Last Friday I saw The Who in concert. It was surreal, but also incredibly moving. Roger Daltrey’s voice is going, but Pete Townsend can still rock. The bulk of the concert was the entirety of Quadrophenia. I think the band both wanted to make an argument for the power of the concept album, a concept now lost in the era of downloading individual songs, and give a swan song of their historical place as a band. The whole thing began with the overture of Quadrophenia with video footage playing in the background. The footage showed England in the years after the Second World War up through the rise of the Mods and the beginning of The Who itself. As my wife said, they historically contextualized themselves. And it brought tears to my eyes. The whole concert was worth those first five minutes.
Then the next day we went to the De Young and saw the Dutch paintings and etchings. The big draw was Vermeer’s Girl With the Pearl Earring, but to be honest the painting doesn’t do much for me. But what the exhibition did have that I was very excited to see were the etchings of Rembrandt. It was incredible to see his work in context. For one, I had no idea how small the things were. A lot of them couldn’t have been more than three inches wide. They’re tiny things. Also, seeing his work next to the work of his contemporaries really highlighted Rembrandt’s mastery of tone and also the looseness of his line. Many of the other etchings had that old tight line work. It is amazing in terms of craft, but it looks stiff and machine-like. In contrast, Rembrandt’s line is sketchy and full of life. It was very inspiring. Also, it was funny to see how Rembrant was almost perverse in his desire to not idealize his subjects. His nude women have cellulite and his depictions of Jesus attempt to make him ethnically accurate. Maybe “perverse” is unkind. Maybe “honest” is a better word for what he was striving for. I bought the book of the exhibition and maybe I’ll post some images later.
And I just finished reading Takemitsu Zamurai on my iPad through Manga Storm. The art is by Taiyo Matsumoto who did Black and White, GoGo Monster, and No. 5. Takemitsu Zamurai is a historical samurai story, but told at a very languid pace with some quirky and fun characters. The story has the problem that a lot of manga have of being longer than it needs to be, but there are some great moments in the tale and Matsumoto’s art is amazing. He uses a spare line work than echoes his older style and also reflects the woodblock print lines that existed at the time of the story. He also uses a very vibrant ink wash. Sometimes he won’t ink the outline of certain shapes, clothes for instance, and instead will just depict them with the wash. Here are some images I found on the web.
And this one…
was obviously influenced by Steinlen’s turn-of-the-century comic…
