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Essays and interviews in the world of the arts, architecture, design, journalism, politics and culture. And more, which appeal to the curious spirit of Elsewhere . . .
QUEEN CITY ROCK: Auckland Nightlife, Look Back in Wonder (2010)
“I hear the Queen City callin' . . . yeah, the whole place is rockin' . . . " -- Peter Lewis and the Trisonic, Four City Rock, 1960 Although Peter Lewis also noted the Windy City, the Garden City and Dunedin (rhymes with “freezin' “) in his classic celebration of New Zealand rock'n'roll scene Four City Rock, he kicked off most... more >>
Added: 29 Aug 10
THE DIFFICULT ARTS UNDER NAZISM: The uncomfortable past -- and present
There was a modicum of good news about the career of the 90s German rock band Endseig whose name meant Final Victory. It was that they weren’t particularly popular and their records sold fewer than a couple of thousand copies. That however may come as small comfort to anyone who scans their lyrics. “Throw them in prison of concentration camps . . . Kill their children, rape... more >>
Added: 22 Aug 10
ANTOINE WIERTZ: Rape, damnation and the art of darkness
Antoine Wiertz was one pretty sick bastard all right. The gallery he demanded be built to house his gigantic paintings in his adopted hometown of Brussels is testament to an artist obsessed by death, disembowelment, rape, damnation and a virulent sexuality. Everywhere flesh is impaled or torn, eyes glisten with horror, and spears drive through bodies. Over there is a beheading, on... more >>
Added: 21 Aug 10
LA MONTE YOUNG: The master of minimalism, and more
When John Cale went to New York from Wales in the early 60s it wasn’t with the intention of meeting up with Lou Reed to form the Velvet Underground, but to study under a pianist/composer who had literally been “born in a log cabin” in the small community of Bern, Idaho. By the late Sixties that composer, La Monte Young, was in the vanguard of the minimalist movement and... more >>
Added: 16 Aug 10
TODAY IN HISTORY: AUGUST 16 1977: The king is gone . . .
John Lennon was only half right when, on being told that Elvis Presley had died, said, "Elvis died when he went into the army". In part that was true: before his posting to Germany Elvis was the archetype for rock'n'roll; after the songs got soft and the Hollywood movies rolled out with increasingly dreary predictability. There were of course continuing flashes of greatness:... more >>
Added: 16 Aug 10
RHONA HASZARD: Portrait of the artist as a young woman (2004)
Popular culture loves nothing so much as the early death of an obvious talent. We are left with questions and the speculation on just what direction the gift might have moved in had the artist lived. Some of that discussion will doubtless be aired with the Auckland exhibition of works by Thames-born painter Rhona Haszard, who fell to her death from the fourth storey of a tower in Egypt in... more >>
Added: 2 Aug 10
THE ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CRITIC (Essay, 2007)
Since I first seriously reviewed an album about 36 years ago (the George Harrison triple set All Things Must Pass) I guess I have written about somewhere in excess of maybe 6000 records/CDs/tapes etc -- and of course I have heard many, many more than that. Some people are well-read, I am well . . . Hmmm, there must be a word for it. In that time I have also reviewed hundreds of books,... more >>
Added: 19 Jul 10
BRIAN ENO AND THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE: Obscure but not oblique
By happy chance recently I pulled out a vinyl album which has changed my listening habits for these past weeks. It was released 30 years ago but has always struck me as timeless: it is Brian Eno’s Music For Films and the austere, pale brown cardboard cover is mottled with age. At any opportunity since I have gravitated to my cherished vinyl collection of Cluster, Harold Budd, Laraaji... more >>
Added: 18 Jul 10
SALVADOR DALI, HIS MUSEUM IN FIGUERES: The Disneyland of the disturbed
Of all the monuments a man has built to himself few, if any, are more bizarre than the grand conceit Salvador Dali designed in a burned-out theatre in his birthplace of Figueres. A little more than an hour north of Barcelona by local bus, Figueres is a modest, not especially interesting town of some 35,000 people. But it is the traditional commercial centre of the plains of Ampurdan... more >>
Added: 17 Jul 10
MARCEL MARCEAU INTERVIEWED 2001: It's all talk, talk, talk . . .
Within minutes, literally fewer than five, Marcel Marceau is back in the unadorned dressing room at Sydney's Capitol Theatre and, still in full pancake makeup, enthusiastically giving an interview after another thunderously received performance.The speed at which this private audience has been expedited and the sheer rush of words from a man whose reputation is built on silence suggests there... more >>
Added: 7 Jul 10
BARRY HUMPHRIES ON THE RECORD: The early life of an agent provocateur
At his first Pan-Australia Dada exhibition, Barry Humphries had packages printed up bearing the name Platitox, which allegedly contained a poison to put in creeks to kill the platypus, that much-loved, much-protected and playful native animal. “So why have an exhibit which offers a pesticide to destroy these animals? Because everything was in its place in Australia,” said... more >>
Added: 7 Jul 10
STEVE REICH INTERVIEWED (1990): The maximal minimalist
American composer Steve Reich finishes telling of his new work – an enormous three-years-in-the making multi-media project – and then reflects on the austerity of his early music which enraged audiences two decades ago. “Yeah, it’s easy to see backwards and how all these new things came from that early stuff – but it isn’t so easy to see forwards.... more >>
Added: 5 Jul 10
SIR STANLEY SPENCER ESSAYED (2003): Of angels and dirt
Sex fascinated Stanley Spencer. But so did angels, the transcendence of the spirit through faith, and life in his home village of Cookham where, as a child, he believed biblical events had taken place and been witnessed by local folk.This confluence of religious and rural influences, and his belief that sexual and spiritual desire were entwined, were resolved in an intellectually... more >>
Added: 28 Jun 10
COMPOSER JOHN TAVENER INTERVIEWED (1993): Lifting the Veil
Late in 1992 in one of his increasingly rare interviews, British classical composer John Tavener uncharacteristically hit back at the critics who had been sniping at his most recent work, The Protecting Veil. After noting that critics want their intellects tickled but had forgotten about the intellect of the heart, he skewered them for their shallowness. “They don't know the... more >>
Added: 21 Jun 10
ANDY WARHOL'S LOOK: Glamour, Style, Fashion and Moron
“People are always calling me a mirror and if a mirror looks into a mirror, what is there to see?” -- Andy Warhol. There's a scene in an Austin Powers movie in which the superspy and international man of mystery is in his London bachelor pad. Amid the iconography of the Swinging Sixties is a large multiple portrait of Powers rendered in flat, garish colours. In... more >>
Added: 14 Jun 10
MOHOLY-NAGY AND THE BAUHAUS, PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION ESSAY (2003)
Lazlo Moholy-Nagy would argue that our eyesight was defective and limited. He would cite the pioneering 19th-century German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, who told his students if an optician made a human eye and brought it to him he would say, "This is a clumsy piece of work".The punchline for Moholy-Nagy would be that we have a better optical instrument than the human eye: the... more >>
Added: 13 Jun 10
HARRY BELAFONTE, ACTIVIST AND SINGER, INTERVIEWED (2000)
Harry Belafonte’s voice has been his passport. It was his passage out of poverty as a young man and has allowed him access to the hearts of people as he tirelessly articulates the struggle for human rights.As he stood alongside Dr Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela as a friend and confidant, his was a compassionate voice for equality, justice and the rights of... more >>
Added: 8 Jun 10
HENRYK GORECKI'S SORROWFUL SYMPHONY: Capturing the spirit of the age, and marketing
When Billboard magazine – the bible of the international music industry – put classical music on its cover in September 92 with the heading “It’s Cool Again!” there was only one mention of Polish composer Henry Gorecki in the 18-page insert supplement. And that reference was only to say that despite a stagnant market (unit sales in Britain down 20 per cent... more >>
Added: 31 May 10
PICASSO, THE FINAL MASK (2003): Into the void
In his last self-portrait -- a crayon on paper work done nine months before his death in 1973, at age 91 -- Pablo Picasso created a disconcerting image: the eyes wide as if terrified, the mouth taut and drawn tightly over the teeth, and the face gaunt with defined cheekbones quite unlike what his bowling ball face actually looked like. It is a portrait of the man within, the image of a man... more >>
Added: 24 May 10
RICHARD MEIER'S GETTY CENTRE IN LOS ANGELES (1999): Architecture, art and anger
High in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, The Getty Centre offers a commanding view. “Yeah, on a clear day you can see smog forever,” says a droll Angelino as he stares into the blue-grey gauze which lies lightly over his city on this typically perfect, dry day. That said the Getty, as it is commonly known and which opened 18 months ago, is beautifully appointed on a... more >>
Added: 10 May 10
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