Nick Cave allows a look into his world

He is a singer and composer, actor and writer: Nick Cave.

The illustrated book "Stranger than Kindness" now allows a look at the material from which the artist feeds his work.

• Nick Cave's illustrated book “Stranger than Kindness” has been published in German.

• The book gives an insight into the creative process of the Australian artist.

• An exhibition runs parallel to the book in Copenhagen.

At the end of last year, which was anything but easy for the well-known reasons, Nick Cave released "Idiot Prayer" - the record for the film of the same name from summer 2020. The 63rd sat alone in the mighty, empty concert hall of Alexandra Palace in London -Year-olds at the piano and reinterpreted his pieces.

Even more: he skeletonized her, exposed the fragile core of titles such as “Man in the Moon” and “Waiting for you”.

“I liked playing deconstructed versions of my songs,” recalls the Australian artist.

"I felt that I was rediscovering the songs."

"Idiot Prayer" was the music for the first lockdown

Like an archaeologist, he wore away layer by layer - and encountered sadness, melancholy, pessimism, but also beauty and, time and again, hope, the belief in redemption.

The film and music matched the "eerie silence" of the lockdown and touched many people in the year one of the pandemic.

Now everyone can become an archaeologist in the diverse oeuvre of the musician, singer, composer, actor and author (always a recommendation: the eccentric novel "The Death of Bunny Munro").

“Stranger than Kindness” is the name of the tastefully designed illustrated book that makes this possible.

The book, which was published with an accompanying booklet in which the German translation of the texts can be found, is based on an exhibition of the same name in Denmark.

The Royal Library of Copenhagen invites you to immerse yourself in the hodgepodge from which Cave draws his works until August 7th.

Of course, the show is currently closed - initially until April 21st.

Nick Cave calls his hodgepodge a "tangled world"

But that doesn't matter, because the volume, which is much more than an exhibition catalog, offers a wonderful replacement.

Cave, it quickly becomes clear, is a hunter-gatherer who picks up, sketches, notes or draws whatever preoccupies him.

Old photos, obscure flea market finds (such as locks of hair, discovered and acquired in Berlin in 1985), music cassettes, images of saints, knick-knacks - and lots and lots of paper, written on, scribbled on, painted.

“What you find in this book,” the artist explains to the readership in the very first sentence, “lives in the intertwined world that was created around the songs and that is inhabited by them.

It is the material that brings the official work into the world and that feeds it. ”The documents, this is important to Cave, should not be regarded as“ works of art ”.

Nevertheless, they are presented as such in the book: large-format (which is good for legibility) and ideally illuminated.

That is also correct, because in this way paths can be found that lead into the heart of the music.

What is the "Kylie Minogue" handbag all about?

There are, for example, references to family, origin and home that stand out.

And there is an interest in religion, in (popular) belief.

The artist has made umpteen little books for himself - from images of saints, some of which he has edited.

"I never actually saw myself as a Christian in the narrower sense," Cave is quoted in the informative accompanying text.

"But the Bible has always reached me in a way that other religious texts could not."

Of course, all of this is only one path that can be taken through this book and its mountains of material.

Therefore, in the end, there is great anticipation for the next dig.

What - for example - is the "Kylie Minogue" handbag all about?

Information about the book:

Nick Cave: "Stranger than Kindness".

From the English by Christian Lux. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 276 pages;

29 euros.

Read our review of the comic biography that Reinhard Kleist published about Nick Cave here.