January 31, 2020
It’s Friday January 31, 2020, the end to an insanely wet, politically distressing week. It is the day of Brexit and the elevation of a US president to KING. Let’s wallow in art and nothing but art, to distract us. I am going to find paintings that inspired some classical music pieces – all you have to do is look and listen!
For the Senate:
‘The Just Upright Man is Laughed to Scorn’ by William Blake
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For you know who, who may end up in Bedlam, the insane asylum:
A Rake’s Progress (1733–1735) – 8 paintings and engravings by William Hogarth
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For the son in law of you know who who devised the steal of the century “peace” plan effectively creating Apartheid in the Middle East:
Der Totentanz by Hans Holbein
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For Friderike Heuer, assuring that the combination of a favorite painter, a favorite subject, a fun cartoon and some weird modernist German music has the weekend off to a better start.
Die Zwitschermaschine by Paul Klee
Nicky
1000 Dank für die Zwitschermaschine!!!
Bob Hicks
Well chosen!
Susan Wladaver-Morgan
Sadly, very well chosen. Do you know the Jacques Brel song “Ma Mort” is also based on the Dies Irae?
Martha Ullman West
And I of course connect choreography to some of these images, specifically Mary Wigman’s Totendanz, which I saw reconstructed by Kansas City Ballet some years ago, many actually, with ballet dancer, mind you, Kim Cowen giving such a frightening performance that a 10 year old boy sitting in front of me was shaking. Excellent post on the last day of the month, when my inbox is full of urgent demands for money to save our democracy. Last night, I read an article by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker about the last time the whole country was terrified we were turning into a fascist country, during the Depression. The FDR administration’s response was the New Deal, among other things, and the New Deal included the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, which paid artists to make art, musicians to make music, dancers (yes, dancers!) and actors to perform and take their art to the people. So this post of yours speaks to what I read last night.
Susan Wladaver-Morgan
The WPA also hired historians to do state histories, which could make a huge difference in the current dire academic job market, bottom mention possibly educating our fellow citizens. That of course assumes that they want to learn anything, which these days seems like an awfully big assumption.
sls
Great post! I hope you get your good weekend (and that the rest get what you designated for them)!