ODE TO NAPOLEON

A multipart work exhibited at Sumida Gallery in Tokyo  in  1992. Like many of my works it was inspired by a dream vision in which I was visiting an exhibition and saw my own new work. Solid cones of beeswax  penetrated by angular steel elements held small speakers.  I had to lean in very closely to hear the sound coming from the speakers. I understood somehow that it was related to Napoleon. I hastily sketched the image upon awakening. The piece that emerged became an examination of authoritarianism centering on Arnold Schoenberg’s 1942 composition “Ode to Napoleon for Reciter, String Quartet, and Piano [Opus 41],” based on Lord Byron’s eponymous poem of 1814. Schoenberg composed this piece during the Second World War as a protest against tyranny. During this time I had become obsessed with a new recording of the work by the LaSalle Quartet. Ultimately the primary elements of the work were : The music, played through the tiny speakers attached to the beeswax cones; a small figure of Napoleon, from a figurine kit produced by the Historex company which I had owned since my teenage years and finally painted and completed (in modified form with a ludicrously large hat and a Nazi salute); the lid of a grand piano; and wall-mounted images. The text of Byron’s poem, in English and Japanese, was mounted in a shattered frame.