Chants of India, A Pinnacle of Ravi Shankar’s and George Harrison’s Friendship

Chants of India, A Pinnacle of Ravi Shankar’s and George Harrison’s Friendship
September 17, 2022
The Mystical Beatle When I was a kid, it was common to be asked “who’s your favorite Beatle”? While most of the youthful questioners probably expected the response of John or Paul, from a fairly early age I tilted toward George. This was before he had fully shown his colors by embarking on his solo career. I think I somehow intuited his introverted and, indeed, mystical tendencies early on. Or, perhaps this is just a bit of confirmation bias, because mystical music making was the direction that he took through much of his subsequent career. A 2011 biography of Harrison by…

The Hypocrisy of War and a Composer’s Lament

The Hypocrisy of War and a Composer’s Lament
April 23, 2022
I am a latecomer to the music of the German-British composer Max Richter, having only stumbled upon it recently while searching for a different style of music. Somehow, Richter’s music from Sleep popped up while searching for possible selections of yoga music. This is somewhat odd, because I don’t think yoga accompaniment was part of the composer’s intention. Richter is considered a composer working in the minimalist genre, but I feel that his work transcends that label. The music is minimalist, but it includes stunning ethereal vocal melodies along with the standard repetition of simple motifs—slightly varied as the piece progresses—that marks the…

New Chinese Translation Coming

New Chinese Translation Coming
April 23, 2022
Indigenous Aesthetics I learned not long ago that Culture and Art Publishing House of Beijing is translating my first book, Indigenous Aesthetics, and publishing it in China. This comes as a pleasant surprise because the book was brought out by the University of Texas Press more than twenty years ago. When you produce something, you really can’t predict the life that it may have after it enters the wider world! The translation is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2022, with the book being scheduled for release in China in mid-2023.  The book confronts some of the traditional philosophical concerns of aesthetics such…

MYSTICAL IMAGES OF WAR

MYSTICAL IMAGES OF WAR
November 20, 2014
Why would an artist create a series of ‘mystical’ images of war? This was the question that ran through my mind as I viewed the prints by Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962) recently on display at MoMA in New York. I knew some of the background about this artist. She, along with her husband, Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964), was a key member of the early Russian avant-garde, which emerged just before World War I. The movement that they led was called Rayonism, and many of Goncharova’s most abstract paintings are organized by shard like shafts of light. Brilliant, brittle and fractal-like, this work was…

THE ART OF PROTEST

November 11, 2014
The exhibition Disobedient Objects, at the Victoria and Albert Museum through Feb. 1, 2015, foregrounds the objects and environments inspired by the outrage at inequality and injustice that motivates contemporary social protest movements. These objects, created from cheap, readily available everyday materials, challenge a hierarchical social system that is dependent on the consumption of expensive luxury items to mark class divisions. In the aftermath of the global depression/recession that began in 2008, a number of related social action movements mushroomed in disparate locations across the globe. However, they were connected by shared concerns for an increase in democratic process, a leveling of…