Drawing by Emma Kunz
As an artists and musician I’m in debt to repetition. In the visual arts it’s a way to bounce the eye in a measured clip, engaging the viewer at your selected pace. In music it creates a strange static motion, propelling the listener’s attention to both submit and tune in. In each, a meditative physical response can be achieved. One that puts us face to face with our ourselves and our surroundings and sometimes eliminating the boundary between the two. Examples can be found everywhere, in works as aesthetically divided as European visionary art from the turn of century to Detroit techno.
Painting by Agnes Martin
The picture above is by Swiss artist and healer, Emma Kunz (1892-1963). Kunz’s artwork was not meant for simple visual enjoyment, but used as a tool for her healing practice. Along with healing, she was also well known for telepathy and use of the divining rod. Her drawings have a charming and transcendent quality. One steeped in the esoteric beliefs that captivated many artists and thinkers in the early 20th century, but still clear in their directness. A similarly direct, yet detached touch can been seen in the artwork of Agnes Martin (1912 – 2004). A slightly more modern visionary, Martin lived a solitary life in the New Mexican desert, where she created beautiful earth toned paintings and drawings. Martin’s work is simple, which is what makes it so powerful. Each painting can be reduced to a single idea, which is then repeated, achieving a brand of minimalism that was utterly human, bypassing the sometimes cold and clinical aesthetic of much of the genre’s heroes . A master of form and composition, ironically, Martin viewed music as the highest form of art.
Basic Channel 12"
Music is an important part of my life, both playing and listening. I’m always digging through different genres and subgenres looking for something exciting. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of dance music from the 90’s. The deeper I get into uncovering techno’s hazy past, the more parallels I find with the visual artists that have inspired me over the years. While I doubt Agnes Martin was listening to say, Basic Channel. I do feel a definite connection between their work. Not to say, Martins paintings look like Basic Channel sound. Far from it. But, my emotional response to the two is almost identical. The repetitive gestures, the slight variations signifying the humanity of it all. It puts me in a place more there than here. Work by musicians like Pole, Monolake, and current day practitioners like the Hamburg’s Smallville Records roster, all have similar touchstones. Music striped of much of the extraneous clutter and reduced to a single idea, then repeated.
