Costa Blanca Arts Update - Claudi Arimany plays Mozart Flute Quartets and Marco Tezza plays Schubert, Janacek and Schumann

 

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the middle of October, and Alfas del Pi has three concerts in the renewed cycle of La Sociedad de Conciertos de la Música Clásica. Friday and Sunday were solo piano recitals by Marco Tezza, while on Saturday, in Casa Cultura, we heard Claudi Arimany and the Beaux Arts Trio in Mozart’s four flute quartets.

The Mozart quartets offer about an hour of music. As soloist, Claudi Arimany called the tune and chose generally fast tempi for the allegros, including the rondos. This is not demanding music, but it is pleasurably tuneful, memorably so. But there are also moments of elegance. It is this mix of the simple and sophisticated, the utterly ordered alongside elements less predictable that has maintained the popularity of Mozart’s music for over two centuries. It was a perfect opportunity for Claudi Arimany to display his unquestionable virtuosity, whilst Joaquin Palomares, David Fons and Gonzalo Meseguer, the members of the Beaux Arts Trio, played their substantial part.

The two piano recitals by Marco Tezza presented the Alfas audience with something of a challenge. The Friday programme was Schubert’s Sonata in B flat D960 coupled with In The Mists by Leos Janacek, whilst on Sunday he repeated the Schubert, but coupled it with Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe, opus 133.

Schubert’s last sonata for piano is a challenging work under any hands. It is one of the longest piano sonatas ever written and its deceptively light textures often give way to dark, depressed corners of the human psyche as its composer contemplated what was to prove a fatal illness and an approaching death that was only weeks in the future. And, given he had suffered symptoms for several years, he was certainly aware of the process.

The work’s tempi markings are possibly ambiguous, but most pianists stick at least roughly to the broad moderato of the first movement in the even broader andante of movement two. But the first movement is moderato qualified by the composer with “molto” and the andante of the second with “sostenuto”. The mind could spend quite some time working out how to be “very” moderate or indeed how walking maybe “sustained”, other than by not actually stopping.

Now it appears that most pianists interpret the first movement’s pace at the allegro end of moderato and the second’s andante towards adagio. The notable exception to this pattern was Sviatoslav Richter, whose YouTube performance of the piece from 1972 is timed at over forty-seven minutes, with the opening moderato running to twenty-four minutes. Most performances, however, do not run to such lengths. Alfred Brendel, for instance, albeit ignoring a repeat or two, could deliver the work in just over thirty-five minutes.

Imagine, then, the level of surprise when, preparing to introduce the concert, Marco Tezza asked me to request that there should be no applause between movements because the piece would last no less than fifty-five minutes. And it did. I would not have been surprised if he had said thirty-five minutes. I would have questioned forty-five, but fifty-five just passed over me, so unexpected it precluded reaction.

And it was the first two movements that stretched time. Rather than a life story told at a story-teller’s pace, the movement became an autobiographical reflection, a series of questions, perhaps from a dying composer’s rambling diary, all of which led to the repetition of “Did I deserve this?” It is a work I have heard hundreds of times, but Marco Tezza’s performance was immediately something different when, at the end of the opening phrase, I became conscious for the first time that there is a clashing semitone in the harmony. The second movement became a long bout of self-pity, interspersed with what came across as memories, telling of better times in the past that contrasted ever more bleakly with the dark present.

Movements three and four were more conventional, but because of what had preceded them, they took on the sense of denials, expressing an inability to face up to the reality that had demanded attention in the first two.

I admit that after the Friday concert I was not convinced. After Sunday’s concert when he repeated the work, I was. It’s an approach that will not replace the existing B-flat sonata in my head but will now live forever alongside it as a different take on what had become the composer’s uncomfortable reality. And, by the way, the Janacek In The Mists on Friday night and the Schumann Gesänge der Frühe on Sunday both contributed to and indeed emphasized the feeling of introspection. On both occasions, we were sent home with a little encore, Chauncey Olcott’s arrangement of My Wild Irish Rose, played, believe it or not, very slowly and introspectively. Music is a very powerful language, especially when understated.

 

Theodoric the Goth: Barbarian Champion of Civilization by Thomas Hodgkin (1897)

The fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian era are often listed as part of what we dismissively label as the “Dark Ages”. These times saw the fall of Rome, repeatedly, and the following centuries that were not well documented, compared to what had gone before. For many of modern mind, this era marks the end of what was assumed to be the civilizing influence of the Roman Empire on the world as it was known. This assumption is immediately challenged by the title of Hodgkin’s provocative and detailed account of the life of Theodoric and his dynasty.

History, when truthfully and fairly examined rather than pre-judged is always more nuanced than populist assumptions allow.  There were not many of Rome’s emperors, especially those from the later years of the empire, that can claim to have done much for civilization. Constantine, of course, two centuries before the period covered by this book had adopted Christianity as the Empire’s official religion and had moved the imperial capital to Byzantium. But on closer examination it can be argued neither of these acts was driven by anything other than pragmatism or perhaps the vanity we still associate with absolute power. For Constantine, Byzantium was simply closer to home than Rome and the iconography of the new religion provided opportunity for political self-promotion in a way that would not offend those who retained previously established beliefs. Early Christian art in the period after Constantine’s adoption of the religion suggest that it was the Emperor, himself, who became the acceptable image of Christ, if perhaps not God. And it was this image that persisted for several centuries before the long-haired, bearded and heavily romanticized image we generally associate with the name became currency.

Anyone who has visited Ravenna knows the artistic achievement of the so-called barbarians. There was perhaps no great innovation in their work, but the very fact that continuity is an identifiable trait again contradicts the populist view that civilization was brought to an end by these sackers of Rome.

It is true that for many decades Theodoric and his dynasty were associated with warfare, power struggles and political intrigue. But was this any different from what had preceded their rule? Probably not very much, not so different from what went before to justify the label “barbarian” that we generally attach to the era.

Hodgkin’s book has much detail, and sometimes that detail is quite hard to assimilate, especially so since many people appear to share names. But reading an account of this era is nothing less than eye-opening for anyone not familiar with the all-important detail that so often contradicts the popular view. The Barbarian Champion of Civilization is thus capable, like all good historical accounts, of challenging these received opinions, encouraging re-evaluation and thus enlightening dark minds in perhaps darker ages.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Orlando by Virginia Woolf claims it is a biography. A young man, the eponymous Orlando, is in London in the sixteenth century. At the outset, we meet him in an attic, having fun with a severed head and a sword. Virginia Woolf also tells us to expect Orlando at a later date to become a woman. It is destined to be a book of surprises.

He is, of course at court. Where else? He rubs shoulders with Tudor bigwigs, even monarchs. Of course, he is at court. Where else might such a character reside? Bloomsbury, perhaps… A few years later he even looks up at the dome on Saint Paul’s Cathedral, many decades before it was built. Despite its historical settings, Orlando does not much care for accuracy. It is not long before this biography becomes something decidedly less definable, though its author continues to invoke her declared intention of presenting the life of an individual.

Orlando, both the book and the character, is rather hard to define. Though it ostensibly focuses on the life, or perhaps lives of an individual, the book is not a biography, even a fictional one. It's not really a novel either, since it offers neither thread of plot, nor characterization, nor description of relationships. There is a lot of name dropping, and many references to historical figures, but history it definitely is not, the author often preferring to drop personal opinion almost at random alongside a name. Orlando meets and even spends time with several literary figures from the past, notably Pope, who is even quoted from time to time.

The writing is often poetic, but Orlando is not poetry. Neither is it a poetic novel. Some markers are needed, so here are some highlights from the text to illustrate both the inventiveness of Virginia Woolf and also how the text often appears disjointed, like random flashbacks into a dream.

“What’s the good of being a fine young woman in the prime of life”, she asked, “if I have to spend all my mornings watching blue-bottles with an Archduke?”

“Life and a lover” – a line which did not scan and made no sense with what went before – something about the proper way of dipping sheep to avoid the scab. Reading it over she blushed and repeated,

“Life and a lover.”

He started. The horse stopped.

“Madam,” the man cried, leaping to the ground, “you’re hurt!”

“I am dead, sir!” she replied.

A few minutes later they became engaged.

Orlando lives for the better part of 400 years, at least within these pages, and has numerous different lives, both as a man and a woman. He is a man, becomes a woman, marries and has children, and then becomes a man again. He or she is a writer, a poet, a courtier, whatever the page appears to demand for him, or her. Orlando displays a little in the way of character, let alone consistency within these different identities. The character increasingly feels like a vehicle for the personal gripes of its creator. On several occasions, the reader seems to occupy the back seat in a taxi, with the driver repeatedly saying, “And another thing…”, over her or his shoulder.

It may or may not be relevant, but it has to be noted that Virginia Woolf, for all her talent as a writer, for all her skills as a constructor of dream-like word pictures, was mentally unstable, and became more so as she aged. The unfortunate observation about Orlando is that the book appears to be a series of randomly assembled, almost disconnected thoughts, illusions, memories, prejudices, spiteful digs and opinionated rant. Orlando is also no less of an achievement for any of this, however, since it contains some real gems, but also much that is impenetrable and obscure.

What is clear, throughout, is Virginia Woolf’s 1920s version of feminism. It provides a thread that binds together the bones this book, but it is a thread that is far from golden, and the skeleton thus constructed has little recognizable form or shape. Also, in fact, she often seems sanguine, almost defeatist in her analysis, more often than not equating “female” with poverty, ignorance or failure, even when the female characters themselves, as individuals, are nothing less than assertive. It could be, of course, that she is projecting stereotypes associated with the people she describes, but it is hard to be convinced of this, since consistency is not a word that can be used in describing Orlando, which is a unique book, its success a genuine achievement of a vivid and strange imagination.

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Suite Havana, paintings by Anthony Miró in Palau Altea

Suite Havana is a newly inaugurated exhibition of paintings by Anthony Miró, hung in Palau Altea on Spain’s Costa Blanca. It complements and amplifies an existing show of the artist’s sculpture, an exhibition entitled de mar a mar, throughout the town. Altea is a long-established artists’ town, a white town whose appearance might suggest its location on a map might have slipped north from Andalusia by a couple of hundred kilometres. But this is Valencia and Altea is a Valencian town hosting Anthony Miró, very much a Valencian artist.

But despite its homegrown nature, the exhibition Suite Havana, like the sculptures of de mar a mar have done for several months, will provoke controversy and calls for its removal amongst that segment of the town’s population for whom sexual taboos retain their significance. For, like his sculptures, the subject matter of the paintings in Suite Havana is sensuality, sexuality and sex, three different facets of the same taboo. But whereas the three-dimensional bronzes portray both positive and negative images of various sexual acts, the paintings in Suite Havana portray only naked or near-naked Cuban women. And they are all beautiful women, all desirable, all at first sight arguably ideals of their type. This, in itself, does not separate them from the Greek pottery or poetry-inspired images of the sculpture, since ancient Greece was not noted for the realism of its own depiction of the human form. But the gender specificity does.

Whether Western art of the Christian era portrayed sensuality as it’s prime message before Titian‘s Venus of Urbino is a matter for the art historian, which I am not. But for me that particular painting is representative of a turning point in the history of art. Titian‘s Venus is naked. Her left hand cups her pubic area, conveniently hiding its detail. There is nothing new either in art or life. But what is immediately different about the Venus of Urbino is that she engages the viewer. And she smiles. There is an engagement in her expression, almost a recognition, indeed a recognition that may even be personal, but equally it could be contractual. We could be her friend or her lover, but we could equally be her customer, with a hand to reveal its detail only after a contracted payment is made. The taboo here may go well beyond mere sex and sexuality. It may indeed extend as far as prostitution, deception and even might reach as far as a notion of pleasure, even worse, pleasure for its own sake. It’s an image whose public display would be controversial today, let alone in mid-sixteenth century Venice.

A century or so later, Rembrandt was painting his canvases that glowed with the human reality. He produced images of ordinary people powerful enough to provoke even today’s observer with feelings of recognition, sensations of association, and the desire to greet by name, a need almost to renew an acquaintance. As observers, we cannot fail to feel the humanity, the proximity to our own experience, an empathy with what we assume are the subject’s concerns. But is this quality diminished, enhanced or unchanged by our knowledge that, largely still hidden from public view, there are hundreds of drawings and sketches by Rembrandt the depict the erotic, the sex act, the aroused genitalia and expressions of sexual ecstasy? Do we find humanity to an equal degree in such images? Does our knowledge of this side of Rembrandt´s interests change the way we view his ability to penetrate the human psyche?

And, as a third observation on the theme that is in danger of overstatement, how do we personally react to Courbet’s Origin of the World? Courbet - we now assume – was of the realist school, the group that grew out of the Brabizon painters of the early 19th century, where the everyday was both subject and object of interest. For those who do not know this particular work, it’s in the Musée d’Orsay and depicts, no more and no less than, a close-up of the hirsute genitalia of an unnamed, unknown and an identifiable woman, a viewpoint of a torso that might be achieved just before oral sex. After many years of not seeing light of day, the work is now in the gallery for all to see. It stays the right side of voyeurism, opinion has it, but why, how or in whose opinion is rarely possible to define.

There exist other examples, of course. Velasquez’s Venus was painted some years after that of Rubens. In both paintings a voluptuous back view is presented and in both the viewer is engaged via a mirror held by Cupid. Goya’s unclothed Maya stares at her viewer and she incurred the wrath of the Inquisition. Manet’s Olympia caused a scandal as late as the mid-nineteenth century in Paris, of all places, where brothels were an accepted part of commercial life, where there were at least 150,000 registered prostitutes and where the state took fifty per cent of the transactions in taxes. And it was a woman, Mary Richardson, who attacked the Velasquez in London in 1914. She later said she did not like the way men gaped at the picture, though the initial motive was to protest against the arrest of a suffragette leader.

It has often been said that female nudes in painting exist for the eyes of men. The women depicted, the nostrum has it, are always ideal types, worthy of voyeuristic scrutiny, of elevation to the status of the pornographic. The twentieth century did challenge that notion, especially via the work of artists such as Lucian Freud or Tracy Emin, both of whom have their own complex relationships with sexuality. Indeed, at the opening of Suite Havana in Palau Altea, a companion of mine stated that in her opinion these seemed to be works painted for men.

It is time to describe the work themselves, lest the critique take centre-stage over the content. Suite Havana is a collection of 50 or so naked or near-naked Cuban women. Each painting features one or sometimes two models. Most paintings feature a named individual and she is often returning the gaze of the viewer, just as Titian‘s Venus does. Facial expressions vary from neutral to inviting, from distance to ecstasy. Some works concentrate on particular parts of the body and some subjects are wearing pants or a bikini. All the women are beautiful.

The paintings are mainly acrylic on canvas. There are a few abstract prints, but the style is predominantly what might be called photorealism. These are named, identifiable women, posing naked for us to look at. And, because of the realism of the style, the viewer must get very close to these images to appreciate how they differ from photographs. There are outlines here and there, sometimes in black or blue or white. There are added lines that accentuates something extended from the image itself, for example a lengthened lock of hair, a circle accentuating the buttocks. And most of the women are lying on beds. Just like the one-dimensional imagery of Courbet’s Origin of the World, these subjects are in your face. And clearly intentionally so.

But let’s suppose they were all wearing enough scanty clothing to be socially decent, to break no taboos, and let’s introduce a product of consumer capitalism into the fray. The smiling woman then becomes an enticement to buy, to consume, to associate the perhaps subliminal pleasure the image creates with the featured product, without ever wanting explicitly to suggest that the woman is part of the product being sold. Suppose we remove the woman’s name from each title and replace it with that of the product. I use only generics as examples: toothpaste, 4 x 4 gas guzzler, washing powder, fast food outlet, dishwasher. We all know this is a woman. We all know that women have breasts and genitalia. We all know that these are being offered alongside the commercial product. Why is it seen as taboo if these qualities, these realities, which we all know exist, are revealed? Does our collective problem lie in the suggestion that these women might just be selling themselves? I wish I could answer the question, but asking it is the important act.

I now read that the artist’s Instagram account has been threatened with closure because he has promoted his exhibition with some of its publicly displayed images. Suite Havana and work like it always asks the same question. The medieval European mind was clear at least institutionally that nakedness was a matter of shame. The Renaissance forced a reassessment of this attitude, and it is a reassessment that is still underway, despite Titian‘s, Rembrandt’s, Courbet‘s and other artists’ contributions.

The images themselves are pleasing, in their provocative, arousing and challenging way. They might promise ecstasy, but sometimes the detail differs, such as in the canvas where across the woman’s lower abdomen there is a scar of a Caesarian or a hysterectomy, with a strange, almost umbilical cord of thread trailing towards it from the navel. My friend pointed at the woman’s labia and declared she thought it looked like a wound. I was reminded of Margaret Atwood’s feminist work, The Gash.

Suite Havana is a collection that would cause some people offense. My advice to such people is, “Don’t go there”. But, as ever in art, the questions are always more interesting than the answers. The beauty of these images and their capacity to move anyone who does seek the experience is indisputable.

 

 

Thought on The Golden Ass by Apuleius

In her book Pompeii, Mary Beard counsels wisely, saying that no one can read confident, unequivocal significance into anything dug up in an archaeological site, since we do not know if this particular object was representative, a prized possession, rubbish, discarded, lost, cherished or whatever. What, then, is any contemporary reader to make of perhaps the only piece of Latin fiction from ancient Rome to have survived intact? The Golden Ass by Apuleius in its translation by Robert Graves is certainly readable. It is certainly farcical. But does it prove, for instance, that in ancient Rome, it was quite normal for human beings to change into asses? Or that Roman asses write good Latin?

Imagine an age, two millennia hence, when printed words have become irrelevant, since texts can be downloaded, pre-understood, directly into the brain. Suppose an archaeological dig in the remnants of the only twentieth century city to have been discovered unearthed only one book, a novel from the thriller or crime section of an airport bookshop. One wonders what contemporary readers might conclude about a society from millennia past that appeared to be obsessed with doing violence to young women, since that might appear to be a common thread in much pulp fiction. One is reminded of an episode of Star Trek where Kirk and Spock find themselves in a society where everyone dresses and behaves like film-set Chicago gangsters, because once upon a time a spaceship landed there to leave behind a book about Al Capone.

Perhaps we are missing something in the Golden Ass. Perhaps the regular references to different gods held real significance for the ancients that went beyond storytelling. Perhaps… and so what if it did? Our understanding of the text would be no deeper, our ability to read the book would not be enhanced.

What does strike a modern reader is just how much time Lucius, the book’s principle character, spends thinking about and pursuing opportunities for sex. Or perhaps Apuleius’s text survived from a particular section of the bookshop. Despite some obvious differences, what is very interesting about the Golden Ass is just how mundane and even familiar are many of the situations in the sitcom. Human beings to have seem to have very similar weaknesses within these pages from two millennia ago as they do today. And Lucius’s intensely moral destiny is perhaps similar to a Hollywood denouement, where a hero rides stoically into the sunset, eventually proving to be just too pure, too good for this world. Some things do not appear to change.

Hidden Agendas by John Pilger

 

We consume journalistic opinions on contemporary events almost without realizing it, or perhaps we used to. We expect commentators to express their view, which we then absorb. We agree with it or differ and then move on, often to the next so-called analysis. Of course these views influence our thoughts, but we are critically aware, and accept that not everyone thinks as we do.

It is quite rare to find collections of such pieces, however, rarer to assemble them long after the events they describe and rarer still to produce, as a result, a book which is worth reading from cover to cover. Hidden Agendas by John Pilger is such a book. And reading Hidden Agendas with today's label “fake news” in mind is both and enlightening and rewarding.

First published in 1998, Hidden Agendas collects pieces by its author on various topics, their subjects spanning several decades. There are pieces on the Cold War and, importantly, on the struggle for independence of the East Timorese, going right back to 1974 and the collapse of what was left of the Portuguese Empire. John Pilger also describes his own country’s, Australia's, relations with its own identity and its indigenous peoples. He travels to Burma to describe daily life as well as its poisoned politics and offers analysis that from today's perspective is no less than fascinating. He describes the start of the UK’s Blair era, with New Labour’s leader declaring his intention to realize a Thatcherite dream. We revisit the miners’ strike in the mid-1980s, already viewed from a distance of 15 years. He also touches on the Hillsborough tragedy in a piece on the Sun’s journalism and reminds us that on Merseyside the newspaper is still vilified today because of its coverage of these events. Ironic isn't it that's a contemporary reader can now look back at this analysis from 20 years ago, knowing that for the victims of Hillsborough an inquiry has finally delivered justice, whereas for those of vilified and imprisoned after Orgreave an inquiry is still denied. It seems perverse that justice seems to need deaths.

But by far the most interesting parts of Hidden Agendas are those that deal with the author’s autobiographical accounts of working as a journalist. He begins in Australia, where the media were owned by cartels whose interests they largely promoted. He moved to UK, where something similar was evolving. John Pilger's description of life in the Daily Mirror is thoroughly engaging and impresses because there is a genuine feeling that the newspaper was interested in truth first and posturing second. He offers a convincing defence of the Mirror’s campaigning style and then laments that by 1998 the newspaper had already become just one of the rest.

John Pilger’s often biting criticisms of the print media are, if anything, even more poignant in today's online jungle. At least the media owners he describes were largely self-declared in their allegiances, to such an extent that the posturing was often predictable. In today's Internet miasma, where populism seems to rule and where the origins of opinions are often hard to identify, it is useful to be reminded by John Pilger that the opinion presented as opinion can never be “fake news”, whatever that might be. Opinion masquerading as “fact” is quite simply a lie.

The political Right has never been impressed with John Pilger’s work. But whatever one thinks about the content of his opinion pieces, Hidden Agendas illustrates that he does not give up on causes. The long, hard and largely unnoticed battle on East Timor testifies to his commitment to justice on behalf of those denied it. And, on topics such as the Hillsborough tragedy, mainstream media, at the time, may even have branded Pilger’s position as extreme, or even as “fake news”, since it contradicted the trumped-up story being peddled by the mainstream media. Reading these opinion pieces by John Pilger, one is presented with the contemporary reality that “fake news” is probably opinion that someone doesn't like, opinion that is more easily dismissed with a label rather than by counter argument. Hidden Agendas also reminds us that the only important opinions are those that are proven correct.

Mary Beard’s Pompeii

 

Mary Beard’s Pompeii succeeds in several quite different and sometimes surprising ways. This is a guidebook, a history, a survey of social relations, a description of culture and religion, a catalogue and analysis of art, and an archaeological record.  It is also an excellent read, highly informative, enlighteningly descriptive and scrupulously accurate.

Pompeii is a complicated site. At first glance, it may appear to be very simple. One day in 79 AD a coastal town in modern-day Campania, near Naples, which was then at the heart of a Greco-Roman culture, was buried under volcanic ash that spread from the eruption of the nearby Mount Vesuvius. The town was completely destroyed, smothered under metres of ash. The disaster progressed quickly giving the town's inhabitants little chance of escape, let alone a chance to gather their possessions. This naive description might thus suggest that all archaeologists need to do is uncover what the ash buried, and first century life in a Roman town will be revealed.

The reality, however, is somewhat different. The volcano did erupt and did bring about the end of Pompeii. But the town had previously in AD 62 suffered an earthquake, which had damaged many buildings, some of which was still not repaired in AD79. And Pompeii has been excavated many times. Some digs a couple of centuries ago extracted treasures for the titillation of monarchs, before volcanic ash, original construction materials and much of the historical and other material was randomly piled back to fill the holes. On the other hand, some areas have never been excavated and others still wait to be uncovered, but possibly not for the first time. Much work in previous centuries was undocumented, so who would know? Only the finds, and only some of those, were lodged in museums, and the provenance of many of those remains unclear.

Such a complicated history presents tremendous difficulties for modern archaeologists. There are many layers of possible interpretation, many potential complications. A great strength of Mary Beard's book is that she always acknowledges these difficulties and, where simplistic, convenient or fashionable positions might create more attractive copy, consistently she is cautious with her assertions and considered in her conclusions. Refreshingly, where evidence is lacking, contradictory or merely open to interpretation, she usually leaves the matter open, thus allowing the reader to appreciate how hard it is to be definitive about the unknown.

Descriptions of everyday life in the first century AD are in many ways reassuringly familiar, with one significant exception. The modern reader may be rather shocked by how much daily life seems seemed to revolve around sex. But Mary beard does point out several times that this may be an overstatement. One is tempted to imagine how a modern town might be seen, if, once buried and uncovered, all that could be identified were advertising hoardings along a street where the only shop not to be obliterated sold sex toys. Our contemporary lack of knowledge about Pompeii's inhabitants is illustrated by our inability to decide what might have been stored in the terracotta jars that were built into many of the town’s shop fronts. Mary Beard points out that theories they might have contained wine or oil are undermined by the simple fact that terracotta is porous, so it is more likely they contained dry goods. In one shop, a jar may have been a till, because it was found to contain a stash of small coins. But who knows whether the shop’s owner, frightened by a sudden eruption, merely tipped a box of small coins into the jar in a vain attempt to fill the box with more valuable possessions that might be carried?

The area of life that was clearly different in first century AD was that of religion and beliefs. There seemed to be a market in gods, as well as one in goods, and most buildings seem to have paintings or altars dedicated to a panoply of deities, drawn from several different traditions. Whether people did pick and choose, or whether people’s origins or ethnicity dictated allegiance, we simply do not know.

Pompeii clearly did have its own version of mass entertainment, both in theatre and amphitheatre. There was even a famous riot after a disputed contest, where supporters from a nearby town fought with locals. It made regional news. There was also a local language that was not Latin, but we have precious little of its literature.

A concept such a slavery, which in the modern mind is inextricably linked with the trade of recent colonial powers, is yet another aspect of ancient Roman life that is more complicated than contemporary assumptions allow. Mary Beard regularly refers to the complexity of these relationships throughout the text and long before then end we feel we really have learned something about a culture that quite suddenly feels much more distant than a mere couple of millennia.

Mary Beard's Pompeii is a brilliant book that is worth reading in itself. But anyone who has visited or plans to visit the site will find it brings the experience or memory completely to life. It is a comprehensive description of the site and its culture, but makes clear that there are still stones to be turned. Unusually, however, readers who previously might have thought they were well-informed on the history, culture and archaeology of Pompei might just find, after reading this book, that they knew rather less than they thought.

Vienna 1683 by Heny Elliott Malden

 Vienna 1683 - The history and consequences of the defeat of the Turks before Vienna, September 12, 1683, by John Sobieski, King of Poland and Charles Leopoldo, Duke of Lorraine by Henry Elliot Malden 1883

 

Written two hundred years after the siege, this history of the Christian victory of Sobeieski was enacted around several of the hills near where we were staying in Vienna. Most telling part of the book is its end, where Sobieski leaves as victor, but leader of a nation that would soon lose everything, while those allied with him went from strength to strength and at Poland's expense.

Giacomo Puccini by Wakeling Dry

 

Another Project Gutenberg book is a short biography and critical appraisal of Puccini, written around the time of Madame Butterfly's premiere. It's after Boheme, Manon Lescaut and Tosca, but before Turandot, of course. Puccini was certainly a man of his kind, and unapologetic to boot. Attitudes towards music and especially towards things people are unfamiliar with never fail to amaze.

Leda by Aldous Huxley

 

It's a set of poems and short prose pieces that Project Gutenberg provided. I have not come across these before. In the title piece, Leda, Huxley offers these lines...

 

The smell of his own sweat

Brought back to mind his Libyan desert-fane

Of mottled granite, with its endless train

Of pilgrim camels, reeking towards the sky

Ammonian incense to his horned deity;

The while their masters worshipped, offering

Huge teeth of ivory, while some would bring

Their Ethiop wives - sleek wine skins of black silk,

Jellied and huge from drinking asses' milk

Through years of tropical idleness, to pray

For offspring (whom he ever sent away

With prayers unanswered, lest their ebon race

Might breed and blacken the earth's comely face).

Do we read Brave New World differently once we know these lines? Or do we ascribe to Huxley merely the adopted assumptions of his times?

The Journey of Anders Sparrman by Per Wästberg

To say that The Journey of Anders Sparrman, by Per Wästberg is a tale of two halves would transcend cliché. Rarely will one encounter such an apparently complete transformation of a character mid-way through a story, and even more rarely will one encounter such a thoroughly credible transformation.

This is a story about a scientist, a botanist explorer of the eighteenth century. Anders Sparrman was Swedish and was raised in a straight-laced society. He studied with Linnaeus at a time when a thoroughly new notion of biological species was emerging from beneath the stone laid by the creationism of Christian doctrine. A sense of discovering empiricism pervades this story of a real historical figure. The result is neither biography nor fiction, whilst simultaneously combining elements of both. Events are drawn directly from Sparrman’s life, as recorded in his own journals, but dialogue and encounters between characters are created to embroider the backcloth of fact. This may sound like conventional historical fiction, but the sense of biography in this work is always strong enough to dominate.

Anders Sparrman’s story is told chronologically, a device that only magnifies the eventual transformation of his life. We follow him to sea as a young man. We accompany him on board Captain James Cooke’s voyages of so-called discovery. One feels that Sparrman’s work in natural history is where the real discoveries are taking place, whilst Cooke’s more grandiose and historically more consequential claims might just be a tad overstated. Throughout, Anders Sparrman comes across as a dedicated, perhaps rather staid, sober and conventional documenter of experience. His quest for truth seems nothing less than single-minded, perhaps myopic, and his thirst for detail sometimes seems to exclude any view of a bigger picture.

Back at home in Sweden, he moves from one apparently well done but unappreciated job to another. He takes over the management of an institution and attempts reform, and thus makes enemies and friends, as might be expected. As the years pass, his memories of and achievements within his years of seafaring and travel begin to fade.

But then he discovers sex. She is not particularly young, beautiful or desirable, apparently. Lotta and Anders, we are told, choose one another not because of their merits, their appearance or anything else we might usually associate with breeding partners. Rather, in their case, it was a mutual sense of desperation that brought them together. It is as if both of them clutched at and grasped an opportunity life had resolved to deny them. And then, without qualification, they took a firm grip on their opportunity and went for it.

Anders Sparrman seems suddenly reincarnated. At least his relation to biology is redrawn, since he suddenly transformed from observer to participant, from the narrow end of the microscope onto the slide, so to speak. A bland and probably predictable life suddenly blossoms by virtue of involvement, and simultaneously the empiricism that discovered becomes personal experience that feels and creates.

The Journey of Anders Sparrman, by Per Wästberg thus becomes a difficult kind of reading experience. Lulled into a sense of predictable safety by the devotion and dedication to its subject, we spend most of the book taking risks at sea and in far-off lands without sensing danger. And then, in the comfort of our own home, we are suddenly propelled into a vivid universe of emotional and sexual fulfilment that is as threatening as a warm hearth, but literally takes the breath away. The Journey of Anders Sparrman, by Per Wästberg is a remarkable experience, both as a book and a life.

Stalin by Edvard Radzinski

Edvard Radzinski’s Stalin is literally and figuratively an enormous work. But perhaps a quarter of a million words is still insufficient to do justice to a subject as monstrously bloodthirsty as Jozef Stalin. Even a list of names of those he ordered killed might not be longer than this tome.

Published in 1996, the book claims to be the first in-depth study of Stalin since the release of documents that happened at the demise of the Soviet Union. Exactly what role this material played is still unclear, but what it did not do was change the author’s opinion of his subject. In hindsight, it is perhaps not possible to hold a different view. Today, even the most diehard supporter of Bolshevism would acknowledge the utter perversity of Stalin’s crimes, but what always seems to be lacking in studies such as Edvard Radzinski’s is a fair description of the context in which the excesses unfolded.

What is clear about Stalin is that he was a survivor, despite, or perhaps because of the fact that many who became associated with him were not. From the very start, however, as a local activist in Georgia, he was a ruthless operator. In the name of collective action, he displayed a single-minded devotion to self-promotion. Like a stereotypical gangland streetfighter, he survived by standing on the bodies of those he could knock down. Thus, in a state that claimed its authority came from “the people”, Stalin became, effectively, the archetypal absolute monarch. Like in medieval kingdoms, where so many people at court seemed to end their lives on a chopping block having offended the all-powerful ruler, there was apparently no shortage of those who were willing to be admitted to the dangerous inner circle. Perhaps the rewards were worth the risk. Perhaps refusal, especially in the case of Stalin, guaranteed an even faster promotion to the butcher’s axe.

Overall, the book is rather predictable and even reads like polemic in places. Perhaps worth reading… I finished it two years ago and thought it not worth reviewing…

Overstory by Richard Powers

 

Overdone.

Overblown.

Overlong.

Ecosystems promote diversity: markets do the opposite. A single line worth reading was worth the sheer boredom of the rest.

What a failed idea, which was to write a novel about environmental issues from the point of view of campaigners, forests and their roots... Just does not work. 

Enough.

Amores percussion, Maria Maica, Elia Casanova in Alicante and International Chamber Orchestra in Alfas del Pi

 

Three concerts in four days…

Despite Spain’s rising number of coronavirus cases, concert halls are open. The audiences wear masks, seat suitably distanced, regularly disinfect their hands, have their temperatures checked and wait in an orderly fashion to be dismissed at the end. 

In one of the more memorable musical evenings, part of ADDA Alicante’s contemporary music festival, percussion group Amores with sopranos María Maciá, and Èlia Casanova presented a programme of Stockhausen and Hildegard of Bingen. It’s not often that works separated by 800 years are programmed side by side. And it is even less likely they will connect with the narrative. Three plain song pieces by Hildegard von Bingen were performed by Èlia Casanova and these were interposed with ten of the Tierkreis, twelve zodiac pieces by Stockhausen. This constituted thirteen pieces and so the concert was called Thirteen, Dreizehn.

Now this number, with its connotations of bad luck, the devil and betrayal, seemed to be significant in the concert’s narrative. As the evening progressed, a transformation took place which, eventually, was seen not as a transformation at all, merely a nuance of interpretation.

Assisted occasionally by a synthesizer Èlia Casanova began by singing Hildegard‘s plainsong on Christian texts. She wore white, though with a thin black veil, and apparently sang from an open book of light. She also, just once, used a musical box, which also served to remind the audience that the Stockhausen pieces were originally written for that medium.

At the end of Èlia Casanova’s first piece, María Maciá, dressed all in black, appeared. It was clear from the very moment of her entry that that this is a very different version of womanhood from the contemplative nun that was Hildegard of Bingen. María Maciá then sang, alongside the percussion trio, four of the ten chosen zodiac pieces. There followed another Hildgard plainchant, three more Zodiac pieces, another plainchant and then the final three Zodiac signs, the last one featuring both sopranos, united in their mutual transformation.

The sung part of Stockhausen‘s music consisted of vocalized seductive syllables and sounds associated with each astrological sign, including in Pisces singing underwater! What you can probably see coming is these two different versions of womanhood seemed to influence one another, transforming the purity of Hildegard into something more earthy and earthly. This also happened musically, as the last of the plainchant developed an accidental here or there, adopted a rhythmic character and was thus transformed into a pop song, jazz singing or even blues.

The transformation was complete, both personal and musical, but the musical changes had been minimal, reminding us of the fundamentally modal character of popular music to this day. And so an unlikely juxtaposition made perfect narrative sense.

The two concerts of La Socieded de Conciertos de la Musica Clasica were structured more conventionally. Violinist Joaquin Palomares led the International Chamber Group in both concerts, but in different formats, a quartet which never actually played as a quartet and an octet that behaved at times like an orchestra.

In the quartet concert, we had the Sonata opus 3 no.4 for two violins of Leclair, Beethoven’s Sonatensatz duo for viola and cello, the Madrigals of Martinu for violin and viola and finally the Mozart Divertimento No1 K39b for string trio.

And then on the Saturday we heard the octet in Elgar’s Serenade, Tchaikovsky’s Nocturne for cello and orchestra, Ernest Bloch’s Prayer for the same grouping and Piazzolla’s Tango Ballet.

The evening was completed by a performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet which, as ever, created its own space and time. Four days, three concerts and almost every work in a different musical style.

Like Life – the catalogue by Luke Syson, Sheena Wagstaff, Emerson Bowyer, and Brinda Kumar

Like Life was a 2018 sculpture exhibition at New York's Met Breuer Museum. Its catalogue of the same name not only illustrates many of the exhibits but also presents several analytical essays of a substantial and challenging nature. The catalogue is worthy of recognition in its own right and can be appreciated by anyone interested in art, even those who have not seen the exhibition. It presents a significant contribution to our appreciation of the three-dimensional art which we tend to label “sculpture” and its insights go significantly beyond what may be described as art criticism. The convoluted nature of this description will be understood by anyone who reads this book, because its approach is always to question the received values through which we interpret our experience of art. Indeed, these essays might even challenge our understanding of anything we might see through the lens of prejudice, assumption or merely interpretation. In short, everything. Like Life, the catalogue, thus becomes almost a disturbing experience. We know much more by the end, but only by realizing how little of ourselves and our perception that we actually understand.

Like Life is obviously a pun on life-like. It may also be read as a command, associated with liking life, which would be ironic, since the still life that these forms present is translated in many languages not as still, but dead. One of the threads that binds the discussion is that when sculpture becomes literally like life, it has generally been dismissed by critics as artefact, thus relegated and denied the label art. And at the heart of the discussion is the use of colour.

Modelled on a misplaced assumption that classical sculpture was expressed via a visual language derived from the unblemished whiteness of marble, the story of sculpture unfolded via this misunderstood desire to reproduce classical values through both purity of whiteness and fineness of finish. Like Life not only reminds us that these classical works were originally polychrome, it also asserts that this false set of values conveniently coincided with the European view that whiteness was always superior, and that anything coloured was, by inspection, inferior. Anything polychrome was thus firmly relegated to the ambit of the artisan, not the artist. And it was this assumption that for centuries effectively separated the worlds of sculpture and painting.

The original Met Breuer exhibition displayed sculpture from the later medieval era up to the present day, but non-chronologically. It juxtaposed items to illustrate themes, contrasts and contradictions in a thoroughly stimulating way. The catalogue of Like Life also does this, but the intellectual arguments within its texts are perhaps even more arresting than the visual punches the exhibition delivered.

Why is it that in painting, an attempt to render flesh flesh-coloured is normal even laudable,, whereas in sculpture it has for centuries been seen as devaluing the object? Why is it that we expect a sculptor to start with stone, wood or wax and work it into an image of their choice, rather than mould directly from the human form? Why do we still reject realism, when that realism depicts the everyday objects we normally do not associate with art? Why do expect idealised human forms, rather than real people, defects, foibles and all? Why is it that the sculpted naked human form still generally does not depict genitals? Why do we devalue sculpture that is modelled directly from life? What becomes clear quite early on in this journey through a history of sculpture is that the process it illustrates could be applied to any artistic form upon which we are willing to offer opinions. It could be painting, music, theatre, literature, poetry, etc. Upon what basis do we describe value or worth, upon what set of rules do we ascribe artistic value? And what controlling role do our presumptions play in editing what we see, or at least our interpretation of what we see? And, perhaps most important of all, if we are slaves to our presumptions, who or what generated them?

Functionality has always been a consideration. If an object is wholly divorced from use, then it has always been more likely, in our Western mode of thinking, that is, to be regarded as art. Mannequins in shopfronts, just like polychrome inflated cherubs decorating altarpieces, have always been seen as functional rather than artistic. A sculptor who chisels at a block of jasper to model a bust produces art, sometimes, whereas an undertaker who plaster-casts a death mask does not. But then, a death mask is not representing life, is it? It shows a form incapable of movement, after all. But then how can we see a still life as art, because that cannot move, can it?

Viewing the exhibition itself and certainly reading the catalogue can literally change the way a person looks at the world. A flea market that used to offer repeated tables of junk, now presents objects that have a reason to exist. What the observer must try to glean is why the maker of the object decided to represent that thing, in that way, in that material and in that colour. Like Life thus leads to complication. What previously was seen, and perhaps largely ignored, becomes objectified, separate, worthy of being looked at actively, rather than received in a passive, even dismissive way. Not many books have this kind of effect on their readers.

Like Life is as much a challenge as it is a presentation. Yes, we are presented with images of sculpture and asked to react. But the commentary often offers such a radically different approach from that which we may assume that it really does challenge us to reinterpret and re-evaluate our presumptions. It is what art is supposed to do, isn’t it?

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Prisuelo-Sanford and Ars Musicandum in Alicante

 

Like most places on the planet, the pandemic has denied us the opportunity of hearing live music in a hall with volume for several months. Our last concerts in Alfas del Pi were in the first week of March, so imagine the elation created by the granting of free tickets by ballot to two restricted-access contemporary music events in ADDA, Alacante! And imagine the elation produced by the quality of the experience generated!

In one of the most original musical evenings of some sixty years of concert-going, Mario Prisuelo and Maximiliano Sanford offered an evening entitled Oceánica - Un océano no siempre tranquilo….  It was billed as a dance event, but the program suggested a piano recital. Intrigued, we awaited the start with the Steinway up against the left edge of the stage. The dancer entered from within the audience, to a refrain of four notes, slapped with his palms against a bare chest. He continued as his pianist also took the stage and loosened his formal tie. And then the concert began with the Opus 34 Preludes of Shostakovich. The four slaps, clearly, were a toneless version of DSCH, Shostakovich’s musical signature, indicating the presence of a vulnerable individual, no more, no less.

Mario Prisuelo’s playing of the Preludes was breathtakingly beautiful. Maximiliano Sanford danced an interpretation of the music, his ability to leap headfirst and land silently was beautiful as well as both evocative and unintrusive. The combination could have failed, could have been overtly pretentious, but in fact it worked supremely well, the movement complementing and interpreting the musical shapes. The contrasting allegro and adagio, major and minor being seen via this inventive choreography as deeply felt emotion, a Romanticism that many might not associate with the music of Shostakovich.

A short speech located the whole experience as a voyage to Ithaca, a perfect destination where an individual can obtain self-realization, despite threats along the way. Projected text floated across the stage and at no point did it intrude into the musical space.

At the end of the piece, the performers advanced the piano across the stage, probably to signify progress on the journey. Then we heard El Amor y La Muerte, Love and Death by Granados with a change in choreographic style. The late Romanticism of Granados might have jarred after the Shostakovich, but in fact the music sounded almost more contemporary then what went before. It was as if the progress on the ideal journey generated joy and enthusiasm in the quest, and this despite the strange foreboding that characterizes this piece, which perhaps signified some of the dangers that had to be overcome on the way.

Another piano progress took the instrument to just right of center stage. Our dancer was probably exhausted by now and spent much of the next piece lying motionless on the floor. It was apposite because the piece was Shadow by Rebecca Saunders. We were perhaps at the point in the journey where the endpoint seems to have receded and all experience seems to oppress, to oppose, to turn to nothing. The music repeatedly pounded our potential hero into the ground, and he was left alone.

The piano progressed again to the right edge of the stage. And the final piece was a neoclassical-cum-minimalist celebration of rhythm, David del Puerto’s Danza. It was the achievement of the goal, the end of the journey, but unreflective in its elation, its apparent rhythmic progress leading eventually to precisely nowhere. Nowhere, that is, except a return to the realization that whatever goal we set ourselves, we begin as an individual and complete our task as that same individual, still vulnerable, still putting out those four tones on our bare chest, DSCH, me, just me. Nothing more. What a superbly thought out and presented experience this was.

That was Saturday evening and, at lunchtime on Sunday, we were two rows back in the same hall at ADDA in Alicante for a performance by Ars Musicandum, a saxophone quartet. What was intriguing about this concert was its presentation of a programme of music by composers who were all from the same small town, Rafal, population 4500, south of Alicante.

We began with a Romantic Quartet by Agustin Bertomeu, born 1928. Written in a pre-dominantly neo-classical style, it mixed rhythmic exploration and clear lines with occasional harmonic clashes.

Next was Subreptos by Sixto Herrero, who is the soprano player and spokesperson for the band. This was a piece written in neo-primitive style, where line and harmony were not the goals. The four saxophones visited the droning horns of Tibetan temple music, the sung-through mumbling of Australian didgeridoos, the sounds and occasionally timeless meandering of the Japanese flute. I am sure there were more influences as well. Overall, the primitivism reminded us of how foreign and utterly strange this imagined, but still utterly human sound world now seems to ears trained to expect tonality, rhythm and form.

The third piece was AL-LA by Jesus Mula, another composer from Rafal and the final piece by Sixto Herrero was Aonides del Viento. There was cultural deconstruction, popular themes and Bach-like chorales, even a fugue of sorts, becoming fractured and jagged.

Overall Ars Musicandum presented a sophisticated, complex musical argument that was communicated lucidly and expertly by the quartet. There were two encores, both arrangements by Sixto Herrero and the group received rapturous applause for the brilliant performance.

It’s been a long time. But what a comeback!

 

Crown of Blood, The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey by Nicola Tallis

When they advance, pawns become queens. But to advance, they usually need support from a bishop or a knight from behind the walls of a castle, assuming, of course, that the king, as usual, remains capable of relatively little, but also assuming that he, himself, survives. Without that living male, promotion to queen cannot happen. But by what rules and in which game does a pawn become advanced by such castles, knights and bishops to find herself still a pawn, a queen in name only, and only for long enough to arrange her own decapitation? The King, of course, had not survived, and a queen without a King breaks the rules. Young women called Jane Grey seem to have been particularly vulnerable to this fate.

Crown of Blood by Nicola Tallis is, effectively, a political biography of Queen Jane, the first woman to be named as the occupant of the English throne and the only occupant never to have been crowned. Born of the Tudor line, Jane's claim to the English throne was significant. Her grandmother had been Mary Tudor, youngest daughter of Henry VII and she was thus a full cousin to the King, Edward VI.

In the mid-16th century, England was riven by political difference driven by religious and ideological conflict and was further plunged into confusion by the untimely death of Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII. But Henry's two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, had by some, including at one stage their own father, been branded as illegitimate, and therefore ineligible to inherit the throne. Confusion still surrounds exactly what Henry VIII, himself, thought of their individual succession rights. After the birth of a son, Edward, the matter was irrelevant, in any case.

Edward, a staunch Protestant, above all else wanted his own version of the Christian faith to prevail. He was a teenager when he started to ail, and his thoughts were turned reluctantly towards his succession and the continuance of the religious revolution he had furthered was uppermost in his prioritied. Thus he nominated Jane Grey as his successor, the move calculated both to promote his Protestantism and to discredit his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, one because she was a Catholic and the other because her mother had, it was alleged, humiliated his father through acts of infidelity. In his eyes neither was worthy of the crown. Lady Jane Grey, on the other hand, was a pious Protestant, from a good family, of Royal Blood and of serious, even learned disposition. Ostensibly, she even had the support of several nights and even a bishop, plus that of her ambitious family in their castle. These could have been the perfect circumstances to promote her advancement to queen. Amongst her backers, however, it was ambition and self-interest that unfortunately underpinned support for the teenage Lady Jane and, as a woman, she was powerless either to influence or counteract that scheming.

Thus, she was married to one Guildford to make a friendly alliance between powerful families, declared queen and admitted to the tower of London for her own safety. Mary, however, had popular support by virtue of her having been King Henry's first daughter and a military skirmish confirmed her greater and now pragmatic claim to the throne. Jane Grey’s protection in the tower thus became imprisonment under the influence of a victorious Mary. Jane’s supporters largely disowned her, while those who didn't lost their heads and their innards. Jane herself was tried, found guilty of treason and beheaded. Mary showed clemency in deciding not to burn her cousin.

What is so upsetting about this story is its apparent inevitability. Jane's major problem, it seemed, was that she was a woman. She had no rights. She was a mere pawn, moved at will by others and advanced for their own gain. Her story is this is not a tragedy, but a conspiracy. She was party to that conspiracy, but she was also trapped and probably could not have extricated herself from its vice, even if she had tried harder to do so. Like women of her age, she was chattel, so much meat to be haggled over by a bunch of property-owning, self-promoting barrow-boys looking for a profit.

The raw and calculated callousness exhibited by anyone in the position of power or influence over the life or status of Lady Jane Grey is more than merely shocking. Its consequences are genuinely upsetting. Here was a young woman used and then discarded when her attributes did not profit those who backed her. The example this presents reminds us that there were many others, who were not royal, who suffered similar but unrecorded fates.

Crown of Blood by Nicola Tallis examines this history in fine and accurate detail. This is a serious study of the political and legal dimensions of the case. But is also a biography, and the delves as deeply as sources allow into the background, development and character of Lady Jane Grey. The author offers a truly historical account, researching sources and judging their veracity or otherwise. Even in history, it is always easier to make it up, to deliver what current values assume. But that is fiction, not history, and Nicola Tallis’s book always inhabits what can be justified.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that Lady Jane Grey was also known as Jane Dudley, because that would remind us of the family’s status just a few years later when Robert Dudley became the favourite of Elizabeth I. Indeed, part of the case that was eventually levelled against Robert Dudley referred back to the treasonous activities of the family in relation to Lady Jane’s advancement to queen.

As is often the case in history, the rich and powerful can bathe their hands in blood, knowing that the consequences will never come their way. Reading details of the callous intrigue, the self-promotion and sheer selfishness that surrounded the elevation and then decapitation of this young woman reminds us of how much, or indeed how little, has changed since the sixteenth century.

History of Modern Art by H H Arnason

  

H H Arnason’s History of Modern Art is certainly worth reading. Even if you have no interest in art, you will at least benefit from the weightlifting. This is not a tome: it's almost a library in paperback. And it needs to be extensive, since the term “modern” can mean anything to anyone, even when the significance of the perhaps more problematic term “art” is pre-agreed.

The book is true to its title in that it not only catalogues the movements, the individuals and the concepts that have created what we called modern art, it's also traces the origins of the concept of modernism, itself. Each “ism” of the artistic philosophy and history is listed, its essential characteristics are described and its principal protagonists introduced. There is usually one illustration per artist, always with an associated and insightful mini critique from the author. Occasionally, there are two or three illustrations per artist, and sometimes artists appear in more than one chapter, indicating they underwent stylistic transformations during the modern era. It should be noted that there are very few such artists, indicating how rare such stylistic flexibility has been manifest.

Most readers of this History of Modern Art by H H Arnason will surely want to use it like an encyclopedia that catalogues individual artists. And, of course, the work will function perfectly well as a reference book, since it is explicitly indexed and provides an extensive bibliography. But the quality of the author’s narrative style renders it both a coherent and rewarding read, cover to distant cover.

The material deals with painting, sculpture, architecture and photography. It focuses on the 20th century, which is surely more than enough for one volume. It does tend to concentrate on the United States, but Europe does figure large alongside it. There are examples from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Australasia as well. Since the book concentrates on styles and movements, there is just a chapter or two devoted continents other than Europe or North America. The coverage, however, is undeniably extensive.

What is the History of Modern Art demonstrates, however, is how this modern era has increasingly enshrined the status of the individual and his or her personal experience. Thus, as the 20th century progresses from broader movements such as Impressionism or Expressionism towards the perhaps the quintessential personal statement of Performance, we feel that the artistic expression becomes progressively a more private, internal reality publicly displayed. Art, arguably, has always been like this, but it seems that as the 20th century progressed, not only the content but also the language of the expression became ever more personalized and individual. Individual artists and even individual works thus confront the observer with the dual challenge of relating to an object via its own language. The viewer cannot assume anything, cannot expect to take familiar routes or arrive at envisaged destinations. And it is here the H H Arnason's work excels, because the author provides carefully constructed, succinct descriptions of style, motivation and form, alongside potted critiques of each illustrated work.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is how the author juxtaposes is the apparently increasing tendency for art to present protest within the context of having to market a product. The inter-relationships between individual, community, capitalism, mass production, consumerism and objectification recur throughout the text, and the comments are always enlightening. So, anyone who is interested to say, “I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like”, should read this History of Modern Art from beginning to end and then the void of the first part of the quote might at least be partially filled. And for those who already know something, the book will pleasurably lead to more.