Sunday, November 10, 2024

Luftwaffe is life


Bombs drop. You think you can send your child away so he’ll be safe, but that isn’t really a viable alternative, is it? Death and destruction are all around us. Some help the victims. Some plunder from them. Something drives us to find something to hold on to: home, a loved one, memories. And these fragments are existence. 
     Blitz (2024, Steve McQueen) is exquisite. The abstract golden inferno fight. The black and white daisies. The before and after hot jazz mausoleum. The plume silhouettes of pillow stuffing. The devastating deep bass counterpoint to the string stabbing cacophony soundscapes. McQueen is the only artist working in film. His one word title is like those early Warhol conceptual pieces, SleepEatEmpire. And when the kid wanders through the Empire Arcade and sees how grotesque it can be for art to depict skewed racial prejudices towards black people no words are needed. 
     It seems maybe Steve McQueen is now showing he can combine his later conventional narrative aims with his early abstract phase. What is the white noise? Is it static? Is it the Luftwaffe? Is it daisies? It’s a shimmering blanket of shapes. 
 
11/09/2024 Tara Theatre
Atlanta, GA

No comments: