I've decided to do a weekly posting on art that is influencing me. Each week I want to do at least one of these posts concerning one visual, one musical and one literary artist that I'm exploring. This will be the first installment of many. I promise some of them will be silly.
Dieter Appelt
Born in 1935 Dieter Appelt is a German photographer who I just recently discovered. He has quickly become one of my favorite photographers and has already begun to influence my work. He works typically with a large format camera. A lot of his work was shot in his native Germany. He is fascinated by places that are charged with history. His series of photographs "Monte Isola" is a powerful commentary on the psychic effects of World War II. He grew up next to a bog and found the bodies of dead soldiers as a child. He also uses sculpture of his own creation in his photographs. I cant find many of the images that I wanted to show you but here are a few.
Elliott Smith- XO
Why do the good ones always commit suicide? if you're not familiar with Elliott Smith's work you are doing your ears and heart a great disservice. He committed suicide very early in his career(by stabbing himself in the heart no less). His lyrics are sad and his melodies are gorgeous. There has even been an orchestral tribute album. He was great and almost all of his music is too. The album XO in particular has been on heavy rotation in my headphones the past couple of weeks and it is spectacular. Add these albums to your list of albums you've been meaning to listen to XO, Either/OR, From a Basement on the Hill, and Figure 8. Its sad and depressing music but it is undeniably rich, complex and special music also.
Rilke
And finally I just read Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. It's a short read and its brain food. Rilke has amazing advice for young artists and his ability to describe the pain and frustration of trying to create something is gorgeous. He then goes on to explain why suffering is necessary to make great art as well as living with the work. A must read for all creative minds.
have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms or books written
in a very foreign language.
Don't search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism : they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.
