Dear reader,

I hope you have been well! Not that there has been much time since the last entry - I’m slowly making my way through the backlog of entries from my notes app, so the next several mirror posts will still be from the past. When I have fully caught up, and the entries are published contemporaneously, of course I will let you know.

Onward we travel to Pittsburgh PA, a city that I’m afraid to admit, is a challenge to remember. While life on tour has normalized, so too has its difficulties. Memories of cities are beginning to bleed together, such that I often struggle to answer the check-in agent at the airport when they ask me: “Where are you traveling to?”. Regardless, I clearly remember the paintings I found in this city, and perhaps thats the only anchor I need.

Here I am on my way to work:

I also am happy to report that my studio has found its home in one of the orchestra hampers, and it is ready to be taken anywhere the Les Misérables tour travels to.

Painting tl;dr

1. CITY: Pittsburgh, PA

2. MUSEUM: Carnegie Museum of Art

3. PAINTING:

   1. Christ Healing the Blind Man

   2. Venus Lamenting the Death of Adonis

4. ARTIST:

   1. Gioachino Assereto

   2. Benjamin West

5. OBSERVATION DATE: Nov 26, 2022

Music tl;dr

1. CITY: Milwaukee, WI

2. HOTEL: Hyatt Regency

3. AUDIO SKETCH:

   1. Blindness, for Assereto

   2. Venus’ Lament, for West

4. COMPOSER: Niles Luther

5. CREATION DATE: Dec 4, 2022

The Museum

Carnegie Museum of Art left quite a bit to be desired. The curation felt random and poorly thought out. This was distracting. For me, when so many disparate works are paired together, my time is spent trying to make sense of the disarray, instead of focusing on the themes underpinning the exhibition’s component parts.

It may very well be that there are just not enough paintings in their collection to organize into cohesive galleries.

Curation aside, I find it remarkable how pulled I am to paintings by the Old Masters. I believe its the deep appreciation I have for technical prowess; you cannot hide in neoclassicism for instance, in the way that I feel you can with, say, contemporary abstraction. Similarly, all is revealed when a cellist plays a Haydn concerto, as opposed to Shostakovich. The inherent cleanliness of baroque music requires a level of finesse that is, in my opinion, totally lost in 20th century compositions.

Not to say that contemporary art is without its own technique, merely my draw is to that which visually describes reality (even if that reality is somewhat fantastic) rather than an allusion or impression of it.

The layout of the museum led to a juxtaposition between the old and the new that only reinforced my belief that that which is classical, or greatness sustained over time, is what is worthy of attention.

There’s an intensity and depth to the brush stroke that I find captivating.

I don’t mean to say that I am drawn in because these works mirror life, in the sense that the realists meant to paint the world with a precision one might find from gazing naturally with the naked eye, no, I mean to say that the gravity I feel is because many of these works feel larger than life.

It is drama!! It is passion!! It is the archetype symbolized!! It is that which appears to be fantasy on first glance but is NOT. Perhaps it is so fantastic (in the literal sense of being beyond reality) that it’s actually meta true, and therefore what we are seeing is deeply honest, authentic, and real.

Christ Healing the Blind Man

Further still, Christ heals the blind man.

What to make of this painting?

Intellectually, biblically, spiritually, I don’t quite know, but what I do know is that the music is very clear, and I hear it even now as I gaze at the painting:

Darkness as silence, and silence as the floor upon which this tenebrist scene of light and shadow shall blossom. Pizzicati, at first random, followed by more silence. Suddenly an overwhelming chord of power, depth, magnitude… it is sight, as restored by Christ. Sight, as gifted from God.

This painting depicts the moment when Christ miraculously restores sight to a blind beggar by anointing his eyes with spit and clay (John 9:I-7). Several onlookers crowd around and react to the drama with astonishment. Their surprise is accentuated by strong contrasts that illuminate the figures and throw the background into shadow. This technique known as tenebrism- is reminiscent of works by Caravaggio (1573-1610), one of the founders of the Baroque style. Although Assereto worked most of his life in the northern Italian port city of Genoa, he was strongly influenced by this Roman artist. In the 1630s, he adopted Caravaggio's innovative manner of painting biblical and literary subjects by presenting ordinary people in dramatic moments enhanced by dark surroundings and brilliant light. Here the life-size, half-length figures make the miracle seem intimate and close to us.

The restoration of vision was a common artistic theme during the 17th century. Sight was a metaphor for religious faith, and the theme of Christ's miracle stood for a reaffirmation of Catholicism, especially during the rise of Protestantism and the Counter-Reformation that followed. This painting dramatically illustrates the efficacy of miracles, a central tenet of Catholicism.

PURCHASE, GIFT OF MRS. THOMAS S. KNIGHT JR. IN MEMORY OF HER MOTHER, MRS. GEORGE L. CRAIG JR., 90.10

Wall text for Christ Healing the Blind Man. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pennsylvania

Musical Response

The following music NFT is my initial response to Gioachino Assereto's Christ Healing the Blind Man, recorded on Dec 2, 2022 via voice memo at the Hyatt Regency in Milwaukee, WI. The cover art is a sineprint (a graphed room frequency response) of my room in the hotel.

It felt a bit too obvious to start the composition at the moment Christ restores the blind man’s vision. I wanted to give music to the experiences the blind man must have lived before the miracle. Therefore, the first couple minutes of the audio sketch are an attempt to capture what it must feel like to stumble around in darkness. The silence in between pizzicatos is synonymous to that darkness. The introduction of the D maj/min. chord progression at the end of the recording is a take on the entrance of Jesus and the carrying out of his miracle. This moment will likely be orchestrated for brass.

Venus Lamenting the Death of Adonis

I couldn’t help but select this painting for the collection as well. I find the delicate style absolutely gorgeous.

Ovid's poem Metamorphoses (8 CE), composed 2000 years ago, contains a variety of stories on the theme of magical transformations. One well-known episode recounts how a wild boar kills Adonis, a youth loved by Venus. Distraught, the goddess transforms drops of blood from his wound into scarlet anemone flowers. Benjamin West reimagines the scene as a family tragedy, with Venus's son Cupid tearfully feeling for the pulse in Adonis's neck.

Purchase, 11.2

Wall text for Venus Lamenting the Death of Adonis. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pennsylvania

Musical Response

The following music NFT is my initial response to Benjamin West's Venus Lamenting the Death of Adonis, recorded on Dec 2, 2022 via voice memo at the Hyatt Regency in Milwaukee, WI. The cover art is a sineprint (a graphed room frequency response) of my room in the hotel.

Upon seeing this painting I could not help but immediately think of When I am Laid in Earth (Dido’s Lament) from Henry Purcell’s opera ‘Dido and Aeneas’. That ground bass line filled my head, and while slightly different from Purcell’s, I pay homage to his original in this sketch.

That’s all for now.

Most sincerely,
Niles Luther

About the Artist