Living in The Material World

“I’m living in the material world
Living in the material world

can’t say what I’m doing here
But I hope to see much clearer,
After living in the material world

I got born into the material world
Getting worn out in the material world
Use my body like a car,
Taking me both near and far
Met my friends all in the material world

Met them all there in the material world
John and Paul here in the material world
Though we started out quite poor
We got ‘Richie’ on a tour
Got caught up in the material world

From the Spiritual Sky,
Such sweet memories have I
To the Spiritual Sky
How I pray
Yes I pray
That I won’t get lost
Or go astray

As I’m fated for the material world
Get frustrated in the material world
Senses never gratified
Only swelling like a tide
That could drown me in the
Material world

From the Spiritual Sky,
Such sweet memories have I
To the Spiritual Sky
How I pray
Yes I pray
That I won’t get lost
Or go astray

While I’m living in the material world
Not much ‘giving’ in the material world
Got a lot of work to do
Try to get a message through
And get back out of this material world

I’m living in the material world
Living in the material world
I hope to get out of this place
By the LORD SRI KRSNA’S GRACE
My salvation from the material world
Big Ending”

George Harrison

1973

Photograph of George Harrison chosen for the publicity posters (and for the front cover of the accompanying book) of Living In The Material World. it was taken during the filming for the Beatles movie Help! (Richard Lester, 1965).

In 2007 Martin Scorsese wrote a short cinematographic appreciation of Help! for the book that comes with both the standard and the deluxe DVD box set re-issue of the mentioned film .

George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Martin Scorsese, 2011) is a documentary film based on the life of Beatles member George Harrison. It earned six nominations at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards, winning two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Nonfiction Special and Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming.

The film follows music legend George Harrison’s story from his early life in Liverpool, the Beatlemania phenomenon, his travels to India, the influence of Indian culture in his music, and his relevance and importance as a member of The Beatles. It consists of previously unseen footage and interviews with Olivia and Dhani Harrison, friends, and many others.

After Harrison’s death in 2001, various production companies approached his widow Olivia about producing a film about her late husband’s life. She declined because he had wanted to tell his own life story through his video archive. Upon meeting Scorsese, she gave her blessings and signed on to the film project as a producer.

According to Scorsese, he was attracted to the project because “That subject matter has never left me…The more you’re in the material world, the more there is a tendency for a search for serenity and a need to not be distracted by physical elements that are around you. His music is very important to me, so I was interested in the journey that he took as an artist. The film is an exploration. We don’t know. We’re just feeling our way through.”

Throughout 2008 and 2009, Scorsese alternated working between Shutter Island and the documentary.

To watch the trailer, please, take a gander at The Genealogy of Style‘s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genealogy-of-Style/597542157001228?ref=hl

Apr 15

Through The Wonderwall

Theatrical movie poster

Wonderwall is a 1968 film by first-time director Joe Massot that stars Jane Birkin, Jack MacGowran, and Iain Quarrier, and features Richard Wattis and Irene Handl, and a cameo by Dutch collective The Fool, who were also set designers for the film.

The reclusive, eccentric scientist Oscar Collins (Jack MacGowran) has for next-door neighbours a pop photographer (Iain Quarrier) and his girlfriend/model Penny Lane (Jane Birkin). Discovering a beam of light streaming through a hole in the wall between them, Collins follows the light and spots Penny modelling for a photo shoot. Intrigued, he begins to make more holes, as days go by and they do more photo sessions. Oscar gradually becomes infatuated with the girl, and feels a part of the couple’s lives, even forsaking work to observe them. When they quarrel and the couple split, Penny takes an overdose of pills and passes out, but Oscar comes to her rescue.

The film is best remembered for its soundtrack, composed by then-Beatle George Harrison. Harrison had never done a film soundtrack, and told Massot he did not know how to do it, but when Massot promised to use whatever Harrison created, Harrison took the job.With Massot allowing him full artistic control, Harrison treated the soundtrack as an opportunity to further educate rock and pop audiences in facets of Indian music. Harrison’s key collaborator on the project was John Barham, who, as a classically trained pianist and musical arranger, annotated the melodies that Harrison sang to him and transcribed them onto sheet music for the Indian musicians. Leng describes Barham as Harrison’s “fellow traveler”, due to the two musicians’ shared appreciation of Indian classical music, and writes that because Harrison needed a collaborator who “empathized with his [musical] ideas”, Barham was a natural choice over George Martin, the Beatles’ producer and orchestral arranger.

To watch the trailer of this movie, please take a gander at The Genealogy of Style‘s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genealogy-of-Style/597542157001228?ref=hl

Apr 23

The Proustian Moments of Yves Saint Laurent

Proust ball gown by Yves Saint Laurent, 1971. It once belonged to Jane Birkin.

Yves Saint Laurent was a great admirer of Marcel Proust, who had been a frequent guest of Gaston Gallimard, one of the previous owners of Château Gabriel, the villa that Yves and Pierre Bergé bought. The designer and his long-time partner commissioned Jacques Grange to decorate it with themes inspired by Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. And it’s been said that Saint Laurent used to register in the hotels using the nickname Monsieur Swann, so as not to be disturbed or recognized.

À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past) is known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory. The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. He established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material, and edited one volume after another for publication.

Volume 1: Du côté de chez Swann (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide was famously given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic errors, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay the cost of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel.

A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, “Un Amour de Swann” is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann’s love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. “Combray I” is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous madeleine cake episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.

Yves Saint Laurent’s Proust Questionnaire
He answered it in 1968 during an interview

What is your main character trait?
Determination.

What is your greatest drawback?
Shyness.

What is your favorite quality in a man?
Indulgence.

What is your favorite quality in a woman?
Same thing.

What is your favorite historical character?
Mademoiselle Chanel.

Who are your real life heroes?
The people I admire.

Who would you like to have been?
A Beatnik.

What is your ideal of earthly bliss?
Sleeping with the people I love.

What is the lowest depth of misery?
Loneliness.

Where would you like to live?
In sunny climates, by the sea.

What talent would you like to have?
Physical strength.

What fault are you most tolerant of?
Betrayal.

Who is your favorite painter?
Picasso.

Your favorite musician?
Bach. And nineteenth century composers of opera.

Your favorite writers, apart from Proust?
I love Proust so much that it’s hard for me to share him with other authors. But I adore [Louis-Ferdinand] Céline and also [Louis] Aragon.

What is your favorite color?
Black.

What do you hate most of all?
The snobbery of wealth.

Do you have a motto?
I’ll borrow the motto of the Noailles family: “More Honor” – in the singular rather than “honors” in the plural.

Feb 23

The Many Faces of Pascal Vilcollet

Born in Paris, 1979, Pascal Vilcollet studied graphic design and taught himself to paint at age 16. “Fortunately, there was not much to do in my suburb. I discovered very early, museum galleries; it is there that I knew I would be painting later”.

He paints mostly for his own satisfaction. Portrait is his favorite motif, “it can be my obsession”. He doesn’t look for creating an effect; he said he paints to lighten a weight. He’s not interested in realism, pure figuration or hyper realism, rather than the border between reality and abstraction.

Vilcollet claims to have very eclectic tastes. He appreciates enormously Pierre Soulage and respects the artists that, in his opinion, represented their era: Caravaggio, Diego Velázquez, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko or contemporaries like Lucien Freud, Murakami, Justin Mortimer or Jenny Saville.

He spoke about his icons, mostly characters he feels fascination for because he either admires them. Taking advantage of real graphic representations, he fragments them and then reconstructs them, giving us a new insight into a psychological portrait. Pascal Vilcollet’s brush is the dynamic extension of his body while he is in action.