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The Chronicles of Clovis and other sarcastic delights

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This week’s book purchase (yes, dear reader, it never ends, there are merely lulls between one indulgence of the vice and the next) is a small Bodley Head volume that comprises part of the collected works of Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), or “Saki” as he’s better known. I have Saki’s complete works already in a big fat Penguin collection but I like these small books that were the common format for portable reading prior to the invention of the paperback. Over a number of years I’ve managed to collect about half of the Tusitala Edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s complete works which are similarly-sized blue volumes (one in a rare leather binding), simply through chance finds in secondhand shops.

This particular book is a 1929 reprint of The Chronicles of Clovis collection first published in 1911 and, like the Stevenson volumes, has the author’s signature blocked in gold on the cover. The introduction is by AA Milne and I’m taking the liberty of reproducing it in full below, partly out of laziness and partly because he does a good job of presenting the man and his work.

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Toxicboy

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left: Mikel; right: Matt.

Toxicboy aka Mikel from Montreal, is a photographer as stunningly gorgeous as many of his models, so his “self-centred self portraits” are entirely justified, for this viewer at least. He enhances some of his pictures with subtle and artful digital manipulation, as with the photo above showing three incarnations of the same model, Matt. The androgynous pictures in his “Maiden to Man” series merge gender in a way that few photographers—gay or straight—seem willing to explore, despite the possibilities that Photoshop suggests. The possibilities suggested by three identical boys in the same bed is something we can only dream about.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Czanara’s Hermaphrodite Angel

The South Bank Show: Francis Bacon

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Non-Brits may not be aware that The South Bank Show is a long-running arts programme (or “show”, as Americans prefer) and the last bastion of cultural broadcasting on the otherwise completely moribund ITV channel. Over the years the SBS has produced some great documentaries and this one from 1985 is particularly good, capturing artist Francis Bacon in fine form, both as combative critic and sozzled pisshead when he and presenter Melvyn Bragg drink too much wine in a restaurant. Highlights include his funny dismissal of Mark Rothko whilst viewing paintings at the Tate, their tour of his cramped studio, and his drunken pronunciation of the word “voluptuous” when describing Michelangelo’s male figures.

I taped this programme when it was repeated after Bacon’s death in 1992 but you lucky people can now see and download it from Ubuweb. (Their note says the SBS is a BBC production but this is incorrect.)

Part of The South Bank Show series, David Hinton directs this documentary about British painter Francis Bacon, known for his horrifying portraits of humanity. The program consists of a series of conversations between Bacon and interviewer Melvyn Bragg, starting with commentary during a side-show presentation at the Tate Gallery in London. Later in the evening, Bacon is followed through various bars hanging out, drinking, and gambling. In another segment, Bacon provides a tour of his painting studio and a glimpse at his reference photographs of distorted humans. The artist discusses his theories, influences, and obsessions. This title won an International Emmy Award in 1985.

This isn’t necessarily the best Bacon interview, that accolade would probably have to go to the 1984 Arena documentary (which was a BBC production) Francis Bacon: The Brutality of Fact where FB is interviewed by art critic and long-time supporter David Sylvester. Sylvester interviewed Bacon many times over twenty years or so and Thames & Hudson printed the Arena interview along with several of their other talks in Sylvester’s book of the same name. Essential reading for anyone interested in the artist’s work.

Bacon’s work has affected my own on a number of occasions. The cover to Reverbstorm #4 borrowed the carcass from his Painting (1946); some of the paintings I was doing in 1997 (like this one and this one) are distinctly Bacon-esque and we used two of his paintings on the cover design for Savoy’s edition of The Killer (Dave Britton’s idea on that occasion).

His work remains popular for the over-inflated art market. Sketches and unfinished paintings that he was throwing out, and detritus like discarded cheque books, sold for nearly a million pounds last month. And earlier this week his Study from Innocent X (1960) went for $52.6m in a New York auction. Bacon once said that “some artists leave remarkable things which, a hundred years later, don’t work at all. I have left my mark; my work is hung in museums, but maybe one day the Tate Gallery or the other museums will banish me to the cellar—you never know.” I think we can assume this won’t be happening for a while yet.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• T&H: At the Sign of the Dolphin
• 20 Sites n Years by Tom Phillips

The art of Lucio Bubacco

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Devils and Angels.

There’s been plenty of speculation over the past twenty-four hours concerning the nature of the post-mortem torments that might await Jerry Falwell now that his soul has departed its corpulent container. Various suggestions I’ve seen run the gamut from the fanciful—being buggered for eternity by purple Teletubbies—to the semi-serious—finding himself in the Third Circle of Dante’s Inferno along with the rest of the gluttons who, so Dante tells us, lie in continual hail and rain whilst eating their own excrement. For a man who spent most of his life talking shit, the latter would seem to be a fitting end.

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Devils and Angels (details).

Which disrespectful preamble brings us to another Italian, Lucio Bubacco, and his glass artworks. Bubacco is a Venetian and Venice has long been a centre of excellence in glass-blowing and sculpture. Yet Bubacco excels even by the standards of his birthplace, and his work is a deal more witty, imaginative and finely-crafted than the dull porn glassworks Jeff Koons had produced (by Italians also) for his Made in Heaven series in 1991. Of the work on Bubacco’s site my favourites are those in the “Transgressive” section which includes the marvellous Devils and Angels tableaux shown above, where a complement of masculine angels and demons are arranged about the central pillar in a Kama Sutra of celestial copulation. Not all his work is this outrageous, some is merely sweetly subversive like The Kiss showing an amorous encounter between a satyr and a naked man. That’s still enough to upset Falwell’s Puritan pod people but then they’re beyond our salvation, aren’t they?

• Official site | Lucio Bubacco on MySpace

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of ejaculation
• Czanara’s Hermaphrodite Angel
• Angels 4: Fallen angels
• Angels 1: The Angel of History and sensual metaphysics
• The glass menagerie