Elizabeth Metcalfe

I have spent many a Sunday afternoon admiring the Kings and Queens sitting in their gold gilt frames in the National Portrait Gallery. But I must admit that the gallery’s latest offering of Man Ray’s portraits provides a pleasant change. 

National Portrait Gallery exhibition poster

On entering the exhibition, we are greeted by walls of vintage black and white Man Ray prints, small in relation to the frames that encompass them. Arranged informally but neatly – sometimes in one row, at other times in three – it feels like I am walking into Man Ray’s studio. His Female Nude (1920) welcomes me; a woman lolls on a bed in a rather ungainly manner, her hair untamed, her stomach slightly rolled, her gaze downwards.

Man Ray: Female Nude (1920)

Juxtaposed with this intimate portrait, a snap – it certainly seems to be a quick, unposed shot – of his close friends Joseph Stella and Marcel Duchamp (1920) sits on the opposite wall.

Man Ray: Joseph Stella and Marcel Duchamp (1920)

The two men, slumped on a sofa, stare directly into the camera, their faces almost blank if not a little perturbed by Man Ray’s camera clicking. Along with these men, Man Ray (born Micheal Emmanuel Radnitzky) was a key player in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements in 1920s Paris, and the exhibition traces his photographic career from avant-garde 1920s Paris to 1940s Golden Age Hollywood and finally back to Paris. 

Man Ray: Noire et Blanche (1926)

Whilst there are certainly remnants of Man Ray’s surrealism and experimentation with photographic techniques– such as the Aztec-esque mask in Noire et Blanche (1926) – most portraits are simply concerned with intimately capturing the true subject and the real person. And it is here where Man Ray shines. In Virginia Woolf (1934), Woolf is shown raising her hand slightly, staring into the distance, lost in thought. His portrait Pablo Picasso (1922) captures the painter at work, rugged and natural, with his latest creations in the background. And I would suggest that here lies the greatest strength of the exhibition; curator Terence Pepper has constructed Man Ray’s world portrait by portrait, and we momentarily find ourselves as members of the literary and artistic groups dotted along the walls. The chronological structure spanning the years 1916 to 1968 aids our journey.

Man Ray: Virginia Woolf (1934)

Contemporary copies of Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar and VU featuring Man Ray’s work allow us to delve even further into Man Ray’s world, complimenting his fashion portraiture. Sensual portraits of women draped in clothing and clad in jewelry, such as Jacqueline (1930) have a freshness to them, whilst Lee Miller – model, British Vogue’s first female war correspondent and Man Ray’s lover for a time – is seen as sexy model as well as playful woman in Lee Miller with a Circus Performer (1930).

Man Ray: Jacqueline (1930)

Just as this exhibition is soft and considered, so is Man Ray’s portraiture. Even royalty are strikingly informal, as Maharaja and Maharanee (1927) well illustrates. As ever, we see the intimate connection between the couple and Man Ray. Perhaps this is Man Ray’s greatest strength.

Man Ray: Maharaja and Maharanee (1927)

Buy the book of Man Ray Portraits

Elizabeth Metcalfe is an English student at King’s College London and a writer, published by the Guardian and London Student. 

Chris Morley

With debate raging around the future of the Eurozone, namely whether Great Britain will stay or go, and issues of independent sovereignty among the other partners, another pertinent question has recently arisen. Given that the whole situation seems to reek of pomp and circumstance, what will happen to each country’s musical bastion, the national anthem? 

Indeed, is the concept relevant any more? In a world seemingly destined to be run by Brussels, ‘God Save The Queen’ seems to ring ever more hollow. Does dear old Lizzie deserve eulogising for being little more than a figurehead?

Perhaps it is time to adopt Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ‘Hymnen’, or a similar piece, as an anthem for a fully integrated Europe. The German electronic composer unleashed his collage of the anthems of the world in the early Sixties, blurring national lines which had been in place for centuries: the oldest national anthem being Holland’s ‘Wilhelmus’, written during the Dutch Revolt, 1568-72.

Listening to ‘Hymnen’ today, it is striking how forward-thinking Stockhausen was being at the time. His treatments of the fragments of various anthems that he collects on his sonic travels appear to pre-empt the current notion of a unified Europe. Stockhausen manages to convey this message via music, whereas the politicians of today are seemingly unable to do so, even with the aid of speechwriters and spin-doctors.

The idea of creating a European anthem has also been explored by Czech composer Zbigniew Preisner, with his ‘Song for the Unification of Europe’, which is attributed to a character in ‘Three Colours: Blue’, the first film in Krysztof Kieslowski’s well-known trilogy. It is revealing that the concept of a European Anthem has only been explored in art and fiction.  

The other side of the argument would be to defend the national anthem, preserving national independence from the influence of the Eurocrats; a defiant two fingers to the uniformity that a European anthem would represent.

National anthems are surely intended to celebrate what makes each country unique. Is it possible to represent the achievements and idiosyncrasies of an entire continent in one hymn, without being overly reductive? Whoever may be given the task has quite a job to do if the situation ever arises, but it is an interesting question to ponder.

Download the music today: 

Trois couleurs: Bleu, Blanc, Rouge (Bande originale des films) - Zbigniew Preisner

Rachel Dakin

There are two great things about the live screening of performances in cinemas: the reduced price and multiple venues enable wider accessibility to a more diverse audience, it also softens the blow when you see a complete travesty and have avoided buying tickets at the Royal Opera House.

Tchaikovsky’s lyrical adaptation of Pushkin’s verse novel ‘Eugene Onegin’, directed by Kasper Holten at the ROH, carried great expectations. Sadly, Holten’s directorial debut became an unfortunate example of life reflecting art: naïve and chaotic, much like Tatyana’s impassioned and impulsive letter.

Although Shoreditch’s Rich Mix cinema lacks the sophistication and grandeur of the Opera house, the screening compensated for this with a useful introduction to the performance, including interviews with the cast, costume and set designers, conductor and Holten, revealing some directorial decisions and aspects of the rehearsal process.

Holten expressed a desire to channel Tchaikovsky’s vision of a simple and direct performance, in contrast with the grand operas so popular in the 1870s. Whereas Pushkin’s novel is elaborate, highly-stylsed and embedded with textual references, Tchaikovsky’s interpretation is essentially reduced to romantic tragedy and the familiar pain of regret. Holten’s production emphasizes this focus on nostalgia and the power of memory. However, rather than maximizing its simplicity and sincerity, his decisions overcomplicate the lyrical opera. 

This confusion is primarily caused by Holten’s decision to cast younger versions of Tatyana and Onegin, in the hope of exaggerating the nostalgia and regret for mistakes made in their youth. Initially, this seems relatively effective: the dancer, VIgdIs Hentze Olsen, depicting a young Tatyana provides a spectral, fleeting reminder of the past. The counterparts linked by their bold and recognizable red dresses, suggesting Tatyana’s passionate sentiment. However, this double-act soon becomes irritating and distracting. The poignancy of the famous letter-scene, in particular, was ruined by the dizzying sensation of double vision. Melodramatic pirouettes and gyrations detracted from Krassimira Stoyanoya’s performance, which alone would have been more powerful and moving.

Another pivotal scene in the Opera is similarly tainted: the fatal duel between Onegin and Lensky, following Onegin’s flagrant flirtation with his best friend’s lover and Tatyana’s younger sister, Olga. Simon Keenlyside portrays Onegin as an unsophisticated flirt, rather than the imperious and bored aristocrat that Pushkin notoriously modeled on himself. The tragic duel is confused and verges on the ridiculous, as the old Onegin observes the unfolding scene with angst, whispering into his younger self’s ear in a hopeless effort to reverse fate. Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece dissolves into a crude take on ‘A Christmas Carol’, with the protagonist clumsily re-encountering the ghosts of his past. After Lensky is shot dead, the scene is similarly assassinated when the old Onegin takes the pistol from the young Onegin’s hands and gestures at suicide. Not only is this a glaring inconsistency, as the pair suddenly acknowledge each other, but the poignancy of this central scene is reduced to pantomime.

As the performance lurches on, the stage is increasingly strewn with the wreckage of these memories: piles of novels belonging to the bookish young Tatyana; bales of hay representing their provincial youth in the country; snow lacing the surfaces; the large incumbent tree branch present at the duel, and the dead body of Lensky lying centre-stage, inert. These objects effectively signify the events that haunt Onegin’s mind and traumatise his present, though they also clutter the stage and interfere with the sleek minimalism of the set design.

The performance was saved by the endurance and magnificence of Tchaikovsky’s score, conducted by the young and energetic Robin Ticciati, leading the tremendous Orchestra. Pavol Breslik’s Lensky received the biggest applause, and rightly so. Equally captivating was Elena Maximova’s Olga, which suggests that casting doubles for Tatyana and Onegin was the show’s main downfall.

During the introduction, Holten inadvertently revealed what was perhaps the cause of his muddled direction: ‘This opera has a very special place in my heart […] When you do a piece that you really love, it’s almost sometimes harder than when you do a piece that you find tricky.’

Download the music now: Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin - Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Nuccia Focile, Orchestre de Paris, Sarah Walker & St. Petersburg Chamber Choir

http://www.richmix.org.uk/

http://www.roh.org.uk/

Rachel Dakin

Between supporting Ethan Johns on his February tour and headlining her own UK tour in March, Marika Hackman’s debut album That Iron Taste is released today via Dirty Hit. 

On the night of the album’s release, Marika gave a haunting and thought-provoking performance at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room. Marika’s lyrics are richly poetic, vivid with imagery and suggestive narrative, whilst remaining sparse, direct and presented with an unnervingly restrained and self-controlled vocal delivery that makes it hard to believe this artist is only 20. What comes across most strongly from speaking to Marika is her almost childlike sense of playful experimentalism. The quietly surrealist and psychedelic quality of her music sets her apart from an industry saturated with singer-songwriters, providing somewhat of a folk-antidote.

Marika reveals some of the ideas behind her enigmatic music in an interview with Beat below.  

The first thing that strikes me about your music is the rich poetic quality of your lyrics. Cannibal in particular reminds me of Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Cut’.

Yeah, I’m a massive fan of Sylvia Plath. In fact, my mum gave me loads of her books for my birthday! Literature has a big influence on my music.

You obviously have an incredible imagination, your lyrics are so vivid… and morbid!

Yeah, it’s weird that that side of me sort of comes out in my lyrics, maybe it’s good that it does through song rather than anything else.

Haha, rather than anything else? Like an axe?

Yeah, like that film Psycho haha. But yeah, we lived in the countryside and my mum was very strict about how much TV we watched, and she’d literally force me and my brother outside and then we’d go off and run around and start inventing things and playing games and spying on people and stuff like that.

I was going to say, I think there’s a quite a childish imagination at play in your lyrics.

 I think I must be quite immature!

No! The thing that’s incredible is that your lyrics are so imaginative and vivid and morbid, which is brilliant, but you have this very mature, minimal delivery.

Yeah, I also think that you can use the simplest words to convey meaning, so I don’t use fancy words. It’s about the imagery you can create with basic language.

There’s no point just alienating an audience is there?

Yeah, and also, longer words are harder to fit into a lyric. I definitely think about the sounds of words and the amount of syllables they have. When I write the words have to just ‘fit’ in the line. So for instance, with Cannibal, I came up with the melody, and usually when I come up with the melody I say words randomly that sort of fit, and literally the first thing I said was: ‘have you seen my nose?’

Ah, and then it just comes from there? So it’s a very organic process?

Yeah, and the same with ‘Here I Lie’, coming up with it I just said ‘I have no head’ and it went from there.

That’s interesting. I think your singing has a very luxurious quality, where you let the lyrics almost take over. I think that you really tap into the musicality of language

Well it’s a major compliment that you said that because that’s what I try and do. Even though people always comment on my lyrics, they are there because they are, in effect, the melody. They are the music, it’s the same thing.

Yes, I recognise certain recurring melodies, but really your music is quite paired-down, it’s quite raw.

When I find a melody I like, I stick with it and keep it quite simple. Even though something like Mountain Spines changes key continuously, I set myself the challenge to stick to and end up with this quite strange melody. If I take the guitar out from underneath it, it’s actually quite hard to sing.

Right, because you haven’t got anything to guide you? The guitar is almost like a ladder?

Exactly. Everything has to go together and with the lyrics all coming in at the same time, it just means that you get the layers without having to be really fancy with what you’re doing.

It’s a really interesting quality to be complex and minimal at the same time. So yeah, spot on!

Yay!

On the topic of setting yourself parameters, I’ve read that you’re quite experimental with some of your songs, like Retina Television, using only sounds made with your body rather than relying on instruments.

It’s just one of those things where you sit down and think ‘let’s try something a bit different, let’s do something fun’. If you put parameters on things, it tends to make you more creative. I was on an art foundation and they would set projects that were so vague and I found that really hard. But if someone had said: ‘Ok, you’re only allowed to use this, and you’ve got to do it like this’, then you have to find a route out of it.

You referred to your art foundation, and we spoke previously about how literature feeds into your lyrics, I wondered if there’s an exchange with art?

I think there probably is. Everything goes into it in some way. I love Egon Schiele, and Klimt obviously, but I prefer Schiele. Bosch, because he’s mad. I love Turner, I love Heemskerck, do you know Heemskerck?

No, I must look him up!

He’s a Dutch painter. There are these rooms with lights and the figures are always from behind. It’s very still, but it’s mysterious and very calm.

That mysteriousness definitely translates in your music. I’ve heard that you’re thinking about getting a band?

Yeah, we’re in the process of doing that. Just a couple of guys who are multi-instrumentalists. We’re not going to try and recreate the records, we’re going to try and do a live show. So many artists have a record out, and then when they do their concerts they basically have a backing track so it makes it sound identical to what you hear on your radio or whatever. But I want the live show to be different. Even if people have bought the record, they should come and see the live show because it’s going to be something different, because the song’s performed in a different way.

Of course, like ‘Retina Televison’ had to be different, I was really interested to see how you would translate that into a live performance.

I think I’m going to keep that stripped down, with me hitting the guitar.

After talking about songs like ‘Mountain Spines’ being quite complex, how do you think that would work with a band coming in? Do you think you’d have to change your sound a bit?

Maybe. We’ll see how it evolves. We’ll maintain quite a natural, organic process and play around with it. I mean, there are obviously things we can recreate from the record. But it would be fun to play around. Again, it’s a case of setting parameters. Having a live band, there’s only so much you can do, there’s only three of us. So that’s where the creativity starts over again, working on top of these songs. So it’s going to be really exciting to see what we come up with.

Yes, your music has such an experimental, and quite psychedelic, quality. I was thinking your music is almost anti-folk. Would you say that?

Yeah, people try and bracket you straight away and label you as ‘the new folk singer-songwriter’, so you’re the next Laura Marling, or the next Lucy Rose or whatever. And it’s kind of like, have you actually listened to my records? I love Laura Marling, but I don’t think our music is the same.

It’s so different. I think it’s almost sexist, because people wouldn’t make those comparisons between two male artists.

Yeah that’s true.

Obviously, it’s really exciting that you’ve got this EP launching today! And your tour. You’ve been on tour for a while haven’t you?

Yeah, since the 1^st of February with Ethan.

And you’re headlining your own independent tour? You must be really excited about that.

Yeah, it starts on Thursday the 28^th. I love doing supports, especially at a venue like this (Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room) with Ethan Johns, where people actually listen.

Yeah, you’re not competing with a rowdy crowd.

But with the headline tour there’s added pressure because people have actually paid to come and see me. But it’s very interesting to see, at this stage in the game, how many people turn up. And chatting to people afterwards, I really love doing that.

That must be really helpful.

Yeah, just like, ‘inflating my ego’! But yeah, it’s nice to mingle.

Well yes, because you are really quite new on the scene, aren’t you? You’ve only released three songs before this EP, right?

Well, I had released ‘You Come Down’ and ‘Mountain Spine’. ‘You Come Down’ was a single, and ‘Mountain Spine’ was an AA side, and then ‘Cannibal’ has been played as the sort of preview to the album, but it hasn’t actually been released to buy. It’s released today. 

So you’ve been active for just a year? And you’ve just rocketed! It’s exciting.

Yeah, it’s exciting. I just take each day as it comes.

You can download ‘That Iron Taste’ today and a free Covers EP at: http://www.marikahackman.com/ 

Find Marika’s tour dates here: http://www.songkick.com/artists/5015008-marika-hackman

Rosie Pentreath

To innovate is to ‘make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products’. 

I am as opposed to beginning with a dictionary definition as the next bohemian arts writer, but here I feel unable to compete with the Oxford’s authority. Innovation, then, arrises from a need for changes. New methods are used to meet new demands, and when a different device is called for, new ideas are tested for the ultimate goal of producing it. This is innovation.

Art may seem the very antithesis of innovation: the frivolous plaything of the creative-minded and unserious, which can be put to no real practical use. But of course any connoisseur in the study of (or even modest interest in) culture will know this to be the very opposite of what art is. Art’s very role is innovative. Art has always championed new methods; new ways of saying things in response to universal or select need. When art was beginning to mirror the reason and empiricism of the new technical age at the start of the nineteenth century, the Romantics sought chaos and the depiction of nature’s sublimity in their canvases; when portraits were becoming insincere and cold, the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood introduced purely aesthetic values and a focus on classical beauty to art. These were movements that changed the established norm; movements that reacted against dogmatic paradigms and responded to the human need for a visual antidote (or in the case of music or fashion respectively, a sonic or sensual one).

The Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood sought classical beauty and innocence – John William Waterhouse | Hylas and the Nymphs (1896)

If you were to name the most innovative artist today you would probably answer ‘Damien Hirst’. Certainly, that was my initial thought. He was invited to design the Brit Award Statue this year and the 2012 exhibition of his work at the Tate pulled in a record 5.3 million visitors. He is probably the highest earning British artist (The Times Rich List figure of £235 million is said to be an understatement) and I think it is fair to say that he is admired as a confident maverick and innovator by those who do admire him. Many of his works, to me, are stunning and very moving. And I have always liked his ironic treatment of art.

Damien Hirst | Revelation (2007)

But when I thought more about Hirst I changed my mind. Although it may be novel for an artist to have such wealth and fame, Hirst would be better described as an anti-innovater. You see, innovation by very definition strives to meet needs. The Romantics responded to a need to be reminded of the power of nature over stifling pollution. And whilst Hirst’s sharks intrigue us and we are hypnotised by his beautiful butterflies for a while, we are only momentarily dazzled. We do not need Hirst. In fact, the expensive price brackets indicate the very not needing Hirst. To buy even a souvenir plastic skull at £36,800 is to display excessive and utterly disposable (in the sense of being disposed with insanely) income. Instead of reacting against society as the Romantics did, Hirst is the very product of it. His pieces are stunning and can prompt reflection and philosophising, but his work is disappointingly inevitable. The fact that he is an architect who hires teams to produce the works is entirely anti-innovative itself; no striving with new methods there. Instead, a rather traditional notion of hiring a workforce to carryout one man’s vision.

The 21st century itself is an age of anti-innovation. We are saturated with products we do not need – products that we merely desire, or think we need after sitting surrounded by advertising. Perhaps the reason for my initial thought of Hirst as an appropriate subject of a feature on innovation is because of his status as a definitive – probably the definitive – 21st century artist. He will certainly be written in the art history books as having been one of the greatest innovators of his time.  But being remembered as the most prominent artist of a period doesn’t make that artist an innovator. 

Today, our society is ordered through hyperlinks and behind firewalls. Our innovators are the ones that come rough and ready, and raw: quite the opposite to Hirst’s gleaming plastics and perfectly symmetrical diamond-encrusted skulls, we seek something more realistic. Our needs are met by Banksy climbing a ladder to make art on the side of the buildings our sterile offices reside in, or Matti Braun’s pathway across dark water upon logs through an exhibition of delicately beautiful silk screens . Perhaps they will not be such large contenders for the art history books, but true innovators and antidotes they undoubtedly are. In spite of them though, anti-innovation may be the most innovative paradigm that the 21st century ever produces. And Damien Hirst? The embodiment of that: art’s definitive anti-innovator.

Rosie is a writer, musician and artist, working and freelancing for BBC Music Magazine and Homes and Antiques Magazine, living between Bristol and London.

http://rosiepentreath.blogspot.co.uk/
https://twitter.com/RosiePentreath

Niall Kavanagh

As we stagger through the opening weeks of the new year it is clear to see a unanimous consensus across the UK music press tipping which emerging acts are on course to set the world alight and reap the rewards of [relatively] untold fame and fortune. However the ‘Class of 2013’ have their work cut in terms of delivering a truly innovative sound – a task that seemingly only becomes open for argument upon reflection once withstanding the test of time.

In their defence, musical innovation is pretty tricky. There are only a certain amount of notes, all of which don’t fit in certain chords, which don’t fit in certain keys. Certain chords don’t progress well from one to another and there are only two conventional time signatures used in most popular music– and one doesn’t even get used that much. There are millions of songs. The chance of replication arising is inevitable. We must differentiate by aesthetics, experimentalism and deliverance.

I fear that this decade (whatever it’s called – ‘Teensies’?!) will be remembered in musical history for the ‘some DJ feat. some rapper/singer formula’ that occupies cultureless meat market nightclubs on Saturday nights (I’m looking at you, Guetta!). And putting this current social monstrosity alongside 60’s psych, 70’s glam or punk and 80’s new wave, it’s just embarrassing. Cue: Savages.

The all-girl quartet creates a violent, dark and artistic noise, which tips its hat to the post-punk and goth eras of decades past, yet is still modern and, more importantly, meaningful. It has message. Savages avalanche their way into our eardrums at a time where a lot of people in this country are angry, especially the youth, and there seems to be a level of understanding between music and society, perfectly reflected in their tense live performance.

Birmingham’s Swim Deep make shameless pop music, but it’s it drenched in [what alternative culture would regard as] ‘cool’ – a concept that is somewhat groundbreaking in itself. Putting their 90’s grunge hairstyles and attire aside, their acknowledgement of themselves as a pop band is incredibly warming – exemplified by regarding themselves as a cross between Duran Duran and One Direction. Jokers.

Fellow ‘B-Town’ cool kids and Swim Deeps’ bromancers Peace collect scraps of influence from the past, but infuse their own melting pot of contingent identity. A consistent theme to their sound is partying. Most of their material was written for the dancefloor, yet they can still throw out a few surprises. ‘California Daze’ knocked everyone’s sock off last summer because it’s simply a GREAT song – in the most classical sense of the word – and even though being an anomaly to the party vibes it stretches their character to a further level of integrity.

Sonically, there’s nothing revolutionary about Temples. It’s neo-psychedelic pop that could be an extract from Woodstock ‘69. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The songs are extremely enjoyable and well written with suitably apt production and I can understand their inevitable success from a generation that still demands this sound (look how galactic Tame Impala have become recently, for example). Their revivalism encourages the argument that maybe this decade doesn’t need pure innovation and we’ve just accepted that we are drowning in post-modernism.

Niall Kavanagh is an East London based writer for ‘This is Fake DIY’, ‘The 405’ and ‘Sex Beat’.

http://yearlings.tumblr.com/

@NiallFoxx