Nicholas Carter in Conversation
(Bradley Forum, Adelaide, March 2016) [ASO Chief Conductor Nicholas Carter in conversation with Jacinta Thompson] TVC attended this important discussion at Uni SA last evening, in the “Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre”, a think-tank with the mission of “strengthening our democracy – valuing our diversity – building our future”. (As to these aims, one could not help hearken back to the imbroglio of Bob’s many failed attempts to impose the Australia Card on us, but let that pass!) The central text was the relevance of the orchestra in the 21st Century – which recalls the golden moment from The Ploughman’s Lunch,…
Continue Reading →Mum for Mistress
Whistler said of his mother’s visit: “All of a sudden in the middle of the affair my mother [Anna] arrived from the United States! General upheaval!….I had to empty my house and purify it from cellar to attic…”* Looking at the picture, perhaps we can understand the artist’s anxiety about this model of rectitude. Incidentally, she made Whistler promise to never paint on a Sunday. The wonderful Musée d’Orsay has lent Whistler’s famous Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 to the National Gallery of Victoria, as it is staging an exhibition of Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947) and despite its…
Continue Reading →Onward!
Onward...(photo, South side of Chicago, by John H. White)
Muse upon the Muses! Track the progress of the arts and sciences here! Comedy Groucho Marx → Bob Hope → Woody Allen → Adam Sandler Dance Hindu Classical Dance → Formal Court Ballet → Nijinsky → Nureyev → Baryshnikov → Free Form Frog-leg Elegiac Poetry Tristia (Ovid) → ‘O Captain! My Captain!‘ (Whitman) → Duino Elegies (Rilke) → ? Epic Poetry The Odyssey by Homer → The Aeneid by Virgil → The Comedy by Dante → ? The Cantos by Ezra Pound → ? Historical writing The Peloponnesian War (Thucydides) → Annals (Tacitus) → The Twelve Caesars (Suetonius) → Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed…
Continue Reading →The Untouchables
(Dir. Brian de Palma) (1987) This is a gangster movie staged as Grand Opera, as a driven, unseasoned treasury official, Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) tries to shut down the illegal liquor trade of Chicago crime kingpin Al Capone (Robert De Niro), and finds that he has to cut all legal corners to do it. Though tending to the mawkish at times, the film rattles along with force and panache, to a dynamic score by Ennio Morricone and including some sensational (arguably histrionic) set pieces, such as the shoot-out at the Canadian border, Mr Capone’s charming ‘human baseball’ speech to his underlings, the…
Continue Reading →Sans Souci
"Yum! Canape of insouciant artist's eye..." (Painting by G. Assereto)
In an article by Luke Carmen in Meanjin (Autumn 2016) he observes “the senselessness, doubt and despair our anti-art overlords are inculcating in our so-called culture industries“. “Getting Square in a Jerking Circle”, overwritten and jejune as it is, assails the arts philistines who will always be with us, and is certainly about the mark as far as that goes. But so what? Take the cash, and the art will look after itself. Carmen’s lament is as old as the hills: The advantage is almost always on the side of the cunning social arts satellite than the demented scribbler. In a culture like…
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