I read a book that wasn’t about William Blake.
I looked up the painter Max Neumann (& found this: https://bonelab.wordpress.com/2024/11/05/no-language-but/) after reading ‘Chasing Homer’ by László Krasznahorkai, paintings by Max Neumann and a soundtrack by John Batki, or “László Krasznahorkai (2021) Chasing Homer. New Directions Publishing.” if you like.
The paintings are good, the story is a sort of Beckettian ghost story, the music is eerie, percussive. There’s an ambience.
Krasznahorkai is a part of the group Bela Tarr credits with directing the films Tarr makes. The ambience in those are fascinating too.
Space and time and culture are totally at the service of the ambience – events unfold but never really coalesce into story – people fold under the pressure of events. and there is the odd very beautiful moment. All of it has its own grubby stylised beauty. A beauty which holds an elemental almost cosmic weight.
This I think describes ‘Chasing Homer’ and Tarr’s films.
The mundane blended with the cosmic is something worth aspiring to.
How does one create ambience? Convincing the viewer that a thing has weight? It has been my main approach since I first saw a Giacometti drawing. Making the familiar unfamiliar.
o 