Back on track

The rain relented so I managed a good walk this afternoon.

By popular demand (well, one person) I have remedied yesterday's oversight. Having commented on the works of Mark Rothko, it was remiss of me not to have listed to an album by the "post-rock" band Rothko, who were named after him. On their album Forty Years to Find a Voice (2000) my favourite track was Shock of Self.

I watched a superb film last night. Queen and Slim was released last year but tells a very relevant story in the light of current events.  It describes what happened after a police officer stopped an African-American couple for a motoring offence. Very powerful, tragic and uplifting.

In the light of that, a very apt work of art for today is Ad Reinhardt's Abstract Painting (1956) which appears to be just a simple rectangle of black. In fact, it is made up of squares with very subtle changes of texture and hue, which are sadly lost in reproduction, as Reinhardt knew they would be. He said of this work "I am simply making the last paintings that can ever be made." Happily he was wrong about that.