{fashion} – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Le Château du Tarot

In which Christian Dior promotes its latest collection with a 15-minute Tarot-themed film directed by Matteo Garrone. The fashion world is voracious in its search for novelty so something like this feels inevitable, especially now that the art world has decided it’s no longer embarrassed by occult themes. But designer Maria Grazia Chiuri notes that Christian Dior (the person) was obsessed with divination and prophecy, while the Tarot symbolism extends to some of the clothing itself. (Given the negative associations of The Moon card I’d be wary of making that crayfish such a prominent feature.) Chiuri also mentions reading Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies in order to deepen her knowledge of the cards. The novel may have suggested the narrative of Garrone’s film in which a young woman (or her spiritual avatar) finds herself in an Orientalist palazzo populated with characters from the Tarot trumps. It’s a dreamy production that’s several worlds away from the murderous Neopolitan gangsters of Garrone’s Gomorrah. Watch it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Egyptian Tarot
• The Kosmische Tarot
• Alas Vegas Tarot cards
• Palladini’s Aquarian Tarot
• Le Tarot de Philippe Lemaire
• Tarotism and Fergus Hall
• Giger’s Tarot
• The Major Arcana by Jak Flash
• The art of Pamela Colman Smith, 1878–1951
• The Major Arcana

Weekend links 551

Bystander #16 (2016) by Mari Katayama.

• “In her prickly, misanthropic stories, her obsession with obsession is on display, big feelings and bad habits redirected to gruesome ends.” Carmen Maria Machado on the brilliance, difficulty and eccentricities of Patricia Highsmith who was born on 19th January, 1921. This reminds me that I have an unread copy of Highsmith’s The Two Faces of January that I ought to move to the reading pile.

• Saint Laurent—Summer of ’21: Gaspar Noé’s new promo for the fashion house features Charlotte Rampling and a group of models in a vaguely Argento-like scenario that’s all crimson light, sumptuous decor and a creditable cover of I Feel Love by SebastiAn.

• I’ve been listening to a lot of Magma recently so this is timely: all three of the live Retrospektïw albums from 1980 gathered together for the first time in a single package and with a bonus recording.

• At Spine: Vyki Hendy collects some recent book covers that use optical illusions (or negative space) to catch the attention. Tangentially related: William Hogarth’s Satire on False Perspective (1754).

• RIP David Larkin, art director at Granada and Pan who also edited one of my favourite series of art books.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Crop Encircled Boy presents…Alejandro Jodorowsky Day.

• Mix of the week: Subterraneans 1, a Bowie mix by The Ephemeral Man.

• At Wormwoodiana: A Secret Book of Ghost Stories.

• “Reality is plasticine,” says Eloghosa Osunde.

• Cats On Synthesizers In Space

• Subterraneans (1993) by Philip Glass | The Subterranean (1994) by Soma | Subterranean Lakes (2018) by Pye Corner Audio

Weekend links 508

Detecting the Forgery (1967), a collage print by Gary Lee-Nova.

• Nigel Kneale’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black was given a UK TV screening in 1989, followed by a brief video release after which it was buried for years, and subsequently overshadowed by the later (inferior) big-budget feature film. Network will be releasing the Kneale version on blu-ray in May. I wrote about the TV film a while ago.

• At the BFI: David Parkinson on 10 essential films featuring the late Max von Sydow, a welcome riposte to obituaries that headlined the often mediocre Hollywood fare that Von Sydow elevated with his minor roles. And at the same site, John Berra on where to begin with the martial arts films of King Hu.

• “Enthusiasts Archive, an artistic project by Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, is the result of extensive research amongst the remnants of amateur film clubs in Poland under socialism. It is a critical archive of amateur films found, restored and made available online.”

• Stephen Calloway, co-curator of the Tate Britain Aubrey Beardsley exhibition, and drag performer Holly James Johnston sit down to tea to discuss the “dos and don’ts” of dandyism according to the artist.

• Mutinous Jester: The Collage Novels of Akbar Del Piombo by Gregory Stephenson. Related: Fuzz Against Junk: The Saga of the Narcotics Brigade (1959) by Akbar Del Piombo.

• Michael Richey on chindogu, the useless inventions of Kenji Kawakami.

• From farting to fornication: John Boardley on early print censorship.

• Douglas A. Anderson on a case of plagiarism in Weird Tales.

• Mix of the week: mr.K’s Soundstripe vol 3 by radioShirley.

• How To Get To Spring is a new album by Jon Brooks.

• Rufus Wainwright‘s favourite music.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Occultists.

• Spring Rounds From The Rite Of Spring (1975) by Alice Coltrane | Springlight Rite (1981) by Irmin Schmidt & Bruno Spoerri | Spring Returns (1999) by Isao Tomita

Weekend links 422

Wu Ming, a communist writing collective known for its historical fiction, sees Kolosimo as using pseudohistory as a tool to shake people from their belief that capitalist society is natural and transhistorical, opening minds to other possibilities for how humans can live. They regret that popular proponents of his theories today, like Graham Hancock and Erich von Däniken, are unable to recognize the political motivations behind his project: “Nothing of his radicality survives in today’s copycats… Every corner has been blunted, the heresy has become telegenic, but we know that the revolution will not be televised.”

The secret history of Marxist alien hunters by AM Gittlitz

I received the Sphere edition of Peter Kolosimo’s book as a Christmas present in 1974, and being 12 years old at the time took its theories fairly seriously. As a work of pseudohistory it’s as poor as the books of Erich von Däniken but I always liked the title, and it happens to be the place I first encountered the mysterious words “Popol Vuh”, a name that would acquire a very different significance a few years later. Kolosimo also joins Kenneth Grant in taking HP Lovecraft’s work as a thin fictionalisation of supposed fact. For a serious dismantling of Not of This World see this review (the first of three parts) by “skeptical xenoarchaelogist” Jason Colavito.

• The Archons are back: Erik Davis talks with Gnostic scholar Matthew Dillon about religious mourning, the Nag Hammadi library, sex-magick Jesus, the Gnostic Eden, David Icke’s lizards, and the power of the Archons as an allegory of contemporary technological and political power.

• Crystal Voyager (1973) is a surfing film by David Elfick that ends with a 23-minute sequence of slow-motion waves set to Echoes by Pink Floyd. Some of the same footage later appeared in the final scenes of Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (1977).

• Sweet artifice: “Dandies in the age of decadence favoured synthetics over nature, nowhere more so than in perfumery’s fabulous counterfeits,” says Catherine Maxwell.

• Now for a lampshade solo: Pascal Wyse on how the Radiophonic Workshop built the future of sound.

• Wilde about Paris: Alex Dean on the sex, drink and liberation of Oscar Wilde’s “lost” years.

• Bee in the City: the vanguard of an invading army from Planet Bee.

• Five books that most inspired Alexander McQueen.

• Colin Newman‘s favourite albums.

• Echoes (1969) by Leon Thomas | Echo Waves (1974) by Ash Ra Tempel | Not Of This World (1988) by Danzig

Weekend links 412

Lovecraft: The Myth of Cthulhu, an English-language edition of three comic-strip adaptations by Esteban Maroto, is now available from IDW.

• The Coffin House, a short story by Robert Aickman that’s a taster for the new Aickman collection, Compulsory Games. Anwen Crawford wrote an introduction to Aickman’s world of “strange stories” for The New Yorker. Related: Victoria Nelson, editor of the new collection, chooses ten favourite horror stories.

• German music this week at The Quietus: Sean Kitching talks to Irmin Schmidt about his years with Can; and there’s an extract from Force Majeure, an autobiography by the late Edgar Froese, writing about the early days of Tangerine Dream.

• More German music at Carhartt WIP: a lengthy and revealing interview with guitarist Michael Rother about his time as one half of Neu!. There’s also a bonus Neu!-themed mix (and one of the mixes of the week) by Daniel Miller.

• From October last year, a Stereoklang interview with master synthesist Hideki Matsutake (Logic System, Yellow Magic Orchestra, et al).

• “When did you first get interested in esoteric studies?” Gary Lachman interviewed at The Astral Institute.

• At Sweet Jane: early illustrations by Wojtek Siudmak for Plexus magazine, 1969.

• 87 prints and drawings by MC Escher in zoomable high-resolution.

• Meet the Small Press: James Conway of Rixdorf Editions.

• Mix of the week: Goodbyes & Beginnings by Zach Cowie.

• Derek Jarman on the trouble with shopping for clothes.

• Person To Person (1981) by Logic System | Plan (1981) by Logic System | Prophet (1981) by Logic System