the cassandra pages

Discussing the Cliburn with Brad Hill - part 3

 

Van Cliburn presents the gold medal to Nobuyuki Tsujii. Official photo  c 2009 Altre Media.

Brad: The Cliburn requires chamber music performances in the semifinal round. I don't have much chamber experience, so I have trouble evaluating those performances. Have you played much chamber music?

Beth: I've never played chamber music for piano and strings but I've done lots of ensemble work, on flute as a younger person in bands, orchestras, and woodwind quintets, and then for many years singing with other people and various instruments, so I do feel fairly comfortable evaluating that category. However I didn't watch much of it - I need to go back and see more of the performances. I saw Son's semifinal chamber performance, and thought it was good but I just wasn't...captivated. Moved. Her manner at the piano is also too affected for me to really warm up to her. What did you think about this category?

Brad: I fade out a bit during that round. I like the pieces, but don't know them like I know the solo literature. I'd be perfectly content if the Cliburn eliminated the chamber requirement,
though I understand why they don't. They are searching for well rounded musicians. I thought Edouard Kunz looked about as comfortable as I would be during his quintet -- he appeared almost to be sight-reading!

I agree with you about age, and seasoning, and maturity. I was hoping the jury would give Zhang a discretionary award, then bring him back in four years to conquer the world. He hasn't figured out what type of musician he's going to be. Or, if he has, then his spectacular technical ability isn't being put to much purpose.

Beth: We should touch on the question of the future of classical music, and how competitions like the Cliburn fit into that - any comments?

Brad: The whole Cliburn experience dovetails in a peculiar way with the shrinking consumer market for classical music. Even as audiences in many venues get smaller, CD sales are miniscule, and regional orchestras are going out of business -- the Cliburn Foundation seems
to be growing ambitiously. They seem to be assuming that if they put the music out there in new media (internet streaming), the audience will appear. Sort of "If you build it, they will come." And apparently they had hundreds of thousands of people viewing the competition online. I love their approach!

Music contests are hundreds of years old. Mozart competed with his rival Clementi. Liszt was staged in a playoff against Thalberg. In more modern times, the Tschaikovsky Competition (the one Van Cliburn won in 1958), the Chopin Competition (Argerich, Ashkenazy, Ohlsson, Li), and others have trained the classical marketplace to expect superhero pianists, launched every few years. As music education has diminished in the U.S., audiences rely on juries to determine who is good, and provide them with instant careers. Much as I love competitions, that is a disturbing trend.

Beth: I thought the coverage was fantastic. If the arts are going to survive, the web will play a critical role, and I agree completely: this is a brilliant example of what can be done!

We've already established the fact that the Cliburn's web format, generosity, and open accessibility are tailor-made for classical music geeks like you and me, but what about those elusive "new" audience members? Can enough excitement be generated to make non-pianists want to watch piano competitions, the way non-athletes get excited about Olympic figure skating? And can events like this help inspire little Zhangs and Bozhanovs to take up the piano and practice long hours - or just learn enough to enjoy music all their lives?

Brad: Those are great questions, and probably unanswerable. Little Zhangs and Bozhanovs are born all the time, and if they get motivation and support at a young age, the practicing happens naturally.

As to attracting audiences, there are many parts to that puzzle in my opinion. I was exposed to classical music while growing up, which I think is increasingly unusual. Were you? And my school had a pretty big music department with an orchestra, band, and choir. I don't have kids, but I gather that's less common now, too. A piano competition like the Cliburn is a piece of dramatic storytelling like the Olympics, but if you have no background, and no context, and don't know the music, it loses meaning.

But I do think that distribution is key. It's no longer just a question of putting people in the seats; it's about putting the music where people are -- that means in their homes and on their digital
devices. The Cliburn Foundation seems to really get this.

Beth: There was always music in my home, and in my school, there was a big music program like yours: every kid learned to read music in elementary school, and we started on recorders in 3rd grade and could take an instrument in the 4th. Our marching band was one of the best in New York State and we competed all summer, and the town took as much pride in it as in sports. But you're right - there are so many other interests competing for kid's time, so much less funding for art education and appreciation, and so much less exposure as classical music has become expensive and perceived to be elitist. This seems like a huge step in the right direction.

Here in Montreal, the new orchestra conductor, Kent Nagano, is trying all sorts of new initiatives - last season they MSO played a concert above the ice in the Bell Center, in honor of the Montreal Canadiens and hockey! He took the orchestra on a Canada-wide tour, has a lot of family-oriented (and priced) programs - and has become quite a hero in the city. It's possible -- but takes work and creativity and an openness to change and experimentation and the possibility of failure - exactly the qualities you like in Bozhanov!

Brad, we've covered a lot of ground, and I want to thank you so much! It was a pleasure and I hope we'll stay in touch. Enjoy your playing and listening!

Discussing the Cliburn with Brad Hill - part 2

 

Evgeni Bozhanov, Bulgaria (official competition photo, c 2009 Astre Media)

Beth: So let's talk about the performances a little. What are the judges looking for in the early rounds? Do you think some very good players failed to make it into the semis and finals this time?

Brad: There is always lots of speculation, in piano competitions, about what the judges are looking for. At the Cliburn, the official line is that they are searching for mature performers who can step into a concertizing career immediately. It might be ironic, then, that the two winners this year were the two youngest competitors.

There were two players from the preliminary round that I wanted to hear again: Spencer Myer and Zhang Zuo. Going into the event, I was familiar with only one pianist, Stephen Beus, who has done some recording. I was rooting for him based only on familiarity, but he banged a bit in his preliminary recital and was eliminated. and we should always remember that everyone who gets to the competition is spectacularly accomplished -- the Cliburn Foundation has already winnowed down from hundreds of auditions around the world. And each of those applicants is excellent, too! There is a lot of talent out there.

We must talk about the final decisions. What did you think of the medalist choices? In 2005 I predicted the placement of the six finalists perfectly. This year I couldn't have been more wrong! My two favorites placed fifth and sixth. I think the silver medalist is unequipped for a major career. Then there is Nobuyuki Tsujii, the blind pianist who shared the gold medal and will probably get most of the headlines. What an amazing and inspiring display of human achievement. But (here it comes!) as a pianist, I honestly don't believe he should have won, or even been in the finals. He played very difficult programs almost flawlessly, but also, to my ear, without much dynamic range or special musical insight. It seems churlish to complain at all about that amazing young man (he is only 20!). But on the blog there was a wide range of opinion about him. Some people thought he was a gift from heaven, and others thought he should have been excused after the first round.

 

Yeol Eum Son, 23 (Korea) - Silver Medal; Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20 (Japan) - Gold Medal (tie); Haochen Zhang, 19 (China) - Gold Medal (tie) (official competition photo, c 2009 Astre Media)

Beth: I would have picked Vacatello for the gold, Bozhanov for the silver (I think those were your picks too, but in the other order) and Di Wu for third place. I wasn't impressed with the silver medalist at all and don't understand why some people felt she was the standout competitor, so that was one major disagreement. I do recognize what is extraordinary about both of the gold medalists - the enormous human achievement of Nobuyuki Tsujii, and the prodigy-like virtuosity of Zhang - but neither one moved me in their performances.

(As an aside - I was talking about the blind competitor with a composer-friend and said I felt guilty for not liking his playing more, because it seemed so astonishing to me that he could play so perfectly and learn all this music from memory. My friend said, "It's actually not that incredible. There's Braille music, and if he's been at it all his life, he probably has no more trouble learning that way than a skilled, sighted pianist learning from a printed score." I didn't even know Braille music existed, and probably many other listeners didn't either.)

What I was looking for, I guess, is that elusive quality we call "musicality." Vacatello has it in spades; no matter what period of music she was playing, she inhabited it and gave it to us; I would happily go and hear her perform anywhere. Bozharov was the risk-taker and the most original of the finalists, and I admire that and wish it were more often rewarded in competitions. Di Wu played extremely well,  I think, and I felt there is evidence of a real musical intelligence at work; she's just young still. After four more years of maturing I bet she will be fantastic.

Brad: Yes, you and I are on the same page. In addition to Vacatello's ferocious technical command and unstoppable musicality (her Italian Concerto of Bach was to die for!), I like her intense concentration at the piano. Bozhanov was the most polarizing figure in this event. Wasn't it fun watching people argue about him on the blog? He stood out because of his individuality, which is rare in classical music. Casual concert-goers might not realize it, but their favorite pianist probably sounds very much like all the other touring stars. The modern recording era has established standard playing styles for different composers, and to win a big contest you can't play outside that mold. Bozhanov broke the mold! I thought he was sensational, and I'd rather listen to an unsuccessful performance that flies too close to the sun, than a safe performance that stays in the shadows. Bozhanov burned himself in the Cliburn, but many people will remember him and follow his career.

Mariangela Vacatello, Italy (official competition photo, c 2009 Astre Media)

Beth: I'm glad you mentioned Vacatello's Italian Concerto - it was stunning. What I felt in her playing, and in Bozhanov's, was their own depth as musicians and, frankly, as people. I simply don't think this is possible until one has grown up a bit and lived for a while as an adult. The video "performer portraits" included in the competition coverage were very good, I thought, and also revealing. When young Zhang, for instance, said "I feel safest at the piano, I was a very quiet child,  I still don't like to talk much," and then we see him at the awards ceremony, in a tuxedo with his white ear buds on, completely in his own world, that says something. Meanwhile Vacatello and Bozhanov were laughing, talking, interacting with friends and colleagues. I'm not saying that a quiet introverted person can't be a great musician -- of course they can, there are many examples, and it goes without saying that one has to enter deeply into one's self to be great. But I didn't find the same depth or maturity in Zhang's playing, or Nobu's, as in these two older competitors, and I also worry about how the two gold medalists will hold up under a grueling three-year concert and travel schedule. I wish them the absolute best, of course!

--the conversation continues tomorrow, about how coverage like this might help classical music in the future.

Discussing the Cliburn with Brad Hill

Pianist Di Wu performing at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition.

Photograph used by permission; © 2009 Altré Media

From May 22 to June 7, the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition took place in Texas. Started in 1962 by Van Cliburn himself, who stunned the Cold War world of 1958 by becoming the first American to win the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the Cliburn has become a major event in the world of classical music. The participants are chosen through an exhaustive process, and the winners receive enormous media exposure, professional management, and up to three years of worldwide concert engagements. Its prestige is increased by the fact that it happens only once every four years. Extraordinarily, this year, the entire competition was broadcast live on the internet. I watched a lot of the coverage, becoming more and more obsessed as it came down to the finals.

Every performance was archived and is still available for viewers to watch and hear - with headphones the sound quality is excellent - and in addition there are video portraits of the performers, a lot of other background material, and an official competition blog for information and discussion of the competition.

That's where I met Brad Hill, who seemed to be a like-minded avid observer and classical music lover. After the award announcement, which was definitely controversial, I wrote to Brad and asked if he'd like to discuss the Cliburn with me here, and he graciously agreed. Over the next few days I'll be posting our conversation. We tried to talk about the competition and related topics in a personal way that both musicians and non-musicians would find interesting. In particular, we both felt that the Cliburn's innovative and generous webcast format bodes well for the future of music and the other arts that so many of us are worried about, and toward the end of the conversation we talk about that some more. We'd both love to hear your thoughts, and are happy to try to answer any questions you might have!

-----

Beth: Brad, I liked your comments on the competition thread and appreciated the fact that you had tracked me down on Twitter! Some of the topics I thought we might talk about are why the Cliburn is exciting, why we both watched it, what it means in classical music today, and how we felt about the vote. But what do you think people would find interesting? And are you a pianist yourself?

Brad: Most people would probably wonder why anyone would get obsessed with a piano competition online. I went to a music school and have done a bit of competing myself, so I have an endless appetite for piano music -- especially live piano concerts. And this one is like the Olympics. The foundation scours the globe for the 30 best pianists; each one must prepare five hours of music; and there is intense unfolding drama over about three weeks. They hold it every four years. I dug in last time (2005), and this year the webcasts were really well done.

What attracts you to the Cliburn? Do you have a musical background, or do you simply love piano music?

Beth: I've played since I was five, but not on anything like this level. I'm more of an all-around, avid amateur musician - I've studied piano, flute, and voice and sing now in a semi-professional choir. My piano playing is mostly classical and for pleasure, but I do practice! My hat's off to you for competing - you must be pretty good. Do you play a lot now?

Brad: I make some time to practice, and wish I could do more. I started when I was six, and went to the Manhattan School of Music. Garrick Ohlssoh, William Wolfram and I grew up near each other, at roughly the same time. They both took the piano a lot further than I did. :) In fact, I first got interested in piano competitions when Garrick won the Warsaw Chopin, in 1970. I was still in high school. I did some studying with the teacher who prepared him for the Chopin, then it was off to conservatory.

Beth: I admire that tremendously, and I'm glad you still find time to play and still enjoy it; I know some people who were very very good but somehow lost the love. Maybe they were pushed too much; in one case it was because of severe stage fright. For me, music is very personal but it's also a bit like doing a sport with people who are better - they spur you on and help you progress. I've always been around musicians; my aunt is a professional, my father is a good natural musician who plays and sings, so there was always music in our house; my college roommate and several close friends were piano majors. I was always trying to keep up, at least to some degree, and maybe that's still true. Even though I'm 56 now, I'm still working on it, and improving. Not many things in life give you that kind of pleasure and absorption all the way through.

I first got interested in the Cliburn when I saw the documentary from the year that Olga Kern won, and also from reading a great article in the NY Times a while ago about the associated amateur competition. Last year in Montreal I got very wrapped up in the international organ competition and went to a number of the live sessions. There was also a piano competition with the symphony, and I listened on the radio and went to the finals. But this was the first time I've gotten into an online experience of a competition. The webcast coverage was excellent, I thought, and I have to admit I'm sorry it's only once in four years! What did you think about the coverage? Did you really watch ALL of it?

Brad: I did watch all of it until the final weekend, when I left town for a wedding. One great aspect of the online presentation is the archive. I was able to catch up when I got back. Anyone can go there now and watch all the performances. It's an amazing body of recorded music,free of charge.

I love the community feeling fostered by the Cliburn Foundation. In 2005 and this year they put up a blog on which anyone could leave comments. That place got more populated as the contest went on. It also got pretty fierce in there, with plenty of arguments about the performances, who should win, etc.. At least two concert pianists that I know of were in the thick of it, and dozens of other people were expert listeners and lifelong lovers of classical music. The blog, by itself, was great theater even as the  competition drama was unfolding on stage!

(to be continued tomorrow)

Imagine

Jon and Yoko's "Bed-In" for world peace; 30 years ago, Montreal. (video clip from the CBC.) This poster is from the Musee des Beaux-Arts' current commemorative exhibit.

Here's another vintage clip, also from the CBC, of the press interviewing John and Yoko after their meeting with Pierre Trudeau (the first 30 seconds are silent.)

If you haven't seen The United States vs. John Lennon, you should. If you were alive at the time, it will take you right back. If not, it will show you what it was really like. (I still can't see Nixon or Kissinger on the screen without wanting to scream.)

Copies and Copiers

A week ago, just about exactly, we were in Washington's National Gallery of Art. We'd just missed the Robert Frank exhibition, celebrating the anniversary of the publications of the seminal book "The Americans," and had seen, instead, a current exhibition of Czech photography from the 30s and 40s. Then we made our way through the Renaissance galleries and into the Dutch and Flemish paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries.

In one of the big rooms devoted to Franz Hals and Rembrandt, we came upon these gentlemen. The man in the white shirt was making a copy - a very accurate and fine one - of this " Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat", a Flemish painting from the 1630s attributed to Jan Cossiers. The man in the suit, with his back to us here, was haranguing him. I didn't catch the whole conversation, not wanting to be any ruder than I'd already been, sneaking their picture, but the gist of it was "We've already got original works of art, we don't need copies, what do you think you're doing?"

This artist wasn't the only one working at an easel in the museum; I saw several artists making copies or otherwise studying paintings on display, and frankly, it's always been fascinating to me to watch other artists at work and to see how they interpret masterpieces. And there's hardly a famous master who hasn't done this - not only was copying a standard training technique in art schools throughout history, but drawing and painting from masterpieces has also given us many extraordinary new works.

What was singular about this particular artist was his skill at both accurate copying and the use of 17th-century technique. His painting was a real copy, perhaps done for study, but more likely, I'm guessing, a commission by a wealthy patron who wanted to hang this particular painting in his own oak-panelled library. The museum must have a well-developed policy about this: I'm quite sure that artists working in the National Gallery are registered and their works recorded, so this painting is not, and couldn't be, sold as a forgery. Once that question is out of the way, I wonder what the objection could be. Making exact copies isn't something every artist would want to do, and this person certainly has the ability to paint his own subjects - and perhaps he does. But in a world where it is nearly impossible for a gifted artist to make a living on his or her own work, should we attack someone who is able to turn his talent into money, openly and above-board? Does the skilled copyist automatically become suspect as a "counterfeiter?" It's a curious question to ponder.

Pastoral Illusions

"In my heart of hearts I just imagine that compared to the rest of the US, your area of New England is still a unique and fairly remote biotope which to a large extent embraces the values of Thoreau and Charles Ives."

So wrote a friend of mine recently, someone who grew up in the northeastern U.S. and has lived much of his adult life on another continent. I'd been talking about the suburbanization of northern New England and the changes I'd observed in the society over the past thirty years. What follows is my response, but I'm wondering if the phenomenon I'm trying to describe rings true for other people in other regions - or even other parts of the globe. I wrote:

"That was still true when I moved up in the mid-1970s but the 1980s destroyed much of it. Yes, there are still people in northern NE who embody those values but they tend to be aging hippies or tweedy Frost-like gentleman-farmer types, folks of dyed-in-the-wool New England stock, who’ve hung onto their places out in the country and have the money to do that. Yes, I do know a few young back-to-the-land types, or like-minded artists and craftspeople, and it's still possible for them to find a place in rural Vermont or New Hampshire, but they aren't going to find the sort of community and support that once existed here for people who share their values. New initiatives in local agriculture and the use of local food, for instance, do support small growers - some towns are more affluent now and that means more money to support local food and local arts and crafts. Some of this is authentic, and some of it - some local farmer's markets, for instance - remind me of tourist stops, where the "natives" and the purchasers/visitors are both playing carefully-choreographed roles.

The influence of mass media and the mobility of younger workers has created a situation in the U.S. where, it seems to me, a lot of the regional difference is being slowly and surely erased, and those people – good, green, smart as they may be – simply do not have the deep connection with “place” that grounded the earlier thinkers and artists we’re using as examples here. Vermont’s values – independent thinking, progressive environmentally but conservative fiscally – do persist, but they are legislated more than they are rooted deeply in people’s lives because of a desire to remain free of the masses, or to preserve the land because you find it beautiful and nurturing to your soul and want successive generations to have that too. There are plenty of people living in the country because they can afford to “play” at being New Englanders – but a lot of that is phony; they certainly aren’t mending their own fences or building their own stone walls: they pay somebody to do that and everything else. I think, for example, of a rundown farmhouse in a high valley nearby which was bought, lavishly renovated, and turned into a horsefarm by a couple from Texas with oil money. These people also became an aggressive presence in local organizations, quite unaware of the way their values and manners clashed with the local culture.

Suburbia has inexorably crept north from the lower NE states, New York, and New Jersey, and brought with it a whole different set of values – like not needing to be present at town meeting in order to vote on important local issues. Being avid consumers of the outdoors -- skiers, hilkers, kayakers - without knowing much about it. Being unaware of, and disinterested in, local history because you know you won't be there very long. Allowing sprawl because you want the franchise stores. Allowing large condo developments and smaller and smaller subdivisions of former farmland. Everything becomes a practical decision based, primarily, on money and convenience. So I do feel something essential has been lost. I’m not cynical about it, but I am certainly wistful."

What I'm thinking about especially are the influences of mass media and mobility in homogenizing the culture - not only of the United States, but of Canada and other parts of the world. What will cultures look like in fifty years, 100 years? There's no holding change back, and a lot of younger people probably don't see what I do, nor do they seem concerned about what's being lost, but much more about what's gained; convenience, speed, efficiency, practicality, and universal access to goods, services, media, and communication are the values that are now in the ascendant. There is also the more psychological factor of seeking comfort in the familiar - whether that's universal WIFI or the local Starbucks - everywhere you go. These values wouldn't be driving change if the consensus wasn't that this is the future and what people want. In central New York, where I grew up, things have changed more slowly. Here in Quebec - slower still. So I can pretend, sometimes, that the enormous change toward uniformity that I've observed over my life so far is less pervasive and permanent than it actually is, but what's happened in New England is, I think, reality.

I wonder how other readers see it.

Barbie's Birthday

She cost around $10 and I had begged for her for a whole year; fashion dolls were pretty new then and my mother thought they were just a short-lived fad, and that I wouldn't play with one enough to justify the cost. It was one of the few things she was wrong about.

I saved my allowance money and when I had enough - in those days, at 25 cents a week, it took a long time - we went down to the gift shop in the big town and I picked out a doll and took her home. I'm not sure the first one was an authentic Barbie, but over the years I got two more that were, one with long blonde hair and one with interchangeable Afro-style wigs. My friend L. and my cousin B. and I played with our dolls constantly. We rarely bought "outfits" - or the elaborate "settings" that were later popular for the named dolls like "Malibu Barbie" -- beach scenes, celebrity trailers, changing rooms, fantasy outfits -- just sometime a few accessories like plastic high heels or sunglasses. We sewed clothes for ours, and one Christmas my grandmother made an entire kntted trousseau from Barbie patterns published in McCall's Needlework and Crafts; another year my mother - long since won over to the cause - sewed my dolls an orange satin sheath dress with a pink hat, a la Jackie Kennedy, and a white wedding dress with a wide train, a veil, and little seed pearls studding the bodice.

Somewhere around sixth grade, there was a short-lived Barbie fan club; we used to meet at one of our houses on Saturday morning and play "The Barbie Game", bringing our dolls and their new outfits. It was boring; my close friends and I preferred to make up our own games and thought the whole "fan" thing was dumb.

I never had a "Ken" doll, or a "Scooter," but it was through play-acting with our Barbies and Kens that we all worked out the facts of life and dating and love, rehearsing for the romance we were all sure was just around the corner, if we could finally grow up. How innocent it all seems now, and how long ago. Sometime in more recent memory, I went up into the attic at my grandparents' house and looked in the trunk where I thought my dolls and their clothes had been packed, but they had disappeared - probably rummaged by a new generation of little girls. I'd actually like to see them again, especially the clothes. The dolls themselves meant less to me; I think they were always just substitutes - twelve-inch plastic actresses - playing at real life.

My first Barbie
had nylon hair in platinum
firm perfect skin
and knees that clicked
like mine do now.

Abraham's Covenant (Lincoln, that is)

Peter at Slow Reads has written the most original and interesting essay I've yet seen in honor of Lincoln's 200th birthday. "The Mysticism of Abraham Lincoln" is indeed a slow read - you need to make yourself a cup of coffee or tea and sit down for a while with it - but unlike simple paeans of praise, this one will take you off in new directions and make you think. Highly recommended.

The Austrian novelist Heimito von Doderer was unknown to me a month ago. Now I've just finished the first volume of the work that apparently made him famous in his native country, The Demons, or (Die Dämonen, same as the Dostoyevsky novel, as it is generally known. It's a long book - 690 pages in vol 1 alone - and I got very bogged down in places but ended up hooked, and now I'm anxious to start the second volume.

The story is about a group of people  -- "our crowd" -- who were drawn together in Vienna in the late 1920s. The reasons for their intersections, their relationship to the narrator, and for the inclusion of many of the long list of characters at all are obscure at first, but gradually more and more is revealed. I got interested in several of the characters, almost in spite of myself, and that kept me reading, but one in particular, a young man named Leonard Kakabsa, really intrigued me. Unlike the rest of the group, who are mostly educated, middle-class or aristocratic citizens, Leonard is a factory worker whose sisters are servants working for them. And Leonard gets it into his head to teach himself Latin, after a chance bookstore encounter with an old bookseller and his lovely daughter. His process of self-education and the accompanying changes in his thinking are one of the highlights of the book.

That's what makes it most remarkable, and puts the novel into a different category along with other milestones of 20th century literature: von Doderer's description of consciousness itself. He must have been describing what he observed in himself, of course, but it's what gives the book its strangeness and also its beauty. The workings of the mind are not only described, but reflected upon and combined as memories and present events intertwine to create a view of life as pattern, repetition, predictability and chance all working together.

Here's one example, and it's not a style for everyone, for sure. In von Doderer's writing I think we can see the mark of Proust, Balzac, Dostoyevsky and many great writers before him; of 20th century contemporaries like Joyce and Mann; and hints of W. G. Sebald, John Berger, and other writers to come:

...And once again only a small and insignificant link is needed to connect me vividly with that winter evening at the railroad station. The link is just a strand of blond hair on the temple of Frau Camy von Schlaggenberg, Katejan's wife, and the way in which her little traveling hat presses into her forehead, with her eyes peering out from under the brim, a little haughtily and yet somehow not altogether in psychological equilibrium.

She stands on the step of the car, small and slender, and holds out a well-gloved hand to me, which strangely enough figures in my recollection as something exceedingly dry.

Such are the trivialities that everyone carries around with him, and yet they alone - I avow it! - contain all the grandeur of life, though still in a formless and nameless state. Such are the possessions of many a solitary man, and when he has extricated himself from the city down there and comes back to his still, empty room which, left so long alone, seems to have stretched itself, enlarged itself - then his property comes closer to him, but in a manner no different from that of the child outside the glass pane. Often after switching on the light, a man will stand for moments at the window - "lost in thought," as we are in the habit of saying (but in reality he is thinking about nothing at all). Whether the view is sweeping or confined, the lights that appear at the window every evening are always the same, making silent configurations, dim or sharp, or in glowing file. It is everyone's earthly firmament, filled with the sick stars of this world which blink and twitch just like the stars in the sky, different for thousands of lonely pairs of eyes peering from thousands of windows, and certainly perfectly congruent to each of these beholders. Anyone who steps up to his window steps up to his own particular constellation; and surely these distant glimmering oracles from the darkness could be interpreted, if only we knew how...

Photography and Feeling

 "When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice."

Robert Frank, LIFE (26 November 1951)

at right, an image from Robert Frank's book, "London/Wales"

Dear Tony,

Thanks so much for your long letter and thoughtful comments on beauty and photography. It's complicated, isn't it, trying to grapple with what makes a picture beautiful in a lasting way, something more than the ubiquitous, predictable postcard image taken from a scenic vantage point, chosen as such because it really is "beautiful" in a way that makes most people respond?

I think I'd like to pick up on a topic you mentioned toward the end of your letter, the question of allowing one's feelings to come through in the work, because I think this is crucial to what we're trying to get at.

Why is it difficult for some of us to allow this? I wonder if working professionally from a young age has something to do with it. For me, as a graphic designer and illustrator (beginning in my twenties) it was of critical importance that my work be technically excellent and that I master the "craft" so that the work would retain high quality from inception through final reproduction. As you know, I think, I'm married to a photographer and have worked with him professionally for thirty years; this was true for him as well. When you're doing commercial work, even if it is editorial work that allows for large degree of personal interpretation, technical considerations are very high on the list. I think this can be dampening to deeper and freer expression, and one has to see this and consciously address it in order to grow as an artist. Conversely, of course, the person who is only concerned with "feeling" can be held back by his or her lack of skill or interest in the technical side of their work. It's the people who excel in both that interest me the most, and although I'm not personally doing a lot of visual art these days, this is true in my approach to writing.

Some artists seem like they've never had a problem with this - Natalie d'Arbeloff is one who comes to mind, though I hope we'll hear from her in the comments. But even Picasso, who we think of as being so inventive, talked about having to deconstruct what he had learned as an adult in order to rediscover the unfettered creativity of a child, and of non-western cultures where technique is less prized.

I also wonder about how visual subject matter itself affects our ability to imbue our art with feeling, and suspect that it is particularly difficult - though not impossible - when the subject in landscape. J. came home the other day with some books by Robert Frank, certainly one of the most influential photographers of the last sixty years. One of them was London/Wales, from an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2003 of photographs taken in the early1950s of London financiers and Welsh coal miners. While one might expect the view of London bankers to be negative, and that of Welsh miners positive, this really wasn't the case: both were moving, both were intensely human. Frank showed us that the clothing of the bankers - the top hats and dark overcoats - was as much a uniform and leveler as the coal-encrusted clothing and skin of the miners, and went beyond it to revel the people underneath. The surrounding - the quality of the atmosphere -- the foggy city and the rugged Welsh landscape -- become in his photographs intrinsic parts of the human portraits. I was very moved by the progression of images, and realized that my own judgmentalism was being laid aside as I viewed them, replaced by Frank's' compassion and nuance. It was clear to me at the end that Frank not only  photographed from a point of view, but that his view was not the immediate one, but something conscious, developed, and deeper that he had probably come to over a considerable amount of time. Some of these images, I am sure, will stay with me forever.

"Quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That's not quality, that's a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy - the tone range isn't right and things like that - but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention." (Elliott Erwitt)

I'm curious about how you have given yourself permission to allow your own feelings to come though in your work, and why it was hard, and also curious to hear from readers: how have you yourself grappled with both technique and emotion in your own approach to art or writing?