Van Gogh – Women Picking Olives; I love you more than I hate myself.

Van Gough

Daniel Johnston. Syrup of Tears.

I thought that this song was called “I love you more than myself”. That would be a less ridiculous title, Daniel. Although in retrospect the whole song is unusual. Johnston, as usual, is defined more by his song writing capability than his lyrical ability. His titles and lyrics sound miserable, and the songs are tinged with a sadness, but musically the songs almost invariably sound hopeful, almost joyous. Like a preacher who acknowledges the inevitability of death and suffering, but is still rejoicing in the glory of their god.

Women Picking Olives. 

It’s really not about the women, it never was. Van Gogh does not know how to paint people,or does not care to. The subject here is the ground and the base of the trees. It’s a voyeuristic, hallucinogenic look at the ground. That may not sound interesting, but it really is.

It’s very important to go and see the picture up close, the caked on paint, the smudges and blending. It seems at once meticulous and passionate. A single mindedness that looks as though it was done with abandon. Women Picking Olives is next to the more famous, and probably rightfully so Grove with Cypresses. Van Gogh is too often portrayed as simply this tortured soul, defined by suicide, his black skies, and his road to nowhere. He was also a painter and his work comes before most of the impressionists. Van Gogh is rightfully put alongside Cezanne and Gaugain as the post-impressionist inventors of modern painting.

It is probably only because of Van Gogh’s reputation for being depressed, cutting his own ear off and sending it to a lover who spurned him, and general mental instability that connects this song to him. It’s obvious and I hate that. It’s unoriginal, because if there is one thing all artists are generally supposed to be is miserable and slightly insane, and this is unfair.

Gustav Klimt – Mada Primavesi and Bikini Kill

Generally Klimt’s work is more busy and stylized, but here he keeps it light for a portrait of  9 year old Mada Primavesi. The picture is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC, room 829. It hangs just at the entrance to the thin room devoted to 4 huge paintings. Klimt’s is at least 7 feet tall and the colors shine out of the canvas due to the white of the museum wall that blends almost exactly with some shades of the girl’s dress.

The work probably done to hang in the massive house of Otto Primavesi, her father and successful capitalist. Her defiant pose, legs braced against anything and a fist on her side, could have been on the cover of  Girls to the Front. Mada Primavesi was painted in 1912. There is no background, just colors that we can take to be a purple wall and a white and green floor, or a white river that Primavesi stands astride; either way the focus is clearly on the girl in a statement of power. The portrait is of the daughter of a wealthy banker and industrialist, so her confidence probably comes from her assurance that she won’t ever have to deal with any problems, but given a push in the right direction she could have grown up to wage war against the patriarchy.  She looks like she wouldn’t take any shit from anyone, that could be seen as rich entitlement, but the picture is far more enjoyable if her pose of control is thought of as a conscious push against the society that was oppressing her both as a woman and a child.

Reject all American is Bikini Kill’s second LP and Statement of Vindication is the first track. The subject of the painting, the colors used,  the pose and the size of the piece immediately called Kathleen Hannah to mind. This girl gets what she wants, and she knows that she is not allowed it and it won’t come without a fight.  Reject All American was less abrasive and rawly punk as Pussy Whipped, and wasn’t as refined as Le Tigre. Primavesi is certainly not punk, but she isn’t entirely polished pop either.  She needs the youthful energy and simple songwriting, especially multiple slightly off key vocals, that comes with punk, but needs the edges filled down a bit – she is refined. So the 2nd album by  Bikini Kill makes sense: still young enough to start a bar fight, not old enough to sit down and write an album for a year.

It would be remiss not to include I Busted In Your Chevy Window as an option, as it works equally well, but for different reasons.

Although the argument could be made for Le Tigre’s track Deceptacon which is defiant, bright and has a Devoesque rejection of authority to it.

An Alternative Audio Guide to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Explanation

For information about a painting, look at it. Failing that, read a book about the artist and the time in which they were painting, nothing happens in a vacuum. Audio guides either jump in with biographical information, or explain the brushwork in detail and attempt to translate a picture into prose. Alternatives are needed; not “european masters for dummies”, but an alternative to the spoken word’s attempt to translate the picture. There are ways in which prose can accentuate pictures, and vice versa – there is also music.

“Writing about art is like dancing about architecture” so by extension speaking about art is equally as useless.

A couple things about the above quote – it would be brilliant if people danced about architecture, to do so, however, assumes a level of knowledge between the dancer and the audience. If both are well versed in architecture then a dance should be absolutely acceptable. Imagine some sort of impregnable interpretive dance, where the dancers are all wearing black and the music is Phillip Glass and the audience is forced to stand uncomfortably as the dancers wrythe around them. That would be the Scottish Parliament Building  another image here.  Now imagine a ferocious ultra sexual tango where the partners are grappling and leaning over tables and the woman’s hair brushes the ground sometimes, but her leg wraps around his back and she pulls herself back up.  This would be an Oscar Niemeyer, some brazilian paradise for billionaires.

Secondly, the origins of the quote are interesting and explored here.

The obvious aim is to pair works of visual art with music.