Morton Feldman "For Bunita Marcus" (Hat(Now)Art 174)

Feldman once wrote that... “Renoir said that the same color, applied by two different hands, would give us two different tones. In music, the same note, written by two different composers, gives us—the same note. When I write a B flat, and Berio a B flat, what you get is always B flat. The painter must create his medium as he works. That’s what gives his work that hesitancy, that insecurity so crucial to painting.” I believe, though, that Feldman underestimated the strength of his involvement in composing that B flat. Feldman’s B flat does sound different, due to his, almost painterly, touch. Depending upon the context, Feldman’s B flat can suggest anxiety, melancholy, heroism, exaltation. The experience may be relative, may even be insecure, but it is inevitably satisfying, if one commits to it as fully as Feldman did to its composition. For Bunita Marcus has an aura like that which emanates off Rothko’s greatest paintings, an aura that makes the experience, no less than the creation, more than an act of will, an act of devotion. – Art Lange