Five favorites of the week: A Leica 105 for two to four million – culture

Leica 105

In layman’s terms, shrugs, but the tiny fraction of humanity that cares about still cameras will be in an elusive state of wonder and ecstasy this weekend. In Wetzlar, the birthplace of the Leica, the legendary 105 will be auctioned on Saturday. It belonged to Oskar Barnack – the inventor of the Leica – which is why it is one of the historically most important cameras of all. In all its tinyness, it encompasses the glorious history of this photo stamp, which actually only exists because Barnack was ill and weak. The inventor with a love for the mountain world simply had no strength for the bulky plate cameras that were common at the time. And so he invented, actually for himself, this 35mm camera, which his boss Ernst Leitz had mass-produced in 1924 and called Leica (for Leitz–Cam). Barnacks 105 is a pre-production model – an incredible rarity. It will probably be on display for the last time in Europe this weekend, as the most affluent collectors are in Asia. And you should already have two to four million euros left over. Marc Hoch

Minimal Music by John Adams

The American composer and Pulitzer Prize winner John Adams is one of the first and most important representatives of Minimal Music, who established a new sound image in the 1970s. It was largely based on rigid patterns that were repeated endlessly and put together like a mosaic or, in minimal shifts, created a stream of sound that seemed eternal. Similar to Indonesian gamelan music or certain forms of jazz, a kind of musical trance is supposed to develop. However, minimal music is built more strictly and exhibits its structure as musical content.

For John Adams that wasn’t enough. He enriched the sounding framework with expressive orchestral colors, interwoven melodies and, in his operas, with arioso singing. In general, he attaches great importance to not forcing the listener into the emptiness of a drug-free trance state, which is created by the sheer penetrance of a repeated motif in minimal variation. His first major opera “Nixon In China” – premiered in Houston in 1987 under the direction of Peter Sellars – unfolds a colorful musical cosmos on the basis of this minimal music and can thus lend this fundamentally anti-dramatic music theatrical features. In one of his first prominent minimal music compositions with the German title “Harmonielehre”, in the second part “Amfortas Wound” Adams not only clearly refers to the sound worlds of Richard Wagner in the title, but also takes up specific melodies from his Parsifal.

Sometimes it seems to be an attempt to continue his orchestral sound revolution and at the same time boil it down to a concentrated minimum. The orchestra in Adams is much smaller, more transparent, and also reduced in the possibilities of creating a supporting drama from sound alone. All of this can now be traced in great detail in the extensive John Adams Collected Works (Nonesuch/Warner) edition, which spans four decades of recordings, including 42 debut recordings, 31 solo albums, six opera productions and many more award-winning ones. Helmut Mauro

Family reunion: The Erlangen Comic Salon

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The feminist star cartoonist Liv Stromquist comes to the audience discussion, Barbara Yelin presents her new book and two Disney artists promise insights into their work. From June 16th to 19th the Erlangen Comic Salon takes place, the most important comic festival in the German-speaking world. The comic family is finally meeting here again live and with an audience after the corona-related flight to the digital world two years ago. Under the slogan “Sign(s) for vaccination” renowned artists had been asking for boosters since December so that this festival (and others) could actually take place.

At the traditional “Elephant Round” publishers talk about the most important developments on the German market for graphic literature. This year it will be about growth in the book trade and the sharp increase in production costs due to paper shortages and skyrocketing energy prices. Dirk Rehm is also on the podium, who co-financed the autumn program of his Reprodukt Verlag with a crowdfunding campaign.

But the core of the festival are the exhibitions. This year you are dealing with “Role Models – Feminism in Comics and Illustration”. There is a Will Eisner retrospective, the work of Catherine Meurisse can be seen, and Anna Haifisch, Liv Strömquist and Birgit Weyhe are also showing their work. Women have long shaped the comic and graphic novel scene, especially in German-speaking countries. “But I’m alive” promises to be particularly interesting – three drawn stories by Miriam Libicki, Barbara Yelin and Gilad Seliktar based on the stories of Holocaust survivors.

For the first time in Erlangen, the small, fine Berlin Jaja Verlag is also present with an exhibition of sketches and drawings by its artists. Among them is Paulina Stulin, whose comic “At my home” has been nominated for the Max and Moritz Prize 2022. Martina Knoben

Anna Haifisch in Leipzig

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Because the work of Anna Haifisch was briefly mentioned above: you can not only admire her in the Erlangen Comic Salon at the moment, there is still a big one running in the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig for a few weeks (until July 3rd). , very fantastic solo exhibition by the illustrator, whose picture stories can long since be considered the equivalent of Max Weber’s “Politics as a Profession”, only in relation to visual artists and, in addition to the deep socio-psychological truths, also with charm and comedy. That’s what the art prize was for Leipziger Volkszeitung due – and in the exhibition there is also a story about early childhood visits to the Leipzig Zoo and the revelation that Haifisch’s successful figure “The Artist” could have its origins in the “griffon vulture” there. Peter Richter

Kate Bush: “Running Up That Hill”

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There was that voice. As bright as a bell, fearless. A voice that always resonated: “Does my volume get on your nerves? Your problem!” And then there was this beat, driving, menacing, a heart about to skip. Kate Bush released one of her most brilliant songs in 1985 with “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)”. He has an unconventional fearlessness that was hardly granted to female artists of the time. Kate Bush paved the way for important songwriters of the ’90s and ’00s, like Björk and Tori Amos, who didn’t want to croon. Now “Running Up That Hill” is popping in of the new season “Stranger Things” up, which is why the song is back on the (streaming) charts in several countries – and the teenagers are freaking out about it. Rightly so. Christian Lutz