{architecture} – Page 36

Albert Robida’s Contes Drolatiques

From Doré (see last week’s post) to Robida, and a set of drawings I hadn’t seen before. Albert Robida is best known today for the illustrations from his books which present a humorous look at life in the future. But he was also a working artist, and enough of an expert on medieval French architecture to oversee the recreation of Old Paris that filled a bank of the Seine for the Exposition Universelle of 1900.

Robida’s architectural interest is to the fore in many of his illustrations for Balzac’s droll tales; where Doré often renders buildings as blurred silhouettes, Robida offers authentic detail. He’s also a match for Doré when it comes to comic grotesquery, as these stories demand, while adding anthropomorphic touches of his own.

As before, this is a small selection from a large quantity of illustrations. This time the book is in two volumes which may be browsed here and here.

Continue reading “Albert Robida’s Contes Drolatiques”

Weekend links 383

Arcadia-24 (1988) by Minoru Nomata.

• Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem Records release a video of edited moments from gay porn film Afternooners to promote the release of the film’s electronic soundtrack by Patrick Cowley. The album, which is the third and final collection of Cowley’s porn soundtracks, is out now.

• Emily Temple looks at some of the art inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. I explored the same subject a couple of years ago in a week of Calvino art posts. From 2014: Peter Mendelsund on designing covers for Calvino.

• Jim Downes on the late Charley Shively, a gay liberation activist who wasn’t interested in equality. Not an uncommon attitude in some gay circles but it’s one you seldom see aired in the mainstream press.

• Geeta Dayal on A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound by Roland Kayn, a 14-hour composition of “cybernetic music” which has been released in a lavish 16-CD box set by Frozen Reeds.

• An introduction to Henri-Georges Clouzot in seven films by Adam Scovell. Clouzot’s masterwork, The Wages of Fear (1953), is released on blu-ray by the BFI next week.

• Ubu Yorker: Menachem Feuer interviews Kenneth Goldsmith, writer and the man behind Ubuweb.

• Why Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro thinks the film vs. digital debate is bullshit.

• David Barnett on supernatural fiction’s “best kept secret”, Robert Aickman.

• Michèle Mendelssohn on how Oscar Wilde’s life imitates his art.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 233 by Mick Harris.

• Invisible Limits (1976) by Tangerine Dream | Invisible Cities (1990) by Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of The Heart | Invisible Architecture (1995) by John Foxx

Weekend links 380

Night Out, Shibuya, a photograph by Yoshito Hasaka. One of a remarkable series.

• Rixdorf Editions is a new publishing venture from Strange Flowers’ James Conway which “…aims to cast light on an era which is misunderstood to the extent that it is thought of at all. I speak of the German Empire, specifically the Wilhelmine period from 1890 to 1918.” The first two titles, both translated by Conway himself, are Berlin’s Third Sex (1904), a study of the city’s queer demi monde by the pioneering Magnus Hirschfeld; and The Guesthouse at the Sign of the Teetering Globe (1917), a collection of strange stories by Franziska zu Reventlow.

• Patrick McGoohan’s enigmatic TV series, The Prisoner, premiered 50 years ago this week. Among the series’ many stylistic hallmarks was the use of Berthold Wolpe’s Albertus typeface, as detailed at We Made This.

• Three of Bill Nelson’s home-produced instrumental albums from the 1980s—Sounding The Ritual Echo, Das Kabinet, and La Belle Et La Bête—are reissued in November.

• Photos by Heinrich Klaffs of German group Faust performing live (for the first time?) in 1971. Klaffs’ other photos are worth looking at as well.

• Mixes of the week: XLR8R Podcast 509 by Laylla Dane, and Secret Thirteen Mix 231 by New Hip Tiki Scene.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Altered landscapes meticulously rendered in pencil by Shinji Ogawa.

• “Why are UK and US book jackets often so different?”asks Danuta Kean.

• Samantha Manzella on eight of the world’s remaining gay bookstores.

• At greydogtales: F. Marion Crawford & the Screaming Skull.

• Tunnel View, a previously unheard demo by Broadcast.

• Zealandia: Earth’s Hidden Continent

• Seeland (1975) by Neu! | Neu Seeland (1992) by Terminal Cheesecake | Osprey’s Odyssey (2010) by Seeland

Weekend links 379

Male Nude, Leg Up (1952) by Horst. From a series of photo prints at Wessel + O’Connor Fine Art until 5th November.

• At Bandcamp: “Tuareg guitar mixed with traditional rural folk”: Eghass Malan by Les Filles de Illighadad; “Pan dimensional spacecraft hover over ancient pyramids on worlds undreamed of”: Lemurian Dawn by Memnon Sa.

• Songs of Discomposure: Quietus writers pick their most disturbing pieces of music. Also at The Quietus: John Foxx on his collaborations with Harold Budd and Ruben Garcia.

• Eros In Arabia, the first album by Richard Horowitz, has been deleted since 1981, and is consequently very difficult to find. Freedom To Spend are reissuing it next month.

• JG Ballard—The Interview Concordance. A companion to the concordance of Ballard’s published works. Some of the interviews may be found here.

• At Dangerous Minds: The Male Figure: Bruce of Los Angeles and the perfection of midcentury beefcake.

• Mixes of the week: XLR8R Podcast 508 by Jennifer Cardini, and Secret Thirteen Mix 231 by Alex XIII.

• Post Punk: a set of postage stamp designs by Dorothy for punk and post-punk bands.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Kanban: The exquisite art of historic Japanese store signs.

• At Greydogtales: Photography of the Folk Horror Revival.

• The Spomenik Database

• The Secret Life Of Arabia (1977) by David Bowie | Arabian Knights (1981) by Siouxsie And The Banshees | Arabiant (2002) by Radar

Weekend links 377

Holger Czukay by Ursula Kloss, from the cover of Czukay’s Moving Pictures (1993). (The painting is a pastiche of Holbein’s portrait of Georg Gisze.)

• RIP Holger Czukay. The obituaries have emphasised his role as the bass player for Can, of course, but he was just as important to the band as a sound engineer and producer: it was Czukay’s editing skills that shaped many of their extended jams into viable compositions. Post-Can he recorded 20 or so albums by himself or with collaborators, several of which can be counted among the best of all the Can solo works. Geeta Dayal and Jason Gross remembered their encounters with Czukay, while FACT reposted their 2009 interview. Czukay’s final interview was probably last year when he talked to Ian Harrison for Mojo magazine.

For my part, I was astonished when Czukay phoned me out of the blue one day in 1997 to thank me for sending him a video I’d made in the 1980s. This was a scratch production created with two VCRs that set 300 clips from feature films to Hollywood Symphony, the final piece on Czukay’s Movies album. Years later, MTV showed a couple of similar video collages that Czukay had made for Can so I sent a copy of my effort to Spoon Records thinking he might be amused. His public persona was often one of a wacky mad professor but the jokiness was allied to an impressive technical skill and curiosity. Most of our brief conversation was taken up with my answering his questions about my primitive video recording.

• “Every pebble can blow us sky-high”: A reconsideration by J. Hoberman of The Wages of Fear, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

• Dario Argento’s masterpiece of horror cinema, Suspiria, is 40 years old. Martyn Conterio looks at five of its influences.

• Mark Korven’s Apprehension Engine: an instrument designed to play the music of nightmares.

• The mystery of the Voynich Manuscript solved at last? Nicholas Gibbs thinks so.

• At Dangerous Minds: The macabre and disturbing sculptures of Emil Melmoth.

• Jonathan Meades reviews A Place for All People by Richard Rogers.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 229 by Erin Arthur.

• The ten creepiest objects in the Wellcome Collection.

• Rob Chapman’s essential psychedelia reading list.

• It’s Just A Fear (1966) by The Answers | Fear (1992) by Miranda Sex Garden | Constant Fear (2002) Bohren & Der Club Of Gore