{film} – Page 276 – { feuilleton }

Naked Bodies, Naked Souls and Mind Pixels

Pictures by Daniel Barkley (left) and John Dugdale (right).

Two exhibitions worthy of note for those in the New York area. Jan Kapera of JKK Fine Arts notified me about a new show he’s curated, Naked Bodies, Naked Souls, currently running at the Loft Gallery in the Delaware Arts Center,
Narrowsburg, NY.

The realm of ‘Naked Bodies, Naked Souls’ is a very private, personal world; a world of artists’ secrets, dreams, feelings, and deepest emotions,” says curator Kapera. “They have expressed the unexpressed—they have found the way to show spiritual and mystical states of soul in dream-like, symbolic images.

This exhibit features the work of 16 international artists: Daniel Barkley (Canadian), Luigi Casalino (Italian), Joanna Chrobak (Polish), John Dugdale (American, NYC), Barbara Falender (Polish), Michel Henricot (French), Michael Kuch (American, MA), Tom Misztal (American, OR), Aleksandra Nowak (American, NJ), Darek Nowakowski (American, NYC), Egidijus Rudinskas (Lithuanian), Krzysztof Skorczewski (Polish), Lubomir Tomaszewski (American, CT), David Vance (American, FL), Damian Wojtowicz (Polish), and Piotr Woroniec (Polish). (More.)

Naked Bodies, Naked Souls runs to September 4, 2010. Thanks to Jan for the photos!

Water Spike (2003) by Daina Krumins.

And by chance this weekend I happened to see news of a forthcoming exhibition of work by artist and filmmaker Daina Krumins, Mind Pixels, at the Barron Arts Center, Woodbridge, NJ.

The Barron Arts Center is located at 582 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge. Admission is free and everyone is welcome to attend. The “Mind Pixels” exhibition features photomontages, sculpture and films by surrealistic artist Daina Krumins. The exhibit opens on Aug. 21 and runs until Sept. 15. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 2-4 p.m. The public is also invited to attend the opening reception on Sunday, Aug. 22 from 2-4 p.m. Light refreshments will be served and reservations are suggested. (More.)

As part of the exhibition three of Krumins’ very strange animated films will be given a rare screening this Thursday, August 26. One of the three is Babobilicons, her epic filming of the activity of slime moulds and stinkhorn mushrooms. I’ve been intrigued by the sound of this for several years (see an earlier post about the film) but have yet to see it so anyone in Woodbridge is in a fortunate position this week.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Babobilicons by Daina Krumins
• Saint Sebastian in NYC

Weekend links 27

Annie Duels The Sun (2010) by Angie Wang.

I’m interviewed again, this time by James at Cardboard Cutout Sundown. Covering familiar subjects for {feuilleton} readers: art history, design, Lovecraft, the genre/mainstream seesaw, etc. Related: Jeff VanderMeer previewed my design for the forthcoming Steampunk Reloaded.

• Battle over legacy of father of Art Nouveau. Prague authorities are demanding the paintings which comprise Alphonse Mucha’s Slav Epic be moved to the capital.

• The films that time forgot. David Thomson on ten neglected works including a cult favourite of mine, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (1970).

• The Viatorium Press: “Fine letterpress printing, digital typography, and hand painted illumination.” Among their recent productions is a poem by Clark Ashton Smith.

À la conquête du pôle (1912); Georges Méliès vs. Jules Verne.

• Taxandria, a feature-length collaboration between Raoul Servais, François Schuiten and, er, Alain Robbe-Grillet, is on YouTube. My earlier post about the film is here.

• Salvagepunk, or (maybe) Post-post-modernism: “How a music micro-trend heralds an emerging, internet-enabled, aesthetic movement.” See also the latest issue of The Wire.

• Drainspotting with Remo Camerota: documenting Japan’s creative manhole covers.

• Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of squid: a book devoted to Kraken Black Spiced Rum.

• After Stanley Kubrick. Christiane Kubrick on life without Stanley K.

• Pills and penises and kissing boys: Tara Sinn’s Kaleidoscopes.

• Found Objects: a hauntological dumping ground.

• Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an.

• RIP Frank Kermode.

• Feuerland (1968) by Theo Schumann Combo; Feuerland (1977) by Michael Rother; Feuerland (2007) by Justus Köhnke.

Druillet’s vampires

Le Viol du Vampire (1968) or Rape of the Vampire (stay classy, Jean!); re-titled Queen of the Vampires for the Anglophone world.

We’re so inundated these days with vampires and—worse—fucking zombies, that I’ll be perfectly happy if I never see another bloodsucker or shambling corpse again. But let’s overlook the degrading of horror staples for a moment to consider Philippe Druillet‘s excursions into the art of the cinema poster.

La Vampire Nue (1969).

These pieces are for Jean Rollin‘s first three films, additions to the groovy-lesbian-vampire-with-false-eyelashes-and-bare-boobs sub-genre made at a time—the late 60s—when all the European film studios, Hammer included, were pushing the erotic content of their films more than had previously been dared. Rollin’s erotic comic strip from 1967, Saga de Xam, featured art contributions from Druillet, among others, which no doubt explains the choice of artist. As with David Palladini’s fantastic design for Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), these are further examples of how unique and distinctive film posters once were in a way they rarely are today. (Druillet, incidentally, produced his own adaptation of Nosferatu in 1989.)

Le Frisson des Vampires (1970).

Pages from the fabulously rare Saga de Xam feature in the Art Nouveau catalogue that was the subject of yesterday’s post. So too does Druillet’s poster for Le Frisson des Vampires although any of these pieces would have made suitable inclusions. Even more than in his comic strips Druillet’s work here shows the overt influence of Alphonse Mucha.

Most of Rollin’s films seem to be available on DVD should you be desperate for some fangs and boobs. I’d much rather see Saga de Xam be reissued; it’s been out of print since 1967 and the copies available go for upwards of £200. This site has samples of the pages and there’s a post about the book (in French) here. For more about Jean Rollin, see Fascination: the Jean Rollin Experience.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Art Nouveau dance goes on forever
• Salammbô illustrated
• Druillet meets Hodgson
• The music of Igor Wakhévitch
• Nosferatu

The Art Nouveau dance goes on forever

Catalogue for Art Nouveau Revival 1900 . 1933 . 1966 . 1974. Peacock feather not included.

Regular readers may recall my mention of the Musée d’Orsay exhibition Art Nouveau Revival which was launched late last year. I didn’t get to see the exhibition, unfortunately, but this week I finally ordered a copy of the catalogue, an expensive cloth-bound volume with essays (in French) by Philippe Thiébaut, Stephen Calloway, Irene de Guttry, Thierry Taittinger and Philippe Thieryre. Despite the ruinous postal charges incurred by the book’s weight this was worth every euro, it being the kind of polymorphous production which in solipsistic moments one can choose to believe was created solely for your own benefit.

Aubrey again, album covers from 1974.

Much of the subject matter has been explored here in various small ways, with the curators following the influence of Art Nouveau through Surrealism (mainly Dalí) to the psychedelic art of the 1960s and on into the Pop Nouveau (for want of a better term) which flourished in the first half of the 1970s. Among the familiar Aubrey Beardsley graphics and psychedelic posters there are also some pleasantly surprising inclusions, including illustrations by Philippe Jullian (yes, I’m still intending on writing about him at some point), yet more Beardsley album covers, film posters, and even some of the sillier films of the late-60s such as Casino Royale. Being a French exhibition there’s a section devoted to comic strips which includes work by Moebius, Philippe Druillet and Guido Crepax.

Sex and LSD, a spread from Playboy, 1967.

It’s common to see parallels drawn between the 1890s and the 1960s but the strange blooms of vulgarised fin de siècle style which burgeoned in the wake of psychedelia are seldom given much attention. One of the great things about this catalogue is the amount of ephemera the curators chose to include such as magazine ads and trend-chasing album sleeves. It was precisely this blend of 1890s + 1960s + 1970s I sought to capture in my recent cover for Dodgem Logic. As I said, it’s an expensive book but for anyone drawn to this aesthetic hothouse it’s also an essential purchase. Art Nouveau Revival can be ordered direct from the museum shop. Further samples follow.

Continue reading “The Art Nouveau dance goes on forever”

Mind the doors!

Russian artist Alexey Andreev populates the Moscow Metro with eldritch weirdness in a photo-collage series he calls Metronomicon. A couple of these pieces remind me of Clive Barker’s throat-grabbing story, The Midnight Meat Train, which was filmed a couple of years ago. For an earlier cinematic example of the horror inherent in underground transport systems there’s Gary Sherman’s Death Line, or Raw Meat as it was fatuously rebranded for the US, a very effective low-budget film from 1972. Fantastic Voyages reviews it here.

Andreev tip via MetaFilter.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Subterrania
• Tunnel 228