{sculpture} – Page 21 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 330

Summer Passing (2013) by Laura Battle.

• The Marquis de Sade’s enduringly contentious The 120 Days of Sodom has been republished by Penguin Books in a new translation by Will McMorran and Thomas Wynn. “[De Sade] described his novel as ‘the most impure tale ever written since the world began’ and, for all the hyperbole, his description still holds true even now,” says Will McMorran, exploring the history and reputation of the book.

• From the Cutting Room Floor: Rick Klaw talks to Bruce Sterling about the current state of US (and world) politics. Sterling’s Futurist novel Pirate Utopia (which I’ve designed and illustrated) will be published by Tachyon next month.

• New from Strange Attractor: In Fairyland: The World of Tessa Farmer, edited by Catriona McAra, and Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic by Sarah Hannant and Simon Costin.

• Mix of the week: Programme No. 16 in the long-running Radio Belbury series is a guest presentation by The Pattern Forms (Jon Brooks, Edward Macfarlane and Edward Gibson).

• The Book of Three Gates by Simon Berman, “An Esoterica of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos”, is seeking funding.

• Occultist Phil Hine discusses Richard Payne Knight and phalluses at the Conway Hall, London, later this month.

• “My goal is to make music that is transcendent and isn’t specific of a certain time,” says Earth’s Dylan Carlson.

• Kiss the sky: psychedelic posters of the 60s and 70s from the collection of the late Felix Dennis.

• Radionics Radio: An Album Of Musical Radionic Thought-Frequencies.

• Madeleine LeDespencer on the occult bookshops of London.

• Unknown Pleasures waveform gif generator

• Sade Masoch (1968) by Bobby Callender | Confessional (Give Me Sodomy Or Give Me Death) (1991) by Diamanda Galás | The Sodom And Gomorrah Show (2006) by Pet Shop Boys

Weekend links 328

Feathers and Weights (2016) by Susan Jamison.

• The latest release from A Year In The Country is No More Unto The Dance, “a reflection of nightlife memories and the search for the perfect transportative electronic beat”.

• Depero Futurista (1927), the bolted book showcasing the artistic work of Fortunato Depero, returns in a facsimile edition.

• This week in the occult: Sam Kean on 21st-century alchemists, and a second volume of The Occult Activity Book.

How could so many jazz critics have overlooked Davis’s powerful trumpet playing on Bitches Brew, and its continuities with his previous work? The reason for their bewilderment was, in large part, the brew, the music’s muddy electric bottom, which bore no resemblance to the jazz they knew. Davis had never been a pure bopper, but his music had always made allusion, however oblique, to the grammar of Parker and Gillespie. On Bitches Brew, Davis decisively broke with his roots in bop. As [George] Grella argues, building on the pivotal work of Greg Tate and Paul Tingen, the more revealing points of comparison were no longer to be found in jazz but in the psychedelic guitar of Jimi Hendrix, the warbled vocals of Sly Stone, and the bass lines of James Brown.

Adam Shatz on Miles Davis

• Daniel Wenger on Bob Mizer, “the obsessive photographer behind America’s first gay magazine”.

• The Hauntings at Tankerton Park, a book of words and very detailed drawings by Reggie Oliver.

• A 40-minute performance by Pentangle for Norwegian television in 1968.

• Maisie Skidmore on ten things you may not know about René Magritte.

• Shirley Collins is the secret queen of England, says Nick Abrahams.

• Eighth Climate: ethnographic recordings from the imaginal world.

• Pasquale Iannone on five ways to recognise a Pasolini film.

• The greatest record sleeves, as chosen by the designers.

• Cosmic Horror, new comics work by Ibrahim R. Ineke.

• Mix of the week: FACT mix 569 by S U R V I V E.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: 47 unmade films.

• Cosmic Dancer (1971) by T. Rex | Cosmic Slop (1973) by Funkadelic | Cosmic Tango (1973) by Ash Ra Tempel

Portraits of futures past

Since blogging here has become sporadic I find myself continually playing catch-up. Recent arrivals in the book department have included two art-related items that feature work of mine. The first is the catalogue for the Things To Come exhibition which ended last month at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Israel. When I posted photos of the exhibition back in May I was wondering about the identity of the curious iridescent structure occupying the gallery floor. This turns out to be a piece from 2015 by Netaly Aylon entitled Armour (Disappearing Methods). The same artist is also responsible for the cover of the catalogue, an homage to SF illustrator Frank R. Paul. I’ve always admired the wild inventiveness of Paul’s work so approve of the choice. There’s more Paul (and many other artists, past and present) inside the catalogue.

The booklet design by Yon Shavit cleverly solves the need to present bi-lingual information by having the English text run from the front while the Hebrew equivalent runs from the back. The artist pages feature both languages.

Book design by Emmanuel Dubois.

The other arrival was Portraits de Dorian Gray: Le texte, le livre, l’image by Xavier Giudicelli, a lavish, 404-page study from the Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne examining representations of Dorian Gray across various media. Xavier had already written about my illustrations based of Oscar Wilde’s novel for a French academic journal, Imaginaires. The book reprises that piece in the wider context of the many other adaptations of the novel. The text is French so much of the discussion is beyond me but the pictorial content is profuse, and includes many illustrations I’ve never seen before. Xavier says he’s already had an enquiry about a possible English edition so I’m hoping this goes ahead.

In addition to reproducing two of my pages from the Graphic Canon adaptation, Xavier illustrates my comments with photos of Whistler’s Peacock Room and Sargent’s portrait of W. Graham Robertson, a painting I used as the model for Basil Hallward’s portrait.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• More Things to Come
• Things to Come
• Foreign appearances
• Picturing Dorian Gray

Weekend links 324

Untitled painting by Aleksandra Waliszewska. The artist is profiled by S. Elizabeth at Dirge Magazine.

• “…from my point of view, the only thing to do with any genre, any medium, is pretty much to break it, to transcend it, to find out what its limits are, and then go beyond them, and see what happens.” Alan Moore (again) talking to Heidi MacDonald about his novel, Jerusalem, which is out next month.

• A Monument to Outlast Humanity: Dana Goodyear gets the reclusive Michael Heizer to talk about his decade-spanning sculptural project, City, work on which is almost finished.

• William Burroughs’ appearances in adult men’s magazines: a catalogue which includes some downloads of uncollected Burroughs essays and other writings.

• Mixes of the week: Homegirls & Handgrenades Mix by Moor Mother, Secret Thirteen Mix 194 by Kareem, and hieroglyphics #014 by Temples.

• Remoteness of Light is a new album by The Stargazer’s Assistant inspired by the depths of the oceans and the vastness of space.

• RIP Gilli Smyth. “The silliness ran deep in Gong, but they could groove like mothers, too,” says Joe Muggs.

• Guide to Computing: historic computers presented by James Ball as though they were new machines.

• “Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis is one of the greatest love letters ever written,” says Colm Tóibín.

• “Will You Dance With Me?” Derek Jarman films dancers in a gay club in 1984.

• Snapshots from an editor: Donald Weise on working with Edmund White.

• Stupid by Wrangler (Stephen Mallinder, Phil Winter and Benge).

• The Rutt-Etra-Izer

• Dynamite/I Am Your Animal (1971) by Gong | Witch’s Song/I Am Your Pussy (1973) by Gong | Prostitute Poem (1973) by Gong

Weekend links 322

• Cover art by the Quays for Inner Sanctums—Quay Brothers: The Collected Animated Films 1979–2013, a Blu-ray collection which will be released by the BFI next month. Being something of an obsessive where the Quays are concerned I have a lot of this material already (some of the films in multiple copies), but I’ve been hankering for a BR collection for some time. The new set will include everything that’s on the BFI’s DVD collection plus more recent films, some of which have been the subject of previous { feuilleton } posts.

• Aubrey Beardsley: “The subjects were quite mad and a little indecent. Strange hermaphroditic creatures wandering about in Pierrot costumes or modern dress; quite a new world of my own creation.” Alan Hollinghurst reviews the catalogue raisonné of Beardsley’s work.

• How to find the spirit of HP Lovecraft in Providence. Related: there’s now a funding page for the statue of Lovecraft by Gage Prentiss being proposed for downtown Providence. Read about it here.

• At The Quietus: Robert Barry on KPM and the history of library music, and James De Carteret on Mike Hodges’ underrated The Terminal Man (1974).

• Michael Newton reviews Erica Wagner’s First Light, “a festschrift of essays, reminiscences, poems and stories dedicated to Alan Garner and his work”.

• Cosey Fanni Tutti‘s forthcoming memoir Art Sex Music should prove more interesting than some of the recent music business autobiographies.

• Mixes of the week: A New Age mix by Matthewdavid, FACT mix 563 by Deerhoof, and Secret Thirteen Mix 193 by Nite Fields.

• Underground music, echoes of war: using the vast Inchindown storage chamber for its resonant properties.

• Totally Lost: a photographic and video exploration of abandoned European totalitarian architecture.

• More animation: Nonsense, Cartoons, and My Post-Soviet Adolescence by Naré Navasardyan.

• Annie Rose on the allure of the predatory lesbian vampire in film.

• “Let’s write an encyclopedia of things blue,” says Bernd Brunner.

• Ferrets can be gods: Katherine Rundell on the inimitable Saki.

• The Mystery of Hieronymus Bosch by Ingrid D. Rowland.

• iO-808: A TR-808 drum machine for browsers.

• A Good Book

• Terminal Hotel (1981) by Synergy | Sataan Is Real (1992) by Terminal Cheesecake | Terminal (1999) by Monolake