{surrealism} – Page 46 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 237

Le Palais des Merveilles, 1907 – 1927 – 1960 by Clovis Trouille.

• “Why is it OK to show a male ejaculation but not a female one? What are the qualifications of those who cobble together these rules?” Suzanne Moore on the latest batch of discriminatory restrictions against porn production in the UK. Porn laws in Britain have long been like the drug laws, sprouting fresh Hydra-heads of unwarranted bans and crackdowns after the previous bans and crackdowns have been discredited. Last month Zoe Williams talked to women who make niche porn for other women. This week she discovered that some of those she interviewed now find their work is illegal under the latest restrictions.

• “[Derek Jarman] considered In the Shadow of the Sun to be just as important as any of the feature films that he made in the 1970s.” Film producer and archivist James Mackay talking to Beatrix Rux about Derek Jarman’s Super-8 films. Related: Tilda Swinton is GQ’s Woman of the Year.

• The Art of Big O by Michael Fishel (author) and Nigel Suckling (editor), a collection of the fantastic and psychedelic poster art published by Peter Ledeboer’s company in the 1970s. Good to see but at $67 (really?) I’d expect a better cover design.

• New electronica: More “confusing English electronic music” from Moon Wiring Club; Shut-Eyed Stories, an album by Jim Cheff; and Shapwick by Jon Brooks, previously vinyl-only and out-of-print, now has a digital edition.

• JK Potter Mutates the Story: Christopher Burke & David Davis talk to the horror illustrator about his photographic work.

• Beth Maiden on The Fascinating Life of Pamela Colman Smith, artist of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck.

• Under the Influence: The Sexy, Sordid Surrealism of Clovis Trouille by Kirsten Anderson.

• Geoff Manaugh on The Fiery Underground Oil Pit Eating LA.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 137 by Teste.

• The Wild Horny Goat

• The Young People (2010) by Belbury Poly & Moon Wiring Club | Goat Foot (2012) by Belbury Poly | Walking Through Me (2014) by Moon Wiring Club

Papillons de Nuit, a film by Raoul Servais

From Homosurrealism to Belgio-surrealism. Papillons de Nuit (1997) is a short homage to the Surrealist painter Paul Delvaux featuring a handful of familiar Delvaux motifs including nocturnal tramcars and large-eyed, bare-breasted women. Raoul Servais had already borrowed some of Delvaux’s imagery for his feature-length fantasy, Taxandria (1994), but that film doesn’t sustain itself over its running time despite the involvement of Alain Robbe-Grillet and François Schuiten. Servais’s blend of live action and animation seems to work better in concentrated doses.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Sirene by Raoul Servais
• Paul Delvaux: The Sleepwalker of Saint-Idesbald
• Harpya by Raoul Servais
• Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux

Leonor Fini: comment vivre sans chat

“How to live without a cat” is the translation but this short television film is in French so the rest is a mystery unless you can understand the language. As with the Max Ernst film, language isn’t much of an issue when you have an opportunity to see La Fini and her many moggies. Leonor Fini was an obsessive cat owner and cat painter, and she could also look pretty feline herself on occasion. (A piece of typically Surrealist apocrypha has it that the pupils of her eyes were cat-like until she was 4 years old.) The Fini website lists a number of European documentaries about the artist and her work but most remain frustratingly elusive. This one is an official release to YouTube from the Ina.fr archives. At the end of the film there’s a shot of the painting below; Fini’s cats are always very self-possessed.

Sunday Afternoon (1980) by Leonor Fini.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism
• The art of Leonor Fini, 1907–1996
• Surrealist women

Maximiliana oder die widerrechtliche Ausübung der Astronomie

The title of this 10-minute film translates as Maximiliana or the Illegal Practice of Astronomy which is also the name of an art book created by Max Ernst in 1964. The film was a collaboration between Ernst and filmmaker Peter Schamoni, the subject being German astronomer and lithographer Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel (1821–1889). Tempel’s astronomy was “illegal” because he was regarded as an amateur by other astronomers which meant he was denied permission to name his discoveries. Maximiliana was the name Tempel and physicist Carl August von Steinheil decided on for an asteroid that Tempel discovered in 1861. This was deemed unacceptable so the asteriod was given the name Cybele instead (now 65 Cybele).

Some of this is related in Schamoni’s film but you’ll need an understanding of German to appreciate the detail. The film is worth a look for other reasons, notably some shots of Ernst filling sheets of paper with the curious hieroglyphs that cover the surfaces of some of his later paintings. These hieroglyphs also feature in the Tempel book, and one of them appears in the film as an animated figure. Peter Schamoni made a number of art films including an excellent feature-length documentary about Max Ernst in 1991. That’s also on YouTube but untranslated so you’ll need some good German (and French) to appreciate it.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Max and Dorothea
• Dreams That Money Can Buy
• La femme 100 têtes by Eric Duvivier

Saragossa Manuscript posters

Polish poster (1965) by Jerzy Skarzynski who was also the film’s production designer.

I love The Saragossa Manuscript, both the novel by Potocki and the movie by Has. I saw the film three times which, in my case, is absolutely exceptional.

Luis Buñuel in My Last Sigh (1983)

No surprise that a lifelong Surrealist was enamoured with Jan Potocki’s rambling collection of stories-within-stories. The 1965 Polish film by Wojciech Has had another famous enthusiast in Jerry Garcia whose efforts to restore and reissue The Saragossa Manuscript helped bring the film to a new generation of viewers in 1999. I was a beneficiary of this, having been intrigued for years by descriptions whilst hoping in vain that it might turn up on television. I prefer the film to the novel although to be fair to Potocki it’s a long time since I read his book.

Another Polish design showing Zbigniew Cybulski as Alphonse.

Watching The Saragossa Manuscript again this weekend sent me looking for posters, some of which can be seen below. There are odd omissions: plenty of examples from the Eastern Bloc countries but few at all from Western Europe. The film suffered by having its 3-hour running time hacked about by distributors which didn’t help its reception outside Poland. The manuscript of the title is a book discovered during a skirmish in the Napoleonic wars, an account of the strange adventures of Alphonse Van Worden in the Sierra Morena region of Spain; one of the soldiers reading the manuscript is Van Worden’s grandson, the first of many coincidental connections. Van Worden’s adventures seem macabre at first—there are more bones in the opening scenes than in many horror films—but they soon turn farcical. As a burgeoning cast of characters appears, many of whom have their own tales to tell, the mood veers into outright sex comedy, albeit with mild philosophical overtones. Some scenes aren’t very far removed from Monty Python, especially those that feature an inept band of Spanish Inquisitors.

Background drawings from the title sequence. Yes, the score is by Penderecki, his first.

All of which means this is another film that presents a challenge for a poster designer. Most of the early examples take their cues from the opening titles whose backgrounds feature drawings with a vaguely Surrealist and occult flavour that I’m guessing are also the work of Jerzy Skarzynski.

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