So Many American Remakes, So Few Ideas

Many people are very excited by tonight's Oscar award ceremony.  My opinion of Oscar award got lower every year and when they failed to even nominate a watershed performance by Kristin Scott Thomas in Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long), I stopped to value it at all.  However, I cannot avoid hearing of it. And again, it snubbed another good performance in a language other than English or American, Noomi Rapace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  In regardless if the books are hyped or not, it is undeniable that Ms. Rapace gave an outstanding performance and received no recognition by Oscar.  As in the case of Kristin Scott Thomas, she received British Film Award nomination for best actress as well.  Of course, there are always exceptions.  This year, Oscar did nominated a performance in a Spanish language film - that of Javier Bardem in Buitiful.

It seems that America has an aversion to cultural products made in language other than English.  To read a subtitle?  God forbidden.  No wonder Hollywood once again planned a remake.  It is almost inevitable.  In an Guardian article, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo director lashes out at US remake, "The director of the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has questioned the need for the upcoming American remake, reigniting a long-running war of words over Hollywood raiding foreign language films to repackage them for a global audience."  Director Niels Arden Oplev says no one can compete with Swedish actor Noomi Rapace's Lisbeth Salander.  The article continued: "But however critically garlanded a film is, if an English-speaking audience has to read subtitles, it will automatically reduce the film's chances at the box office, and confine it to the status of art film, whatever its content."  It is very depressing.

There have been a rash of remakes, not only in subtitled movie or television shows.  There are two very well received, rather recent British TV shows - The Office and Skins, and both were subjected to American remakes.  What are the compelling reasons behind these?  The British accents are not hard to understand and no subtitles need to read here.  The obvious reasons to me are to tone down caustic satires and social commentaries which made American audience uncomfortable.

Dumbing them down.

It also shows that how depleted Hollywood is.  It is a place devoid of ideas.

When I grew up in China, all the foreign films were dubbed, instead of subtitled, and innocent Chinese audience had the notion that foreigners spoke in a stylized, glamorous way which turned out to be untrue.  People in all the part of the world speak in rather natural ways not dissimilar to those by the Chinese.  Nowadays, Chinese people watch foreign language movies with subtitles, due to the increased literacy rate.  Subtitled actually are preferred amongst many because they are less censured.  Perhaps, Hollywood is preparing us for a very low literacy rate, which is not unlikely, considering our governments of all levels are slicing educational funding as in slicer movies on steroids.

I'm not trying to say not all the remakes are not warranted.  Some classics can and perhaps could use a fresh look and re-thinking, like True Grit by the Coen brothers. 

I also would love to see Cate Blanchett or Kristin Scott Thomas as Blanche du Bois.  But who can match the irresistible mixture of unbridled sex appeal and animal danger of Marlo Brando amongst today's leading men?  None.  Therefore, let's not have that remake of A Streetcar Named Desire yet.

Depicting Painting with Music Notes

I have always been fascinated by one art form depicting another.  If it involves creating, then it would be even better.  A case in study is the book The Girl with Pearl Earrings.

The most challenging case would be trying to depict visuals with music notes.  I have been meditated on this theme for a long time and today's San Francisco Chronicle review of San Francisco Symphony's performance propelled me to finish this draft.  The review, S.F. Symphony review: A superb 'Rothko Chapel', stated that:

In Davies Symphony Hall on Wednesday night, Michael Tilson Thomas introduced "Rothko Chapel," one of Feldman's richest and most haunting works, to the San Francisco Symphony repertoire. The piece is a virtuoso display of minimalist lyricism, and the few performers onstage gave it a mesmerizing performance.

Written in 1971 for the opening of the interfaith chapel in Houston built around Mark Rothko's paintings, "Rothko Chapel" marks a confluence of several strains in Feldman's work. As ever, the rhetoric is subdued, the tempos slow, the textures sparse and suggestive, and the instrumentation - for solo viola, chorus, percussion and celesta - is a determinative feature of the piece.

But there are other elements in play as well that tie the music directly to its setting. The viola, which is clearly a protagonist and emotional stand-in for the composer, relocates physically to different parts of the stage, adding a spatial dimension to the music.

"Rothko Chapel" is also more explicitly sectional than many of Feldman's works, conjuring up an image of Rothko's paintings being looked at one by one (shades of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition"). And Feldman's writing - particularly the gentle block chords sung by the chorus, which Thomas aptly likened to a cross between Webern and Duke Ellington - is a correlative in sound to Rothko's fields of color, with their solid centers and vaporous edges.

It must be a wonderful evening - I wish was there.  

In last couple month's, I've been listening to a recording including Respighi - Gli Uccelli/Il Tramonto/Trittico Botticelliano.  Trittico Botticelliano is a three-part orchestral suite, based on the impression from Botticelli's three incomparable masterpieces - La Primavera (Spring), L'adorazione dei Magi, and La Nascità di Venere (The Birth of Venus), all reside in Uffizi Museum.

This suite was conceived by Ottorino Respighi in 1927, during his trip to Washington, D.C.  The music was not very photo-realistic and the title helped to set the mood and the way to understand it, quite similar to the better-known Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, and unlike some quite vivid poems like La mer by Claude Debussy, which would be hard to miss the topic as the sea.

Back to Respighi.  Apparently, he tried to imitate or suggest some old music idiom, as far back as Renaissance period, and the echoing of Vivaldi was palpable.  As for the middle piece, a section based on hymn helped to establish the character.  However, the overall effect was much established by the suggestions of melody and rhythm, which can be seen as parallel to the paintings the music notes were trying to depict.  However, a knowledge of these paintings would be extremely helpful for the listeners to make connections of the aural impact and visual memories.  It might be very interesting to listen to these pieces with copies of the paintings in front me, but I haven't tried yet.  Perhaps I ought to.







The above-mentioned Pictures at an Exhibition is another good example.  However, the artworks Mussorgsky based on are lost to us and I have to admit that I have more difficulty in understanding this than that by Respighi.  Therefore, I'll rely more on Wikipedia:

It was probably in 1870 that Mussorgsky met artist and architect Viktor Hartmann. Both men were devoted to the cause of an intrinsically Russian art and quickly became friends. Their meeting was likely arranged by the influential critic Vladimir Stasov who followed both of their careers with interest.

Hartmann died from an aneurysm in 1873. The sudden loss of the artist, aged only 39, shook Mussorgsky along with others in Russia's art world. Stasov helped organize an exhibition of over 400 Hartmann works in the Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, Russia in February and March 1874. Mussorgsky lent works from his personal collection to the exhibit and viewed the show in person. Fired by the experience, he composed Pictures at an Exhibition in six weeks. The music depicts an imaginary tour of an art collection. Titles of individual movements allude to works by Hartmann; Mussorgsky used Hartmann as a working title during the work's composition. He described the experience to Stasov in June 1874: "Hartmann is seething as Boris was. Sounds and ideas float in the air and my scribbling can hardly keep pace with them."

Mussorgsky based his musical material on drawings and watercolours by Hartmann produced mostly during the artist's travels abroad. Locales include Poland, France and Italy; the final movement depicts an architectural design for the capital city of Ukraine. Today most of the pictures from the Hartmann exhibit are lost, making it impossible to be sure in many cases which Hartmann works Mussorgsky had in mind.

Mussorgsky links the suite's movements in a way that depicts the viewer's own progress through the exhibition. Two "Promenade" movements stand as portals to the suite's main sections. Their regular pace and irregular meter depicts the act of walking. Three untitled interludes present shorter statements of this theme, varying the mood, colour and key in each to suggest reflection on a work just seen or anticipation of a new work glimpsed.

More broadly speaking, his Night on Bald Mountain and Debussy's La mer can be called musical landscape paintings.  Several tone poems by Richard Strauss and Jean Sibelius fall into this category too.  I love Sibelius' tone poems greatly, particularly his The Swan of Tuonela. I admire Strauss greatly, particularly his songs and opera, but have to cringe a bit of the banality in his tone poems, such as however masterful they are.  Such as Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), Op. 40 (1899) and Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), Op. 64 (1915).  But then, he redeemed himself with his sublime Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), Op. 24 (1888-89).





Even more broadly, one can say that some music pieces are portraits as well.  The best known example of this is Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (Op. 55), also known as the Eroica (Italian for "heroic"), which was a dedication and semi-official biography and portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The challenge and admiration between painters and musicians are often mutual and the traffic goes both directions. Even I attempted to capture some music making with my paint brush:

Characterization or Caricaturization

Last December, I went to Oakland Museum for Pixar exhibit and was quite impressed thus I got hold of a copy of Finding Nemo, and put a hold on the library copy of A Bug's Life. 

However, my viewing of Finding Nemo left me a very unpleasant feeling, mostly triggered by the characterization of Dory, who was obviously cast as a Wal-Mart shopper.  I also found some jokes quite forced.

It seems that humorous or funny moments are prerequisite in animated films nowadays.  I have heard people talked about how funny Toy Story 3 is. However, after Findng Nemo, I will stay away from those humors.

Even for movies made for children, it is not necessarily to have these moments.  Insisting having them, movie makers fall into mannerism.  Children can be trained to be sophisticate and appreciate a good story told straightforward.

I remember that I attended a forum when I was in fourth or fifth grade and gave the visiting local children theater people a lecture on the sophistication of children.  I told them that we didn't not need to be cued to laugh or cry.  Caricaturization would be all right if it was a farce.  Otherwise, we children could appreciate real characterization and good storyline just fine.

I might be too harsh to them but I still believe that adults tend to patronize children and forgot how smart we were when we were little and how annoying it was when we were treated as idiots.

Perhaps, time changed.  Perhaps, Chinese and American children are different.  "A sense of humor" is an accolade in the US but suspicious in China.

Culture gulf hard to bridge, it seems.

My Zazzle.com Store Opens - www.zazzle.com/MatthewFelixSun

Last weekend, San Francisco Chronicle reported Website lets customers do the designing: "The website is www.zazzle.com and For just over five years, San Francisco's Zazzle.com has operated a website that lets users customize and design their own T-shirts, postage stamps and mugs. It has expanded its product line to include hats, cards, binders, shoes and even iPhone cases..."  It seems a good place for artists to utilize their talents and hopefully to generate complementary or main income.

I was quite intrigued, especially because I just had a discussion on fantastic fabric designs made by a linguist friend who utilized her research on medieval life. A typical of her design was based on a drawing by a young boy in 13th century Russia.

I decided to give it a try by using my paintings, drawings, and particularly my photographs to design some cases for iPhone, iPad, T-shirts, mugs, and shoes, etc.  I can even upload large images and produce fine quality prints for my self or for my patrons.


My Zazzle store opened today official - http://www.zazzle.com/matthewfelixsun.  A sample of my creations are:


create & buy custom products at Zazzle


"White Dress" iPhone 4 Case


"Full Moon" Shoes


"Full Moon" Mousepad

The original images for the three products above are:


White Dress - Oil Painting, 2005

and


Full Moon - Photography, 2011

More to come.  Please visit often!

Tattoos and Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Milos)

Had an interesting discussion with a colleague recently and he mentioned how movies and television shows used tattoos to identify villains, particularly in those with detective themes.

This reminded me that in the 1980s, Chinese movies often utilize a plaster statue of Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Milos) as a cue to identify elements or characters considered decadent, subversive and counterrevolutionary, most often in spy and political themed movies.  Coffee was such symbol as well.

1980s was a time when "Chinese Taliban" ruled streets and they shaved off peoples' hair, cut open people's trousers, if they deemed the hairdo was too outrageous, the pants were too narrow or too wide.  Anything immodest was not acceptable.

Though sometimes, stereotype does point at a common trend, often, it is simply stereotype.  Nothing more.

Art Practice Department and Worth Ryder Gallery

I walked by the Worth Ryder Gallery of Art Practice Department at University of California, Berkeley recently and saw several interesting installations:











Searching my photo archives and I found several interesting photos I took in the hallways of the Art Practice Department in 2008.  They are quite amazing:

Twenty-Some Years' Long Shadow - from Tian'anmen to Tahrir

The largely bloodlessness of the uprisings and revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, to a large extent, should be contributed to the resolve of the military not to use force against the people, or due to the decision by those ex-rulers not to use real bullets to shoot people.

It could have happened the other way, like what happened in Beijing, in 1989.  Even if it was true as Chinese government claimed that there was no bloodshed in Tian'anmen Square, the epicenter of the protest, there was no denying that blood was shed in many places surrounding the square.

What happened in Beijing, shook the world and in a certain way, it paved the road for the Eastern Europeans for their freedom.  Event in Beijing, let them realized the extent of that brutality and cruelty and gave them resolve to end their totalitarian rules.  It, perhaps, also made a great impressions to their military at home, who in turn resolved not to shoot their own people when revolutions took place there, therefore allowed bloodless change of regimes.

There was one exception then - Romania.  The army did shoot protesters and their rulers, the Ceauşescus were executed as the result.

It can be argued that the events in China and Romania cast long shadows.  It is hard to fathom that the rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, and other Mideastern nations facing popular uprisings, did not cast a fearful looks on those bloody pages of the world history.  What has happened and what will have depend on many factors but how the rulers interact with their military and how willing their military to tarnish their images will have a decisive impact, no matter how well organized and determined protests are.

The events in China, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, etc. serve lessons for people who rule and ruled.  How these lessons were learned, varied vastly.

We have seen some governments tried gentler approaches, such as granting certain rights to the people and handing out more cashes.  At the meantime, we also saw Iranian and Bahrain protesters beaten and killed.  In Bahrain, it was police who did the deeds.  It was reported on 16 February that Security forces in Bahrain had dispersed thousands of anti-government protesters in Pearl Square in the center of capital, Manama.

I have no doubt that some rulers, by instinct, would go all out to quash any uprising.  How effective these harsh measures, however, one can never be sure.  And that, hopefully, will serve to prevent even greater human calamities.

New Moon

On February 4th, I was startled by the beauty of the new moon and took a few snapshots and I want to share with people of those images:

Happy Valentine's Day!

Coke or Pepsi

Bloomberg Businessweek reported, in its article For India's Consumers, Pepsi Is the Real Thing published in September 20-26, 2010 issue, that Pepsi became a common synonym for cola in India's most widely spoiken language after having the market to itself in the early 1990s - Pepsi had the Indian market to itself for three years during Coke's absence.  The article said that PepsiCo's linguistic advantage translates into higher sales for its namesake cola.  "Lalita Desai, a linguist at Jadavpur University who studies how English words enter Indian languages. 'And with no real international competition, 'Pepsi' became this catch-all for anything that was bottled, fizzy, and from abroad.'"

I read this article recently by chance and it reminded me of a blog post I published last month Coca Cola, Mercedes-Benz and Yosemite, in which I described how that the Chinese translations for Coca Cola is 可口可乐 (pronounced as: ke-kou-ke-le), which means delicious and cheering.  The truncated form Coke was simple 可乐 (ke-le), cheering.

This delicious translation of Coke therefore played a very positive role for Coca Cola's sale in China.  There, 可乐 (Coke) became this catch-all for anything that was bottled, fizzy, and from abroad, though it has to be dark.  Sprite (雪碧 - Snow Bright) represents those fizzy but clear soft drinks.

The power of words!

One More Award from ArtSlant Showcase Competition

ArtSlant just chose my oil painting "Dispersion" as one of their 2nd 2010 Juried Showcase Winners in the painting category.  When choosing work to enter for this competition, I was influence by a curator who had looked at my portfolio and told me that my Dispersion was the strongest in that group and apparently, others were warm to it as well:


Dispersion
Oil on Canvas
20" x 24"
Completed in 2010

Below are screen shots of my winning piece on ArtSlant.com's winner pages:







Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- "Diptych - Dawn" Won Another Award

- Editor's Choice Award for "The Song of Orpheus" - Artist Portfolio Magazine
- Another Award for a Drawing
- Editor's Award on Artist Portfolio Magazine, Published by My Art Contest
- Honorable Mentioned in A Juried Competition

Tunisia, Egypt... Who's Next?

Democratic demonstrations toppled one totalitarian regime after another.  Who's the next?


Tunisia


Egypt


Who's Next?

Art and Politics

The story, if not a controversy following Lang Lang's playing anti-America Korean War ear song in the White House, triggered much talk in Chinese American circle. To whose who grew up in China and living in the US now, the song he played, however melodic, has an undeniable political undertone.

Many the disgruntled claimed that Mr. Lang has always been eager to participate in performing art as propaganda, despite his protest that he was only a musician. One piece of Chinese music he loved to play was the Yellow River Piano Concerto.

Yellow River ConcertoThe Yellow River Piano Concerto is a piano concerto arranged by a collaboration between musicians including Yin Chengzong and Chu Wanghua, and based on the Yellow River Cantata by composer Xian Xinghai. The Yellow River Cantata, written in 1939 during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), is an eight-movement piece in which Xian used traditional folk-melodies and evoked the image of the Yellow River as a symbol of Chinese defiance against the Japanese invaders.

Under orders of Madame Mao, a collective of musicians from the Central Philharmonic Society including Yin Chengzong, Liu Zhuang, Chu Wanghua, Sheng Lihong, Shi Shucheng, and Xu Feixing rearranged the cantata into a four-movement piano concerto. In the fourth movement, following a recapitulation of the theme of "Defending the Yellow River" played canonically against the strings came the climatic tutti of "The East is Red", a song with lyrics like this:

The east is red, the sun is rising.
China has brought forth a Mao Zedong.
He works for the people's welfare.
Hurrah, He is the people's great savior!
(Repeat last two lines)

Chairman Mao loves the people.
He is our guide
To build a new China.
Hurrah, he leads us forward!
(Repeat last two lines)

The Communist Party is like the sun.
Wherever it shines, it is bright.
Wherever there is a Communist Party,
Hurrah, there the people are liberated!
(Repeat last two lines)

Then the first phrase of "The East is Red" is played by the trumpet, and tightly followed by the final phrase of the Internationale.

Below video was a performance of this concerto by Mr. Lang, at a countdown event in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Game in China:



The Yellow River Cantatas was a great piece of choral literature and deserved to be heard often.  The concerto, though wonderful as well, was seriously marred by the inclusion of The East is Red, which was not only stylistically incompatible, it also hijacked an ode to a great nation to a personal cult.  It is high time to have a new edition prepared and get rid of those inappropriate notes.

I learned that the Yellow River Cantatas was written in 1939 in Yan'an, a place Mao and his army took strong hold during World War II, in preparing for the inevitable civil war afterwards. The timing of this composition reminded me a quite provocative lecture my high school English teacher gave us in 1980s.

He mentioned a slew of wonderful writers, artists and composers who had established themselves in 1920s through 1930s and then suddenly, everything they could put forth was pure rubbish. The turning point was a crucial speech Mao Zedong gave in a Forum on Art ad Literature in Yan'an and the time was May 1942.

Following his instruction, I did some inventory and the result was precisely what my teacher had claimed. It was a brave lecture, sort of, because most of my fellow students would not have recognized the significance of his lecture or didn't care. My father had been working in the art and literature fields for a long time and I was very alert to the essence my teacher's bravery.

The background of his speech was ominous. In 1942, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership faced an internal crisis, as a group of "Internationalists" had returned from the Soviet Union with ideas that challenged Mao’s authority. In response, Mao launched the Rectification Campaign, inviting open criticism from the masses. This call for criticism was Mao’s way of inviting popular opinion unfavorable to his enemies. However, rather than speaking against the planned targets of the campaign, Party intellectuals took the opportunity to unmask the CCP’s hypocrisy by pointing out instances of inequality in Yan’an. The Forum was part of his counteract campaign to erudite oppositions. Mao's speech on art and literature could be summarized as: 文艺服从于政治 - literature and art are subordinate to politics, and 在阶级社会里就是只有带着阶级性的人性，而没有什么超阶级的人性 - in class society there is only human nature of a class character; there is no human nature above classes.

Artwork will never be separated from politics, and needn't and shouldn't be. However, it should never subject to politics. To demand so, is to committing artistic homicide and suicide.

My Baby Steps

During my last visit, my father handed me a small package of some very old drawings I made when I was a child. I was very surprised by this artifacts and quite touched by this gift.

Those drawings were naturally not finished or polished but they did have certain vitality and flair, which I am struggling to regain:

Why Can't We Just Trust Words?

Obama's recent State of Union speech was quite well received and people who watched his speech on TV or internet were particularly appreciative of the liveliness and subtlety conveyed through body languages and facial expressions of the speaker and those who surrounded him.

So far so good.  However, if you ask anyone to name one or two the most effective and memorable lines from this speech or backwards for several years, we usually don't get much.  The truth is that many speakers, including the former and current presidents rely on things beyond words.  I am not trying to find fault; I just hope the words themselves would carry enough weight so when we read them we will get it all.

It is no wonder that we haven't heard any speech on the par of Lincoln's Gettysburg adress for a very long time.

This distrusting of words is not limited in the public speaking arena.  Even in the legit theater, many are guilty of distrusting of words and over produce plays with saturated music, scenic and special effects.

I long for the days of simple essence but not optimistic at all.

Story Ballet or Not?

Yesterday, I attended San Francisco Ballet's performance of three pieces - two established masterpieces and a new commission work's world premiere run.  The former two are Symphonic Variations choreographed by Frederick Ashton, set to music by César Franck, and Symphony in C choreographed by George Balanchine, set to music by Georges Bizet.  The new work was RAkU, choreographed by Yuri Possokhov and set to a commissioned score by Shinji Eshima. 

It was a richly rewarding afternoon at the theater.  Many years ago, after attending a gala performance by the visiting Bolshoi Ballet, I decided not to attend any plotless ballet performances.  However, I was persuaded to attend a performance of Balanchine's Jewels and concluded not I was not against plot-less ballet, rather I did not like gala performances of highlights from various works and seemingly randomly grouped together to earn applause.  That kind of demonstration seems brainless and purely showy.

A well choreographed abstract ballet, however, can convey a full spectrum of drama and emotions and without the fussy trapping of background stories and sometimes obligatory mime to move plot along, they can be even more evocative and satisfying, such as these two abstract pieces, particularly the Symphony in C.  Tiit Helimets led large cast in both pieces and was truly godlike, either in movement or stood still.

This said, I still love see dance as drama, therefore, I still love story ballet and was eager to be satisfied by RAkU.  It was an intense piece and wonderfully danced by Yuan Yuan Tan, Damian Smith, and Pascal Molat.  The music was very dramatic and intense, as well as haunting and beautiful.  The scenery and costume design were superb as well.  The choreography was good, except for a couple rather cliched hand gestures assigned to the love-mad monk who set a temple on fire.  What was less than fully satisfying was the story.  The plot was not clear as if the princess returned love to the monk or not and what triggered the final dénouement. The timing of the appearance of the Prince's ash was when the confusion started.  If it appeared a bit early or late, it would have cleared the plot very much and added layers of human emotions, follies and fragilities.  As it is, it was not a story well told and reduced the psychological insight.

If tell a story, it must be well told.  Otherwise, abstraction would be preferred.

That said, I'm eager to attend Winter Dreams and Coppélia later this season.

My Flickr Phote is SFMOMA Blog's Picture of the Week

I took a snap shot of a group people who spontaneously participated art making at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).   The picture was on both Flickr and my blog Introduction to Fisher Collection and the 75th Anniversary Exhibit at SFMOMA.

Now, SAMOMA's blog - Open Space just chose it as Visitor Flickr Photo of the Week.  Wonderful!