Monday, May 3, 2010

Lou Reed -- Romanticism -- Es Baluard -- Museu d'Art Modern i Contemporaini de Palma -- 29 abril 2010 - 30 mayo 2010




      As someone who listened to Sister Ray this morning, and who has viewed as many of the photographs as I've been able to find online and tried to assess them and the things Lou says below generously, I have strong negative feelings about this. That being said (and said sadly), there's also a very strong "who cares?" element at work here, first on Lou's level (I believe) and then on mine. 

     Palma is lovely, though. And when you get out into the Mallorquin countryside, as you should, please enjoy yourself and have an Hierbas (or two) on me and my friend, Bobby the horse

     As Elvis's bodyguards asked so memorably (with Steve Dunleavy's able assistance), "What happened?"








 



PALMA DE MALLORCA.- 



     The Es Baluard Museum  presents an exhibition of new photographs  by Lou Reed. The exhibition, entitled Romanticism,  features stunning black and white and color images of landscapes and architectural motifs, shot on the artist’s travels to Scotland, Denmark, Big Sur and elsewhere. The photographs are taken with a specially altered digital camera, which gives them an aura of strangeness, or otherworldliness. They have a timeless quality but are simultaneously very modern, like Reed himself. They are surprisingly small in scale, making these striking natural images personal, portable, and intimate.
     This collection of photographs takes its name from the 18th and 19th century art movement that sought a return to the emotion, beauty, and unknowability of the natural as a counterpoint to industrial era’s emphasis on technological development and the pursuit of rational knowledge. Reed’s images recall this impulse: they focus on the aesthetic and the sublime; the splendor of a single tree against a cloudy Scottish sky, suffused with light. There is, however, also something uncanny and eerie about some of the photographs; the absence of human figures, a road leading over a bridge into a dense, shadowy forest. Reed has recently adapted the poet and writer Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, the supernatural is a theme that underwrites much of his recent work. Perhaps, like the Romantics, Reed is commenting on another Industrial Revolution — the rapid developments of globalization are once again placing the natural into both literal and metaphoric danger — the beauty of his landscapes takes on a more urgent meaning.
     Reed says of his work, “I love photography. I love digital. I love digital. It’s what I’d always wished for. Being in the camera and experiencing the astonishing accomplishment of the creations of life sparked through the beauty of the detailed startling power of the glass lens. A new German lens brings a mist to me. The colors and light I come to see through the beauty of the camera. A love that lasts forever is the love of the lens of sharpness – of spirit warmth and depth and feeling. It makes my body pour emotion into the heartbeat of the world. A great trade and exchange. I think of the camera as my soul. Much like a guitar. My lovely Alpa has rosewood grips. What more could you need?”


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