Pierre Boulez

Quite apart from his merits as composer, of which I know nothing, Pierre Boulez is the best conductor of XXth century music there has ever been. His foremost virtue in approaching these pieces is clarity. It is as if he alone, with his razor sharp mind and keen musical ear, really understood how they should be played. I was lucky to see him conduct the composers of the Viennese school, back in 1977, when he was at the New York Philarmonic, and I will never forget the revelation: the spaciousness, the precision, the chromatic beauty which really made these pieces come alive. Listen here to his interpretation of the Five Orchestral Pieces, by Anton Webern.

The Farewell

Mahler composed the song cycle "Songs of the Earth" in 1908. It is one of his last completed works and a hauntingly beautiful one, even for someone like me who is not really into Mahler. You can listen to the story and the song, performed by Pierre Boulez, the Vienna Philarmonic, Violeta Urmana and Michael Schade here.

Mapping Contemporary Art

In the old days, we had the vanguard. Then came the vanguards. Then the art scene exploded and fragments flew in all directions. This is called contemporary art. The distinctive thing about contemporary art is that everything is allowed. Means - drawing, painting, photography, video, installations, sculptures - and styles. What follows is a stupid attempt to identify certain categories, after breezing through the Venice Biennale and associated shows in one hectic weekend.

Flashy art for millionaires: this is mostly what you see at Palazzio Grassi, where the french magnate Bernard Pinault houses his collection. An example would be the stuff produced by Takashi Murakami. There are of course exceptions, also to be found there. For example, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, the little collages by Barbara Kruger

The big collages of junk and mementoes: this falls under the category of installation. Assemble a lot of apparently unrelated stuff and put it together in some kind of jarring order as far removed from any sense of beauty as you can get. An artist friend says this is a reaction against the perfect pictures you can get with photoshop.

Documentation art: this is the kind of thing heavily favored by a museum like MACBA. Photos and photocopies, "objets trouvés" in the mass media, all carefully put together to make sociological points.

Hostile art: as far out as you can get, often highly formalistic

In the midst of all this, you have of course the painters (fewer and fewer, it seems) the photographers (out of fashion this year) the video artists (as the technology improves, they keep getting better) and the sculptors (which never go out of fashion).

So here is a list of some of the stuff I liked: Lygia Pape, Hans Peter Feldmann, Michelangelo Pistolleto, Gonkar Gyatso, Cildo Meireles, Huang Yong Ping, Gordon Matta-Clark, Pavel Pepperstein. And pavilions: Australia and Finland I particularly remember.

Venice Biennale Weekend

Inglorious Bastards

Has Quentin Tarantino succumbed to infantilism? Inglorious Bastards plays out like the fantasy of a twelve year old. Hitler and the lot are certainly ripe for a spoof and Tarantino's film provides some harmless innocent clean fun. His cartoonish take on World War II has some odd flashes of brilliance - the scenes with the British agent seem to me the best - but as the film progresses to its Godawful climax, it elicits no more than an indulgent smile of mild disbelief.