Gutai

I went with our friend Christopher to see the Gutai exhibition at the Guggenheim. This show is about a movement in postwar Japan, that like many postwar movements, sought to upend any traditional concepts of what art was supposed to be about, with an emphasis on the spirit of play and engagement with the materials.  I was expecting a series of conceptual and gestural statements; we got those, but there were also a large number of paintings.   They looked something like abstract expressionism, but without philosophy and psychology.  It was more about things like painting with feet, and with bodies (this before the famous body paintings of Yves Klein), and pouring buckets of paint here and there.  This painting was made by painting with a remote controlled little electric car with a paintbrush attached:

Some other paintings:

This one has a bear skin in it:

I liked the show; the exuberance of the art was exciting; there were also some interesting installation type things, and I learned about an art movement I had known nothing about.

A few more:

Parsifal

On Wednesday night, we went to hear the new production of Parsifal at the Met.  It was a long evening, starting with dinner in the Grand Tier restaurant at 4 PM and ending just before midnight.   Parsifal might be the ultimate Wagnerian opera; it is problematic, to say the least.  The plot could probably be described in a paragraph, and parts of it stretch time out to an extremely slow pace, and characters reflect endlessly on their situation.  The Wagnerian view of Christianity is confusing, and ultimately, I ended up not looking at the surtitles.  The last act, however, contains what is to me some of the most sublime music I have ever heard, and the orchestra and singing were nothing short of superb.  The production itself sets the opera in a kind of post-apoclyptic landscape; barren ground and barely any light.  Non-stop gloom, in fact.  The second act is set in a kind of cave, with the entire stage covered in a pool of blood.   When one of the characters sings about all the flowers around, there are none to be seen.   While the sets and video projections (including some 2001-like cosmic images) are stunning, the relentless gloom and darkness get to you after a while.   But ultimately, it is about the music, and to hear Wagner's music played and sung in a performance of such intensity is a thrilling experience.  Though not one I would want to repeat very often.

A few images

The pool of blood, and the flower maidens, in a very wide screen image: