The Times
October 31, 2009
Rap with Raphael? It’s a better idea than it sounds
The trouble with the greatest paintings in our grandest museums is that they eventually turn into tea towels. Or mousemats, umbrellas, wrapping paper, Google images and clichés. And at that point, you can never look them in the eye again.
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So how do museums give the jaded art-lover a good slap in the face and get the tourists to slow down? Set the art to music, of course. Now this idea is not as bad as I suspected as I headed into the National Gallery in London this week to preview its new Sounds of the Gallery tour. Composers and ageing rockers had been let loose in the museum, each making a three-minute soundscape, “a sound art piece, created in direct response to a painting”.
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There are 11 soundtracked paintings. Jem Finer of the Pogues interprets Monet’s The Thames below Westminster with the creaks of the wooden pier, the distant foghorns and a rippling, dappling score — all unexpectedly polite.
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You can read the full article reviewing the exhibition HERE.
More info about the exhibition is HERE, including this comment by Jem:
Jem Finer, who chose Monet’s Thames below Westminister as his inspiration, explains, ‘There is something slightly odd about composing for a painting. They are undeniably silent but far from mute. I thought of the river as a drone, a constant through history and as a sound about which composition would revolve. It was hard to make recordings in situ. At all times of the day and night traffic was present, bleeding on to my tapes. Even below the waters there was no escape from noise pollution… In the end I made the recordings in the middle of the night when at least the boats were silent.’
Thames Below Westminster by Monet
