Music from an Unknown Source

(From the drafts : on an exhibit held last December)

'Music from an Unknown Source', an exhibition of German artist Sigmar Polke's works was held in Max Mueller Bhavan earlier this month. The exhibition focussed on 40 gouaches that the artist had painted around 1996.

(I can safely say that I know nothing about painting techniques let alone their interpretations. I like to look at paintings, photos, just about any snapshot from outside. That is to say this post isn't a review or anything close to it, but you knew that already, didn't you?)

Immediately noticeable was the unique use of dots in most of the works on display. Painstaking effort surely to paint pictures in just the right light by using only dots, I later learned that these are called raster dots. I could only appreciate the style, splashes, colours in the works. For most of them were really abstract, could mean just about anything you wanted it to (isn't everything that way?)

A personal favorite apart from one of the first I set my eyes upon (see pic below) was the sketch of a little girl-boy pair playing tennis and a larger-than-life cat playing the violin on the side. The cat was sketched as though it was vibrating, a white dash'd outline and  then a black one. That ought to be some clue. Then there was a painting like a strip of photo negative, focusing on two shots of the same scene.

About the artist (from the Goethe Institut site)

Sigmar Polke was born in 1941 in Oels/Lower Silesia. Today he lives in Cologne.
His position as one of the most important artists of the current art scene has its seeds in an inexhaustible richness of ideas, the joy of experimentation, mechanical skills, but also because of his ironical perspective on social reality.

Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell was the last read (and almost re-read). True story of Julie who gets out of a rut by cooking her way through it, but it's more than that really. Was hooked on to the book from the start (though it isn't a page-turner sort), for various reasons that I wont dwell into here. The key being this is the most honest piece of writing I've come across recently.

What I like about this book is somewhat akin to what Julie says about the Book. In her own words:

I didn't understand for a long time, but what attracted me to MtAoFC was the deeply buried aroma of hope and discovery of fulfillment in it. I thought I was using the Book to learn to cook French food, but really I was learning to sniff out the secret doors of possibility.
Sometimes, if you want to be happy, you've got to run away to Bath and marry a punk rocker. Sometimes you've got to dye your hair cobalt blue, or wander remote islands in Sicily, or cook your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, for no very good reason. Julia taught me that.

Oh, and Julie's admirable...but Eric's the star :)