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My songs ain't writ on papuh... them words, they just come to me while I sing. That's a true God-given talent I was borned with. Only real blues singers like me can make songs on the spot. No mutha's gonna teach you that - Guitar Gabriel, PTCBW 1995 in a semisober moment responding to a naïve student who asked "where ideas for his songs come from?"

Author Topic: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records  (Read 10337 times)

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Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #15 on: December 15, 2008, 04:21:22 AM »
The accepted wisdom among renaissance painters, sculptors and architects was that the greatest achievements had happened during antiquity and that their mission was to try to bring contemporary culture back up to that level through close study and emulation of its forms.
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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Offline dj

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #16 on: December 15, 2008, 04:32:13 AM »
I don't argue that.  But that view means that they saw the late medieval artists that they were replacing in a very unfavorable light.  And don't forget that, as much as renaissance musicians thought they were recapturing the greatest achievements of antiquity, early baroque music, especially opera, thought they'd gotten it wrong and set out on a different path to recapture the glories of the ancient world.   

Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #17 on: December 15, 2008, 04:50:42 AM »
In all cases there was an acknowledgment of an earlier form which set the standards  for succeeding generations. At no point did even the greatest artists consider that they'd succeeded in surpassing the work of the ancients. This is certainly the case in the visual arts, the particulars regarding music my be different. Were Corelli, Vivaldi,Buxtihude, Biber, Handel & Bach just a century behind the painters and sculptors in forming an idealized image of the ancients which propelled their inventions?
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #18 on: December 15, 2008, 06:00:27 AM »
It also occurs to me that while Corelli's invention had the most profound consequences and gave birth to a form which produced some of the greatest artistic achievements, his own music was not an improvement in terms of intensity, beauty, ability to convey emotion over someone like Monteverdi.
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Offline Rivers

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #19 on: December 15, 2008, 05:03:57 PM »
I know a thing or two about art history, I lived with an art historian once. I'm not sure the analogy with music holds, in every case.

One word: Kandinski & Expressionism. OK, two words. What The Blue Rider group set in motion changed the art world at a stroke after WW I, when decadent Art Nouveau and the older Impressionism thankfully seemed suddenly passe for a moment. Now Nouveau seems quaint, and Impressionism is always back in fashion since it goes so well with a certain designer look, and much of it is incredible art. The horrors of the trenches triggered the Expressionists to create a revolution. There was no discernible throwback or knee-jerk hat doffing to the past, though I recall from the recesses of my brain Kandinski was a post-Impressionist before whatever lightbulb went off in his head, and Marcel Duchamp was into the whole classical geometry thing, a.k.a. The Golden Section. Or was that someone else.

I suppose what I'm saying is there are evolutions, and there are revolutions, both in visual arts and music. I just torpedoed my original bloated false dichotomy so I'll modify it. Significant changes in art and music always embody elements of evolution and revolution. The seismic shifts are more concerned with revolution.

I can't think of anything as violent in music as the dawn of Expressionism in visual arts. The Sex Pistols on the Bill Grundy Show made a bloody good attempt. Think of decadent tripe being churned out in the mid 70s by the The Eagles etc as overproduced Art Nouveau, and the Sex Pistols as the upstart Expressionists, you get the picture.

Stockhausen and John Cage were the audio equivalent of Expressionism I suppose but sounded like a load of junk falling off a truck and dragged 5 miles, to most ordinary people, including moi.

So, what exactly is my point? That's the same question I asked after reading OMuck and dj's posts, that prompted me to write this in the first place!  :D

[edited to tone down the revisionist art history a little after googling]
« Last Edit: December 15, 2008, 06:13:36 PM by Rivers »

Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #20 on: December 15, 2008, 07:23:28 PM »
My point had to do with the idea of things being assigned value ONLY as evolutionary stepping stones to a another form I.E. Blues to Rn'R in this case.
Wave the expressionists at me will ye matey?   >:D The entire Blau Rider group's endeavor was in fact a BACKWARD looking movement based in large part on the BACKWARD looking work of Paul Gauguin. What were they looking backward at? In Gauguin's case primarily Romanesque sculpture and Gothic stained glass, with a pinch of indigenous Oceanic imagery, and a modicum of Javanese, Cambodian and Egyptian spices thrown in for taste. Gauguin also played guitar and mandolin btw. Not content to have produced Bach and Beethoven, Durer and Grunewald, the Germans have always had a bit of an ineriority complex as regards the visual arts, and especially in relation to France (and Italy..and Spain,,,and Holland,,,and Belgium.... you get the picture, well there's always England). Add a sprinkling of post war national identity angst (we all know where that led) and a dash of the then current ideas of their Viennese neighbor Freud and you had a group of committed modernists (Kandinsky's great inspiration was actually Matisse and he was a Russian anyway) who began mining the mythic imagery of Germanic-Nordic legend and culture, particularly the same kind of Romanesque grotesque images that had inspired Gauguin. One need only look to the likes of Bosch, Grunewald, Brueghel, Van Eyck, Van Der Goes and other great pre renaissance and renaissance Northern painters to find the basis for the distortions and grotesquery that became hallmarks of expressionism. There was of course also the seminal expressionist, a Dutchman living in France by name of Vinnie "the Crow" Van Gogh. Matisse, and his Fauve compadres, Picasso and his African inspired distortions, Bonnard, Soutine, The influences were flying  thick and fast in those years and coming literally from all over the planet and all over the timescape. Janus's panceras! Its almost January! The time of looking to the past and future simultaneously, from whence all worthy inspiration comes.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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Offline Rivers

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #21 on: December 15, 2008, 07:40:07 PM »
And I thought I was a revisionista... Backward looking? How is chucking riotous globs of paint at a 20 foot high canvas in 1920-something backward looking?

Gauguin??? You mention Gauguin, in the same sentence, neigh, thread, as Kandinski?  >:(

I'm talkin' non-representational art here Mr O... Gauguin? I love Gauguin. But not in the same league, neigh, dimension, as K's perfectly balanced squiggles and enigmatic geometries, not to mention the shadings and wilder abstractions. K was free of representational bonds, G painted people on the beach, lot of fruit. K painted on hardboard, cardboard, washing machine cartons... Did Leonardo do that? I don't think so! Even though he did produce the first visionary sketches of today's modern front loading fully automatic washing machine.

I was so lucky to live in Germany in the '80s when a huge Kandinsky show came through Dusseldorf. Blew my head off. Man oh man, the Germans love their art and exhibit it with the respect it deserves. One painting occupies a complete wall of a room, 30 feet long x 20 feet high, natural skylights... I really, really miss the galleries in Deutschland.

BTW, I take your point about things being assigned value ONLY as evolutionary stepping stones to a another form I.E. Blues to Rn'R in this case. People fear radical, revolutionary change but it's good for 'em, in the hands of real artists, not politicians or record company executives. Speaking of which 'Change we can believe in' is a bad sentence, ending in a preposition. 'Change in which we can believe' is a little better but not as catchy. Whatever, I won't hold my breath!
« Last Edit: December 15, 2008, 08:29:10 PM by Rivers »

Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #22 on: December 15, 2008, 08:29:50 PM »
Paul Gauguin gave birth to the first "officially" non objective painting known to be done in the era of "modern" art called the Talsiman around 1888 in Pont Aven, France. He did not paint it but rather held a pistol to the head of one of his students Paul Serusier, and forced him to. Western artists from the fourteenth century until the present have been fascinated with and frequently depicted the purely abstract patterns of "Oriental" rugs however.
What moved Kandinsky from a Gauguin-esque post impressionist style to his non objective work? It was his girlfriend and former student Olga Meerson a fellow Russian who went to study with Matisse and was Kandinsky's source of information about Matisse's heroic abstract experiments of the first decade of the twentieth century.
As far as Leonardo is concerned; I can't find the quote online, but in his writings he advises painters to gaze in an unfocused manner at rough, crumbling walls, and let the shadows and irregularities suggest movement and compositional ideas.Hmmm.
Of the Blue Rider, only Kandinsky became truly committed to non objective painting.  Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky,  Gabriele M?nter,Lyonel Feininger, all retained aspects of figurative and landscape imagery throughout their careers. Other prominent German Expressionists, like Kirchner, Pechstein and Nolde were likewise involved with figurative and landscape imagery as was the greatest twentieth century German painter, Max Beckmann. They all acknowledged their debt to Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and the Fauves as well as to their indigenous and medieval sources. :)
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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Offline Rivers

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #23 on: December 15, 2008, 08:42:36 PM »
Well you got me there, I can only talk about how the originals affected me up close. Unlike anything I've seen before or since. True originality is pretty obvious when you see it, and the bigger the canvas and more natural the light the better. Flicking back through my memories the Kandinskis hold their ground in that respect. You're very lucky to live in NYC, I'd love to be able to visit the MOMA on a regular basis, and have never been. I'll look you up next time I'm there and we can argue about art!

PS my definition of full-on 'expressionism' is you can't really see anything you recognize as a physical thing in the real world, you see only emotional and intellectual expressions of 'stuff'. By that def Gauguin was not an expressionist, though he was undeniably expressionistic, nor were the Blue Riders who lapsed back into comfy pastoral scenes when K moved on to wherever it was, I forget the story. Van Gogh was something else entirely, a movement unto himself. I think of VG as the Elvis of art, very very good but a tad overrated. But that's just my definition.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2008, 09:02:12 PM by Rivers »

Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #24 on: December 15, 2008, 09:11:20 PM »
Only over a beer! I'll buy.

One of the things that interests me with regards to all this early twentieth century explosion of creativity, is that it is part and parcel of the whole Weenie continuum, yet da Blues don't get no respect!
I would like to see this music take its deserved place in the cultural pantheon as the serious  (and sometimes not so serious ) work that it is. Do Charlie Patton, Gary Davis, Big Bill, Skip James & Geechie Wiley deserve to have their names listed right up there with  Picasso, Stravinsky, Joyce and Graham?
Yeah, I think they do. Another fantastic, geographically contained flowering of genius in an unlikely place, but part of the bigger world cultural picture? Yeah, I think so. In fact the development and archiving of early twentieth century African American music is one of THE great stories and legacies of our late great twentieth.
Right up there with Cubism or any other ism.


My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

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Offline waxwing

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #25 on: December 15, 2008, 09:27:21 PM »
PS my definition of full-on 'expressionism' is you can't really see anything you recognize as a physical thing in the real world, you see only emotional and intellectual expressions of 'stuff'. By that def Gauguin was not an expressionist, though he was undeniably expressionistic, nor were the Blue Riders who lapsed back into comfy pastoral scenes when K moved on to wherever it was, I forget the story. Van Gogh was something else entirely, a movement unto himself. I think of VG as the Elvis of art, very very good but a tad overrated. But that's just my definition.
Well, that would be a personal definition, Riv. Expressionism only calls for the distortion of reality to express emotion, not the supplanting of reality, which might define all of abstract art, but that's a much broader spectrum than what you guys are talking about, no? Actually, for me, movement toward abstraction tends to lead away from expressionism, as it becomes too personal.

Geez, how can you discuss expressionism without mentioning Edvard Munch?

VG over rated? In a letter to his sister (not Theo) he said something to the effect, 'when I paint a line, I don't know that I'm really painting a line that I see, but more that I am painting a line that I dreamt.' If that doesn't signal the advent of modern art....

I agree about blues unto itself, Mr. O'M.

All for now.
John C.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2008, 09:28:29 PM by waxwing »
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Offline dj

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #26 on: December 16, 2008, 03:55:27 AM »
I like a nice landscape with some cows in the middle distance...   :o

Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #27 on: December 16, 2008, 06:42:38 AM »
Cuyp!
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

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Offline Mr.OMuck

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #28 on: December 16, 2008, 07:17:39 AM »
Quote
VG over rated? In a letter to his sister (not Theo) he said something to the effect, 'when I paint a line, I don't know that I'm really painting a line that I see, but more that I am painting a line that I dreamt.' If that doesn't signal the advent of modern art...

Not like Elvis. Like Mohammed Ali, he was the greatest.
So radical that almost nobody gets him even today, and at the time his work really did seem insane to all but about ten people in the world. You have to travel back 300 years to the work of his fellow countryman Rembrandt to find an equally affecting group of portraits. The shock his work caused was not even equalled by Pollock's drip paintings. And btw (sorry 'bout this) if you want to understand Pollock you have to go back to sixteenth century Venice and the work of Tintoretto. Thats what Pollock did.
Final note:
If you are in late middle age (like me) and your batteries need recharging, try a 22 year ol...No sorry don't know what got into me. No seriously read Van Gogh's letters. There's a small paperback collection called Dear Theo, letters to his brother. It is not only profoundly beautiful writing, but a concentrated dose of the best kind of inspiration. A holy text for secularists.
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

http://www.youtube.com/user/MuckOVision

Offline David Kaatz

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Re: "Cadillac Records" -- movie about 1950s Chess Records
« Reply #29 on: December 16, 2008, 08:10:51 AM »

Final note:
If you are in late middle age (like me) and your batteries need recharging, try a 22 year ol...

Personally, I like a 65 yo...Guitar!

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