ARTS Saturday, February 9, 1985 The Michigan Daily Page 5 Artists portray emotional variety By Hobey Echlin A RT IS one of those funky little things you can never quite figure out and even if you can there's no right or wrong, just your feelings about a work against those of another. And if this other happens to be the artist, well, he or she probably has a view separate from yours. And so what? Just as the artist expresses herself through a medium of the senses, so too does the admirer envelop himself inside his own artistic realm, usually just a five minute contemplation and then a move on to another piece. This five minute contemplation is a sort of test. A question and answer period where you the viewer try to figure out what's going on just as much as you can and eventually confuse yourself and give up the whole idea and then just sort of look at the thing and get your own ideas. This to me is the impor- tant part. The more abstract or ambiguous the art form is the more the viewer is af- forded the opportunity to kick back and make it his own, and interpret each aspect of the form as a "why" instead of a given. So art becomes a fusion, a harmony of sorts between viewer and the viewed. The viewed is the part of the artist you see on the canvas or on the paper. And this is only a glimpse. No artist bares the obvious and can be pleased with it. And if it looks obvious, look again. The more inward the thought or feeling conveyed, the more Quartet di By Mike Gallatin THE GUARNERI String Quartet is a familiar group of performers to Ann Arbor concert-goers. The perfor- mances are the second installment in a series of six concerts in which the com- plete cycle of Beethoven's Sixteen String Quartets will be performed. The concert will include a representative quartet from the early, middle, and late periods of compositions: opus 18, no. 3; opus 95, "Serioso"; and the late quartet No. 15 in A Minor. The performance, which begins at 4 p.m. on Sunday at Rackham Auditorium, marks the Quar- tet's twentieth anniversary season and is their eighteenth' appearance at Rackham. The Beethoven quartets have always been favorites with performers as well low I openly identifiable the piece becomes as depicted emotion and feeling. And with the media of painting, photography and sculpture, and your reactions to these varied forms, a whole realm of abstract emotions is opened up. A whole realm of emotions for each medium. Photography for instance is more an art of concrete perspectives where you're photographing what's really there. Only you control the angle and the exposure. But the subject is still there. Painting isn't what's really there, it's what you see there and put on canvas. And the mode of abstract sculpture takes what isn't there and makes it there in three dimensions; in a sense, something from a whim of ab- stract emotion. And before you start wondering just what the hell this is about, this is a review of an art gallery. And it's about now you have to ask yourself, much like I am writing this, why the weird for- mat? Why all the brainrot? Why the gross generalizations about art? Well...It's my reaction and my feelings about art as a whole and as components. And in this manner this entire review is my personal reaction to an evening at the opening of the "Utilities" gallery at the Center for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit, Tuesday night. Evening? Well, more like two hours. But in that two hours I entered a realm that was as much an experience for me as being the artists themselves. The work of five CCS students, in the various media I mentioned before, provide an inspirational atmosphere for me as a critic. I mean here are talented art students putting them- selves up there on the walls for you to see and be and you're kind of up there with them. "Hello, my name is..and this the back of my mind" it all seems to say. Maybe a name-tag with that on it and we'd all be a little deeper. It is with these feelings, bent as they seem, that I entered the gallery, or should I say, the artists. This is their baby, wet plenty, but smiling all the same. Everything was theirs: the music, from Pat Metheny to the Talking Heads and plenty more that wasn't quite as artsily cliche. Then there was the bar well stocked with "Big Jug" beer, real cheap wine, Twinkies, generic this, generic that, and green Kool-Aid. Their baby. The gallery itself: Newspapered walls, ironically proclaiming inauguration, the Michigan Catholic, and the Grosse Pointe News, in a set- ting that remains aloof and above any journalistic nonsense. Aloof to a con- crete and far off Washington reality that nobody really cares about, or should anyway. Editorial? Sure, feed your head and all that... As for the art itself, all themes presented. Joseph Baratelli's triptych seems an unfocused configuration of rage and isolation, and the inwardness of it all, on three large sheets of canvas. Jayms Fluder's photography, dealing with the nude and a variety of oddities from headwrapping to the American flag conveys a brashness, almost offen- siveness, that in itself reconsiders values and perspectives of American culture, while exploring a novel twist to the nude theme itself. Lori Grissom offers the viewer scenes of last fall's Mondale rally and Pro-life campaigners in pictures that take the apparent and suggest a deeper interpretation, often reversing the first impression and leaving you with a much different one. Renee Dooley's sculpture of "Anger" provides a blank sheet of interpretation in the most ab- stract piece of the gallery. Oh yeah, it's made out of an old door, too. Diane A. Crea's photography, utilizing the sequential technique, ex- poses the forboding qualities of an ar- tist's feelings and their depiction with a theme of the woman. "Intrusion", a sequential of the artist herself, with its bold images of very black and very white relay as much a personal reac- tion to an emotional intrusion, and the varied tempermants that such an in- trusion might be dealt with by. And it's right about now you're screaming for something concrete. Enough of these weird impressions. All I've given is my own interpretations and reactions: five young artists and the impressions, the emotions, and the perspectives they've allowed me to see for myself in my own way. And as for you, the gallery is located at 245 East Kirby, right next to the Detroit Institute of Arts , in Un- derground 245 of Center for Creative Studies, and will be open from Feb. 6- 22, Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Admission is free, and all works are for sale. The green kool-aid may be gone, but maybe you can snag a Twinkie... Why are these men smiling? Because they get radio air-play while keeping their artistic integrity intact. From left to right: Brian Ritchie, Gordon Gano, and Victor Delorenzo, the Violent Femmes. Violent Femmes sell out to MTV? Not a chance, splays Bee as with audiences, although they in- spire as much fear as admiration. They represent a pinnacle of chamber music as well as .seeming a high point in the history of cultural achievement. Many consider them Beethoven's crowning feat, with all else he had accomplished previously being but a preparation for the consummate artistry of the last quartets. As a whole, they say as much about the development of music form the Classical to Romantic period as they do about the extraordinary life of Beethoven. A great deal of commentary and analysis considers the quartets in much the same light as Rembrandt's self- portraits are seen. If broken down into the three major periods of composition, one may trace a picture which paints a thinly disguised autobiographical por- trait of Beethoven's spiritual and creative development. Certainly, the late quartets describe a world of pain thoven's brilliance and mystic visions that borders at moments on the superhuman. This is not completely surprising when one remembers that Beethoven struggled with a fate that included a progressive deafness. His last works were heard by him only in the imaginative silence and space of his in- ner ear. The early quartets show direct influences of Haydn and Mozart, the middle period is distinctly individual and mature, while the last five quartets expanded the limits of form and ex- pression in revolutionary ways, com- bined with a visionary intensity which plumbs the depths of our understan- ding. Music critics throughout the ages have always tried to articulate in literary terms the genius and heroism of Beethoven's enormous creative powers. While words are ultimately made the paupers of the music, the noted musicologist J.W.N. Sullivan best a a a sums up the credo of the artist as a glorious failure only to be hailed by posterity as a genius when he says: "To be willing to suffer in order to create is one thing but to realize that one's creation necessitates one's suffering, that suffering is one of the greatest of God's gifts, is to reach an almost mystical solution of the problem of evil; a solution that for the good of the world very few people will ever entertain." Particularly famous is the third movement of Quartet No. 15 in A minor. As a whole, the quartet represents the capacity of man to rise above his fate and stand invincible in his ability not only to endure suffering but to prevail over the injustice of destiny. The dynamic theme of the final movement was originally considered as the prin- cipal theme for the last movement of the Ninth Symphony. The late quartets, the final piano sonatas, and the last symphonies stand as immortal testaments to the strength of the human will, the courage of man's spirit, and the ultimate transcendance of art. As Andre Malraux once said, "The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of the earth and galaxy of the stars but that in this prison we can fashion images of ourselves sufficiently powerful to deny our nothingness." Throughout his tortured life Beethoven paid a high price, yet the rewards were infinitely great. The sacrifice, of creation involves a love's labor won as well as a world well lost. The worldly substance is but a shadow to the higher, unseen world in which the quartets were conceived. The ruins of his fortune composed the architecture of a higher providence. This second installment of the complete cycle of Beethoven's String Quartets as performed by the Guarneri Quartet will no doubt illustrate the eternal truth of the motto of The University Musical Society: A rs longa, vita brevis. March of Dimes BIRTH DEFECTS FOUNDATION SAVES BABIES HELP FIGHT BIRTH DEFECTS When the Violent Femmes come to the Michigan Theatre Saturday night, it will be with an air of deliberate ob- scurity. Just look at their discography. It might have taken a few years and a lit- tle help from new-music radio, but the first album, with its mischevious puberty theme, rocketed the Femmes from acoustic obscurity into a com- mercial limelight. And the fee-backed adolescence of "Ugly" and its high- school revenge sufficiently wetted the appetities of new fans a bit disgruntled with the mellower, bluesy side of the band. Thus with America by the tail, the time was right for a commercial drop. But the Femmes are no sell out. And so you have Hallowed Ground, a much more country-blues album with even more abstract and potentially con- troversial themes of religion and sex. You gotta know "Country Death Song" left the "Blister in the Sun" crowd fhinrir~t n~i r% fina ther R~i)' thinking about putting tneir Bs-5z2 hae.Ejy. terack upiplaceofGordnandHobeyEchi Theater. Enjoy. poster back up in place of Gordon and --HObey Ech/in But I think that was the desired ef- fect. I mean, the idea of the Femmes becoming a Duran Duran that forgot to pay the electric bill just doesn't cut it. And along those commercialism-be- damned lines, 'the Femmes have managed to keep their current tour in the small theaters instead of the arenas bands like U2 have lowered themselves to. And on top of that, this tour isn't tied to the promotion of any album. This won't be the kind of show that all you walk away from with is a tour shirt. Instead, save some money and get a better understanding of a band that's doing its own thing, whether you want them to or not. But regardless, you have to respect these guys for not slip- ping into the MTV genre of money talks and talent a video does not make. So take a tour with no strings (figuratively, of course) attached and a band whose releases swerve to avoid commercial trends and you have the Femmes tonight at the Michigan These distinguished looking gentlemen comprise the Guaneri String Quartet. Tonight's performance at Rackham marks the Quartet's twentieth anniversary season and their eighteenth appearance in Ann Arbor. S a - aJ $1"00 OFF with this entire a$-.00 off Adult Eve. Admission. Good for 1 or 2 tickets.A features thru 211 4/85 except Tuesda $2.00 "A REFRESHINGLY QUIRKY COMEDY" -NEWSW ~ememe SomeneSec al All nvaene - ovCe G, Cerifiate did w w w w ~w EEK STRANGER THAN PARADISE 0 " " -rqwr HIU5E THIS WEEK AT GUILD HOUSE 802 MONROE ANN ARBOR, MI 48104 February 11 8:00 p.m. PC I " " FRI., MON. 5:15, 7:15, 9:45 SAT., SUN. 1:15, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, 9:45 FRI. & SAT. AT 11:30 P.M. 0 0 GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS Incl.... BEST PICTURE THE KILLING FIELDS I I I I 4 4 . ,4 p 4 GUILD HOUSE READING SERIES TINA DATSKO and RICHARD TILLINGHAST 4 Reading from their works. I ' 1 I