So, I'll start off with a bonus compilation tape. When I was doing my original 101 Songs blog, which was all about themed 10 song lists, I always wanted to to do 10 Songs about Art and Artists. but never thought there were enough, but in fact there are more than enough.
Here's a nice compilation, it's quite loose
The Jungle Line - Joni Mitchell
Pablo Picasso - The Modern Lovers
Mona Lisa - Nat King Cole
Interiors - Manic Street Preachers
Debaser - The Pixies
Vincent - Don McLean
Andy Warhol - David Bowie
Michelangelo - Emmylou Harris
Painting by Chagall - The Weepies
The Model - Belle and Sebastian
Viva La Vida - Coldplay
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - The Beatles
The Art Teacher - Rufus Wainwright
Magritte - John Cale
Pictures of Matchstick Men - Status Quo
Picasso Baby - Jay-Z
When I Paint My Masterpiece - Bob Dylan
Painting People Blue - Gruff Rhys
Wings of Speed - Paul Weller
What Light - Wilco
Quite a lot of the greats of rock'n'roll have tried their hand, or more, at painting, including Joni Mitchell, Dylan, McCartney, Bowie, John Lydon etc. Whatever default contempt this is met by, and how many folk think they're being smart by suggesting they stick to their day job, I think it's fair enough and think it's interesting in and of itself, and have no problem with stuff being exhibited on the basis of name alone. The fact is, to someone like me, a selection of sketches from travels around the world by Bob Dylan ARE more interesting because they're by Bob Dylan. I've got no qualms about saying that's my approach to painting.
I've limited aesthetic sense, I'm not the kind of dude (or pseud) who spends hours staring at one painting and tries to say insightful things about colour and brushwork. I'm kidding no one.
Yet, I've really come to love visiting galleries. I'd get dragged round them as a child with my much more genuinely art-loving family (one notorious trip to the Whitechapel Gallery to be baffled by the works of someone called Ian McKeever sticks in the mind), I remember a fearsomely dull school trip to the National Portrait Gallery too (come on, there is a lot of dull in the Portrait Gallery) and I was discouragingly poor at art myself. [Mrs Holmes, a diminutive South African school art teacher who sneezed like a Latin alas - eheu!eheu! - broke my spirit when she first encountered my laboured attempts with quite the worst moment of teaching I ever encountered. "I can't believe you're James McGaughey's brother" in reference to my bro whose fine, grand paintings had pride of place on display all over the school. Though I commonly visualise schooldays as a load of mean young fuckers being relentlessly mean, I do remember someone (I sadly can't remember who) piping up in my defence with "he's good at other things" which was nice]. Anyway, since I became an adult, as I was saying, I love going to galleries.
Whichever city I'm in, I'll always schedule in as many galleries as I can. And, as I say, I'm very much from the "tick off the famous name" school of art enjoyment. I've got decent, at least, at guessing what's by who - that's my own way to make it more fun. I get my Kandinsky confused with my Malevich sometimes, my Renoir with my Degas, but I'm not too bad. I used to mainly like post-1850 stuff, but who couldn't delight in the likes of Durer and Bosch and all their lunacy.
I'm aware I sound like a boor. I'm playing up to it a little. In fact, I sound rather like the main character in the book I just read, 'Us' by David Nicholls. The 50-odd year old scientist who is a narrator provides a hilariously knowledgeable, enthusiastic but reductive and uncomprehending view of the art world and its history. That's me all over. Visual art is one of those things that's not my thing but I love it in my own way.
Anyway, I've mentioned books so let's switch media, shall we, since it's a jolly Sunday. OK, I'll start with a literary compilation. Not having made it yet, I imagine there'll be quite a few of the usual suspects. Let's see.
Wrapped Up in Books - Belle and Sebastian
Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
Absolute Beginners - The Jam
Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits
Desolation Row - Bob Dylan
Don't Stand So Close To Me - The Police
Killing an Arab - The Cure
Paperback Writer - The Beatles
Gurdjieff's Daughter - Laura Marling
Cemetery Gates - The Smith
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
There She Goes My Beautiful World - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Bit weak, that list, bit obvious. There's lots of songs inspired by books, anyway ... all those lyric writers like to let us know they've read books.
As do I! So, yeah, I just read Us, it was good. He's a nice writer, very good at writing scenes, very funny, easy to read. I didn't buy the ending, it was both too gut-wrenching and too sentimental. Before that I read The Sound and the Fury, and before that The Girl on the Train, a recent bestseller (I read it on trains).
My ability to select books to read has recently gone awry, as I had previously been good at finding books acclaimed enough to make me seem clever but easy to read enough to be a pleasure. Of these last three, two are definitely not "literary" enough and the other, The Sound and the Fury, was as hard work, at times, as a book can be. Yes, rewarding, though. Yes, yes. Mmmhmm.
Hopefully, I've got my touch back with my next choice, as it's a recent Booker winner and, having just started it, seems very readable. Long, though. Might have to read a book about boxing or pop music first.
Anyway, Us was written by the chap who wrote Starter for Ten and his monster bestseller One Day, which I also succumbed to. So, let's switch media again for a little afterthought. One Day, such a popular bestseller, seemed made for a breakout British romcom-weepie Bridget Jones type smash, but the film failed pretty badly, almost certainly mainly because of the terrible casting of Anne Hathaway, who did one of the worst accents in the history of cinema and consequently ruined what would otherwise have been a nice film.
What makes a terrible accent? Let's be fair about this. It varies. We all suddenly become experts in accents. People talking about dodgy accents in Gangs of New York, like we're suddenly all experts in how people spoke in 19th century New York. Or dodgy accents in Game of Thrones, like we're all suddenly experts in how people ought to speak in mythical kingdoms.
But Anne Hathaway had no leeway. She was playing a beloved character, already visualised and realised by millions of potential viewers, the character was from Britain not America, the character was from Yorkshire, not anywhere else in Britain. Gosh, while watching, I tried to give a bit of leeway that the character went to uni in Edinburgh then lived in London so would have a slightly odd accent, but not that one, Anne, not that one.
But all sorts of actual people do have funny accents, that should be remembered. We should try to give accents the benefit of the doubt, I reckon. Tom Wilkinson gets so much work in America, but he always sounds to me like he's the English guy "dewin my Amairric'n acc'nt", but he never ruins a film, clearly, otherwise he wouldn't keep getting the work. We can just remember that quite a lot of Americans, say those from New England, have that slightly anglo element to their accent, and let it be.
I watched the recent Far From the Madding Crowd recently, and they had a Belgian playing Farmer Oak - Matthias Schoenaerts, and that was kind of a weird choice because it's hard for Belgians to sound like they're from the West Country, and sometimes, despite his best efforts, you heard his European creeping through.
But, unlike with Hathaway, where it was clearly a terribly compromised casting decision and a bad one, Schoenaerts seemed really the right man for the role. Oak is a character of stillness, immutability, nobility, in touch with nature and the old world, and that's quite a tough thing to carry off, and that dude, Matthias Schoenaerts, he has it. So I told myself "maybe they did sound like that in this so-called Wessex in the 19th century" and I just about accepted it.
There aren't hard and fast rules for shitty accents. I didn't mind Dominic West's in The Wire but it irritated me him doing the self-same thing in The Affair. Ewan McGregor's American accent always seems rubbish to me but in Big Fish, he's playing Albert Finney as a young man, so, you know, the rules are slightly different.
Anyway, anyway, I need to find a way to get this back to artists. Erm, Bob Dylan ... I've been to see his art on display. I don't particularly care if he's accomplished or not. Some critics said he was quite accomplished, some said he wasn't. I thought he had some nice tales to tell, and I liked the way his paintings were displayed entirely without fuss in the Portrait Gallery. I like the fact that he's had an exhibition of wrought iron gates, that he's been a DJ, that he's written a book or two, I don't think people should stick to their day jobs. I don't think people shouldn't have a go at doing accents. As long as we reserve the right to be brutally unfair whenever the mood takes us, anything goes ...
No comments:
Post a Comment