{surrealism} – Page 5 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 719

The Decoy (1948) by Edith Rimmington.

• “Among other things, [Dalí’s] storyboards involved [Ingrid] Bergman turning into a statue that would then break up into ants.” Tim Jonze talks to film scholar John Russell Taylor about the storyboards for Alfred Hitchcock’s films, including the ones for Spellbound which Taylor found in a bric-a-brac sale.

• “Of all the pop acts that proliferated in the early 80s, it was Soft Cell who retained punk’s sharp, provocative edges.” Matthew Lindsay on 40 years of Soft Cell’s This Last Night In Sodom.

• Coming soon from White Rabbit books: Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines and Tomorrow’s Music Today by Simon Reynolds.

Anathema to many philosophical systems, or perhaps philosophy itself, Lovecraft’s philosophical project fundamentally holds that contemplations of higher reality or the nature of things can never be fully realised. Ultimately, the search for knowledge does not constitute some telos, some purpose, for humankind, but rather leads to the violent dissolution of the self. Higher reality is that which the limited human psyche can never fully comprehend.

Sam Woodward on the cosmic philosophy of HP Lovecraft

• At Public Domain Review: Grotesqueries at Gethsemane: Marcus Gheeraerts’ Passio Verbigenae (c.1580).

• “Here is a remarkable form of popular heraldry.” Mark Valentine on the mystique of old inn signs.

• At Bandcamp: Brad Sanders on where to begin with Lustmord’s cosmic ambient.

• New music: Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal by Adam Wiltzie.

• At Aquarium Drunkard: Jason P. Woodbury talks to Roger Eno.

• Gomorrha (1973) by Can | Sodom (1978) by Can | Spellbound (1981) by Siouxsie And The Banshees

More Surrealist Subversion

It looks like I’m still in the Synchronicity Zone. This PDF of the fourth and final issue of Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion turned up when I was searching for something that had nothing to do with Surrealism in general or the Chicago Surrealist Group in particular; inside there are yet more wolves and mentions of anarchy, although the two aren’t directly connected this time. The fourth number of Arsenal was published in 1989, thirteen years after the third issue, and at 230 pages is the most substantial number of all. Substantial and easily the best of the four, with a wide range of textual and visual material, and less concern with the aesthetic and political arguments of the distant past. There are some impressive collage pieces in this issue, as well as examples of work by painters that were unknown to me which I’ll be following up later.

The editorial tone is generally less belligerent than the earlier issues although Franklin Rosemont is still lobbing verbal grenades at the cultural figures who managed to upset him. As I said in January, you can’t expect much else from a magazine that names itself after a store of weapons. Elsewhere in the issue the writers attempt to compensate once again for André Breton’s dismissal of music as a vehicle for Surrealism although none of the discussion goes very far. The blues and jazz musicians mentioned are all dead ones, and mostly seem to be celebrated for their “liberatory” existence rather than any overtly Surrealist qualities in their music. The attitude seems to be: This music/person is liberatory; Surrealism is liberatory; therefore this music/person is Surrealist. The only reference to the vast ocean of popular music comes with a one-page eulogy to Bob Marley of all people, the safest choice in any discussion of Jamaican music. Reading this you wouldn’t know there was a whole world of deeply weird and very influential dub music out there. I’d argue that there’s more Surrealism in King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown or any number of Lee Perry singles than in the whole of the Marley discography. An opportunity was missed in this issue and the earlier numbers of Arsenal to show the ways in which music—especially the popular variety, not compositions for the concert hall—has been continually Surrealist from the rock’n’roll era to the present day. But this discussion is only a small percentage of the whole journal. If it fails here it leaves an opening for more detailed exploration elsewhere.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Surrealism archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Werewolf of Anarchy
• Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion

Man with a Newspaper

René Magritte with a newspaper.

La Nouvelle Médication Naturelle Traduit de l’Allemand – Vol. 2 (1899) by FE Bilz

Man with a Newspaper (1928) by René Magritte

Fuzz Against Junk (1959) by Akbar Del Piombo

The Oxford Book of Short Poems (1986) edited by PJ Kavanagh and James Michie

Mensonge (1987) by Malcolm Bradbury

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2015), illustrated by Anthony Browne

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Surrealism archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Fuzz Against Junk & The Hero Maker

The groovy video look

Under Water/In Air.

This recently-released video for Under Water/In Air by Starfucker (or STRFKR, as they often have to style themselves) is an animated production by Edward Carvalho-Monaghan, an artist whose visuals may be seen to similar effect in an earlier animation for Starfucker’s Armatron. Carvalho-Monaghan’s artwork has appeared on a number of the group’s record sleeves, including the latest album, Parallel Realms, which combines a Surrealist dose of the visual style that I refer to as the groovy look with the kind of impossible architecture popularised by MC Escher. Armatron, meanwhile, features more architecture in what may be borrowings from Giorgio de Chirico.

Armatron.

I lost interest in music videos years ago, I’d much rather listen to the music than have to experience it as a soundtrack to some director’s attempt to illustrate a song with visual novelty. But animated music videos are easier to take, in part because the pairing of animation with music goes back to the earliest days of the medium. The Starfucker videos have had me wondering how much video or animation might suit the “groovy” definition if you went looking for it. And by this I mean following the limits defined by my earlier post which is predominantly concerned with heavy outlines and flat, bold colours rather than quasi-psychedelic effects. I don’t have the time just now to start searching for other examples but The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine is the Ur-text in this department, and the film’s influence may be found in both Carvalho-Monaghan animations.

Sing, Sang, Sung.

One other music video that does come to mind is for Sing, Sang, Sung by Air, directed by Mrzyk & Moriceau. The colour palette is desaturated but the rest of the graphics are definitely in the groovy zone, with the video as a whole coming across like a Surrealist take on those endlessly scrolling, mutating computer games. When the black ball reaches its destination you’re tempted to watch it all again.

(Under Water/In Air tip via Scotto Moore’s This Newsletter Cannot Save You.)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The groovy look
• Tadanori Yokoo animations

Valentine Hugo’s Contes Bizarres

Looking around at the weekend for drawings by Valentine Hugo (1887–1968), I was reminded of a defunct bookselling blog which hosts scans of the illustrations that Hugo created in 1933 for Contes Bizarres, a collection of stories by Achim von Arnim (1781–1831). I posted a link to this place in the past but since neglected sites have a tendency to abruptly vanish I thought it worth bumping the illustrations into the future here. Valentine Hugo never seems to receive the same attention as the other well-known women Surrealists despite her evident talent and closer connections to the original Surrealist group than those who came later. Her careful renderings are easy to recognise, often done with pastel or crayon on textured black paper or card. This edition of Contes Bizarres was a collection of translations by Théophile Gautier with an introduction by André Breton which suggests the stories are bizarres enough to be considered Surrealist precursors. Not having read any of them I can’t say much about them but Max Ernst counted von Arnim among his favourites poets. André Breton, meanwhile, favoured German Romanticism enough to make Novalis the Magus of Flames in the Jeu de Marseilles card deck but Achim von Arnim is one such writer who still seems to be more popular in France than he is in the Anglosphere. Valentine Hugo apparently illustrated an edition of Les Chants de Maldoror around the same time as Contes Bizarres. If this is the case I’ve yet to see the illustrations anywhere.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
• The Surrealism archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Max Ernst’s favourites