subtlety of expression and depiction that one seldom finds in painting. There is also a wonderful expansion of the definition of drawing today, with many novel uses of paper, media, even attitude. The result is a continuous challenge to any preconceived notions of what one personally likes or even defines in terms of draughtsmanship. These are just a small smaple of drawings that I consider totally sublime and memorable.

Head of a Young Man (?) by Michelangelo, ca. 1516, red chalk, 8 x 6 1/2. Collection Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England.

Young Woman Looking Down (Study for the Head of St. Apollonia) by Peter Paul Rubens, 1628, black and red chalk heightened with white, retouched with pen and brown ink, 16 5/16 x 11 1/4. Collection Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

Woman Carrying a Child Down Stairs by Rembrandt, ca. 1636, pen and brown ink with brown wash, 7 3/8 x 5 3/16. Collection Morgan Library, New York, New York. “

Yesterday I was marvelling at the mysterious delights of personal taste in music as well. It was during another of the wonderful Savannah Music Festival concerts, the second in the Sensations series of chamber music recitals held in the acoustic delight of the Telfair Museum of Art's main gallery. The programme was again the result of skilled personal tastes in selecting the concert's music and then my personal choice of that particular performance versus another being offered last night. Violinist Daniel Hope , violist Philip Dukes , pianist Gabriel Montero and friends played Dvorak's Piano Quartet in E-flat Major,Opus 87, in the first half of the concert. Brahms' String Sextet No. 2 in G Major Opus 36 was played after the intermission. Both pieces were ineffably beautiful and wonderfully played. I personally preferred - if one could prefer one or the other in truth - the Dvorak because I loved the lilting melodies that he had incorporated from Bohemian folk songs and the wonderful subtle treatment of strings and piano dialogues. Yet all around me, I heard differing opinions - some loved the first piece, others preferred the Brahms. As in art, every person brought their own experiences to the choice of music.

In the end, it is a miracle that so many of us like the same music, the same art. It underlines that there are universal attributes to works of art that resonate with most people, often subtle, mysterious attributes, but nonetheless very powerful ones.

Artistic Individualism

Last night, the 2010 Savannah Music Festival opened with a wonderful celebration. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, directed by Robert Spano, played Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 - lifting hearts and expanding minds. The second half of the programme opened with a flutter of anticipation because Lang Lang, slender and youthful, came out on stage to play Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor.

Portrait of Frédéric Chopin (originally part of a larger painting showing Chopin and Georges Sand), 1838, oil on canvas, Eugene Delacroix (Image courtesy of the Louvre, Paris)

As he played, I was fascinated at his butterfly approach to the delicacy and complexity of Chopin's ravishingly beautiful music. His lightness of touch and sensitivity to the nuances in the music made me think back to other pianists whom I have heard interpret this Concerto. Lang Lang has a very different approach, I decided, and his individualistic approach made me feel that Chopin would be very gratified at this interpretation. Essentially music suitable for a younger pianist, I would argue, this Concerto allowed Lang Lang to show his own understanding of Chopin's musical record of his infatuation for a fellow student at the Warsaw Conservatory, Constantia Gladkowska.

As I listened with delight to the music, I could not help thinking about the aspects of any artist's individualism, in any discipline. A musician has to hew to the notes written by the composer, but the interpretation is his or her own in terms of emotion infused into those notes, in conjunction with the other musicians and orchestra director. A visual artist has another task in terms of defining individualism: first the concept and execution of an artwork has to come from within that artist. Only after creation of the piece of art can a viewer appreciate the individuality of that piece and hence the hallmark of the artist. Perhaps, in fact, the visual artist has the easier task, for the musician has to work within much narrower confines to define his or her essential artistry.

Lang Lang's wonderful technical and interpretive skills, complemented by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's superb playing, allowed Savannah to glory in great musical beauty last night.

Drawing as Thinking

In earlier posts on this blog, I alluded to the exploration and excitement of drawing. But as I try to work on a series of silverpoint drawings I am doing, I realise again how much the act of drawing is a form of thinking. I am working on a series based on a piece of music that I listened to during a Savannah Music Festival concert. The images began to flood into my mind's eye as I heard the music. Now I need actually to work out how I want to construct those images and what I am actually trying to say in the drawings.

Consequently, I am trying to think through the silverpoint stylus, in fact, as I work out the drawing.

Silverpoint marks and stylii, (Image courtesy of Anita Chowdry)

The exercise makes me think of a really fascinating document I found some while ago - Aesthetic Education, Inquiry and the Imagination, written in 2007 by Madeleine Fuchs Holzer, Director of Educational Development at the Lincoln Center Institute. In this document, well worth downloading, especially if you are a teacher, nine Capacities for Imaginative Learning are laid out. The first ones, Noticing Deeply, Embodying, Questioning, Making Connections and Identifying Patterns, seem not only very germane for teachers but for artists themselves.

Every one of those concepts helps as one is thinking and/or drawing. If you are drawing something from real life, the level of observation will dictate the level of detail you show in your knowledge and thus portrayal of the subject matter. Even if you later simplify the drawing, or painting, the knowledge you have gained from noticing deeply will enrich and inform the art. The same acquired essence of the subject will permeate the artwork though your embodying it and translating it into the art. A questing curiosity and willingness to venture into unknown realms will lead you to do better art - the questioning part is very much bound up with thinking with the pencil or silver stylus. What if I do this... or that? What will that convey and what effect will it achieve? The same elasticity and openness of mind allows one to remember back to other art seen or done, other experiences, other results; the new work you are thinking about creating will be enriched by the connections you can make as you are developing the art. Even identifying patterns, visually or otherwise, can be a valuable stepping stone to thinking of the best way to go in planning the art.

Ultimately, however, after all the effort put into the initial thinking/drawing stage, there comes the time to launch yourself into what you are being driven to create. And you know full well that along the way, there will be surprises and deviations... and more thought and more drawing – before the work is finished.

Rendering life itself

Sitting this evening in the Rotunda Gallery of the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, I was listening to violinist Daniel Hope and his friends create the most wonderful chamber music on the second day of the Savannah Music Festival. Around me on the walls of the museum were works of art large and small from the museum collection, dating mainly from the late 19th or early 20th century.

I thought back to a quote I had read by Roger H. Boulet, that "Life's ephemeral quality has always been evoked by artists". Composers and visual artists alike strive to convey their visions of life itself, or what they perceive that life to be in time. The searing passion and serene beauty of Samuel Barber's Adagio from String Quartet seemed to be the epitomy of Boulet's quote. Dvorak's Piano Quintet in A Major was full of romantic energy and melody: it echoed in feel some of the paintings on the museum walls that harked back to earlier, perhaps less complex times.

For each artist, rendering life itself is complex, intensely personal and usually the result of passion, technical skill and tenacity. Working out what you want to say in paint, pencil, music or any other medium is one thing; finding the right vehicle through which to express that message is another thing. Sometimes an artist knows clearly, ahead of time, what the work of art will be like. I find on occasion that I can envisage clearly the drawing or painting I want to do, down to a very detailed level, and yet, when I actually work on the piece, it inevitably acquires its own life and dictates to me how to proceed. In a way, I feel this is "rendering life itself", because life is flowing through me to the artwork and back again, to form an ongoing dialogue. The act of creating art (and I am sure, music or any other medium) is one part one's own will and input, but two parts the energy and life emanating from the piece being created. One always hears of novelists talking of their characters becoming "alive" and telling the author how to proceed in the novel. And yet, in each case, the act of creation is reflecting life's ephemeral quality as it is a moment in time: that art will never again be created in quite the same way.

The music I was lucky enough to hear performed this evening was definitely a wonderful sampling of art created to celebrate and render unique and fugitive moments in time. We are the richer for this music, just as we are richer for the other arts we inherit and enjoy in the world community.