A Quote by David Harewood

Art is all about the experience. I could say I don't really relate to opera, but then you watch Placido Domingo, and you go, 'Blimey, look at that.' — © David Harewood
Art is all about the experience. I could say I don't really relate to opera, but then you watch Placido Domingo, and you go, 'Blimey, look at that.'
Art is all about the experience. I could say I dont really relate to opera, but then you watch Placido Domingo, and you go, Blimey, look at that.
In preparing my thesis, I have had the pleasure of collecting testimonies from colleagues such as Placido Domingo but also from singing teachers and musicologists. The entire course of study has confirmed what I already thought, that the value and meaning of opera singing, at the beginning of the third millennium, remain intact.
When I go to galleries in New York, I feel like I'm in school. I know that there's good contemporary conceptual art, but I have a really hard time caring about it. I'd rather look at images of people and things I can relate to. Then again, I didn't go to art school.
My favorites growing up were always Billy Joel, Michael Jackson... and Placido Domingo.
The difference between me and, say, the opera critic is that I'm charged with thinking about the world beyond opera. I could go see 'Die Fledermaus', for instance. I've never done any of this, by the way. I've never written about one opera since I've had this job.
I was a super once - an extra - in 'Die Fledermaus,' and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.
On stage you never watch yourself. You just experience it, and then you go home, and you feel pretty good if you gave a pretty good performance or crappy if you didn't. But in TV and film, you actually have to experience it while you're doing it, and then you have to watch it. And then when you're watching it, you watch it with a different sensibility than how you experienced it.
Some people who look at abstract art say 'I could do that.' A good response is, 'Go ahead but then you'll be accused of copying.
Culture is defined, really, by the artists who record what the everyday experience is like and then translate it to a common piece of art that all people can respond and relate to.
I mean, part of the justification for art is art history, the fact that you're part of this tradition. You can't really operate outside of it. So looking for what this work is really about, if I look at Velázquez, if I look at Las Meninas or The Tapestry Weavers [1657] or something and really study it and try to figure out what that painting is really about, then I find relationships between what I'm trying to do and what he was doing.
People don't watch TV only to relate to stuff. They also watch to find out about a world they can't relate to.
I got to sing with Placido Domingo... I got to sing with Aaron Neville, who is one of my favorites. Got to sing with Brian Wilson, one of the great high tenors. And Ricky Skaggs, a bluegrass tenor. I'm also proud of my musical friendship with Emmylou Harris.
You watch the interview afterwards, and they didn't really say much, but it's interesting, funny, and engaging. Whereas I sit there and look a little bit too serious, and as soon as that happens then you're uncomfortable and you don't want to watch.
I can't relate to the people who shoot wolves. I'm guessing the person who shot Wolf 06 wouldn't relate much to me either. You let people go out and shoot hundreds of wolves and watch violent movies, and then you're surprised when they go on a rampage shooting other humans. You can't separate violence like that.
Art, well good art at least, takes you to a place you go during the experience of it, and then after you experience it you are different.
Much like teaching art to young art students age 10 to 15 or so on, you have to break it down into bite-sized pieces, essential components. You have to - you know, at this point I'm so used to operating within given assumptions about art. But when you're explaining art to art students or people who are new to this experience, you have to really go back to the fundamentals.
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