Rodney Graham

Rodney Graham's show at MACBA was a revelation. This canadian artist seems to embody, all by himself, the bewildering eclecticism of contemporary art. There is no style to speak of, just a collection of separate pieces in all genres - painting, video, installation, photography - and yet there seems to be a hidden coherence in his work. His pieces have an uncanny precision and force. Some highlights: the white shirt in hommage to Mallarmé, the two outstanding videos of the chandelier an the typing machine submerged by snow, the light boxes. Strange, haunting images, which resonate with references to the contemporary confusion laden with visual and cultural memories.

Fundació Tapiès

Fundació Tapiès has just reopened in Barcelona with a wonderful show of paintings by the great catalan artist and an amazing selection of his personal collection of books, drawings, ethnic sculpture and art. At 86, Tapiès is still going strong. His work shows no signs of aging. The paintings now on display were created in the last twenty years. Within the narrow confines of his style, they remain inventive, with a wonderful dexterity in the treatment of matter and a strong sensuous and spiritual appeal. Many of the paintings now exhibited approach the human body with tremendous evocative appeal. This seems to be a new departure for Tapiès. Like all great artists, he has created a style which makes us look at the world anew.

The great failed masterpiece

At the third attempt, I am finally making headway with "The Man Without Qualities", the much cited, seldom read, great novelistic project by Robert Musil. There are many flashes of brilliance, and the prose, at its best, has a hard edged dryness and elegance, but there are also many dull patches, full of philosophical digressions and a kind of all pervasive irony, which often feels heavy handed and obscure. It may possibly work in german but it is definitely lost in translation. "The Man Without Qualities" was written in the twenties and thirties when the novel, as a literary genre, was at its most ambitious. Musil seemingly wanted to fully capture a time - the Austria-Hungarian monarchy in 1913 - and its ethos, precariously perched between science and soul, and full of foreboding of the explosion to come . The action advances slowly, going nowhere. The characters think a lot but seldom act. Was this the situation of the empire, in a kind of stasis perpetuated by the figure of Francis Joseph, one of the longest serving rulers in the history of Europe? Still, you keep going: not entranced but intrigued by the mounting tension, afraid of missing out on something important.