{surrealism} – Page 83 – { feuilleton }

Entr’acte by René Clair

One of the best—and most entertaining—films to come out of the Dada/Surrealist period, Entr’acte (1924) is also worth watching for the appearance of notable figures such as Francis Picabia (who initiated the project), Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Erik Satie.

This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between two acts of Francis Picabia’s new ballet, Relâche, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in 1924. Picabia famously wrote a synopsis for the film on one sheet of note paper, headed Maxim’s (the famous Parisian restaurant), which he sent to René Clair. This formed the basis for what ultimately appeared on screen, with some additional improvisations. Music for the film was composed by the famous avant-garde composer Erik Satie, who appears in the film, along side its originator, Francis Picabia. The surrealist photographer Man Ray also puts in an appearance, in a film which curiously resembles his own experimental films of this era.

Entr’acte is a surrealistic concoction of unrelated images, reflecting Clair’s interest in Dada, a fashionable radical approach to visual art which relied on experimentation and surreal expressionism. Clair’s imagery is both captivating and disturbing, giving life to inanimate objects (most notably the rifle range dummies), whilst attacking conventions, even the sobriety of a funeral march.

Entr’acte can be watched and downloaded at Ubuweb. Tate Modern is running a major exhibition of the works of three of the participants, Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, until 26 May, 2008.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alexander Hammid
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie revisited
• Short films by Walerian Borowczyk
• The South Bank Show: Francis Bacon
• Rose Hobart by Joseph Cornell
• Some YoYo Stuff
• Beckett directs Beckett
• Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren
• Not I by Samuel Beckett
• La Villa Santo Sospir by Jean Cocteau
• Un Chant D’Amour by Jean Genet
• Borges documentary
• Film by Samuel Beckett
• Towers Open Fire

Engelbrecht again

I’m surfacing this week from a busy couple of months having finished (more or less) two substantial book designs. I mentioned the redesign of The Exploits of Engelbrecht a couple of weeks ago and it’s been a pleasure to have another bash at this. The original design wasn’t bad as such, especially compared to the rudimentary first edition from 1950, it’s more that the production standards were raised so much by the Savoy titles which followed that I frequently felt dissatisfied with it. You can see the new cover above and I’ll post some additional examples nearer publication (ETA for that is still vague).

Maurice Richardson’s tales of the dwarf surrealist sportsman are classics of eccentric comedy and it’s been a privilege having the opportunity to reintroduce them to a new audience. I intended the new dust jacket to be reminiscent of an old theatre or boxing poster and the brown and red design will be printed on uncoated textured paper to augment that effect. In addition to this volume I’ve also designed an edition of Jeff VanderMeer‘s Ambergris novel Shriek: An Afterword for Wyrm Publishing. Once again, I’ll post more details of that closer to release.

So now I take a deep breath and see what’s next. There’s another book project imminent but I’ve been asked not to say anything about that for the time being (don’t you love a mystery?). In spare moments such as these I’ve been trying to keep working on the collected edition of the Reverbstorm comics I created with Dave Britton for Savoy. That series has always been an important part of my work, more important in many ways than The Haunter of the Dark, and it’s frustrating to have over 250 pages of some of my best artwork sitting around virtually unseen. I was supposed to have the book finished off last year but other projects kept intervening. One of the resolutions for this year has been to at least complete the scanning and re-lettering, then we’ll see where it fits into Savoy’s schedule. Watch this space.

Dirty Dalí

The paranoiac-critical gaze: Dirty Dalí.

I finally managed to see this fascinating documentary this week. Since my TV broke down some time ago I refused to waste money buying another, partly for the reason that films such as this are increasingly rare and most of them have been shunted to minority channel BBC 4 which I can’t receive. Thanks to BitTorrent you can still find the worthwhile stuff, of course, but this often requires patience.

The Wines of Gala and of God (1977).

Dirty Dalí: A Private View was a reminiscence by art critic Brian Sewell about his encounters with Dalí and wife Gala at their home in Port Lligat in the late 60s and early 70s. What’s interesting about it is the first-hand light it throws on Dalí’s complicated sexuality, a subject which has been the source of speculation in biographies (notably Ian Gibson’s The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí) but which is confused by the artist’s simultaneous revealing of his obsessions in his art and the veiling of his interests in public statements, not least the frequent declarations of impotence. Sewell confirms that Dalí was interested in both men and women although purely as a voyeur, and relates how his first encounter with the artist led to his having to lie naked in the armpit of a giant Christ sculpture in Dalí’s garden, masturbating while Dalí took photographs. Sewell also examines Dalí’s affair with Federico García Lorca, the closest the artist came to a gay romance, and his subsequent relationship with Gala, which became one where the pair used the artist’s celebrity to attract delectable people of both sexes, like a pair of art world super-swingers. According to Sewell, Dalí’s physical ideal was the hermaphrodite which would possibly explain his attraction to (alleged) transsexual Amanda Lear during this time.

The Great Masturbator (1929).

As a piece of television the film struggles to fill out its running time by resorting to animating photographs, a persistent hazard for documentaries that lack the relevant raw material. All the footage of Dalí is lifted from previous documentary films including a large chunk of Russell Harty’s Aquarius interview, Hello Dali! (that camp double-entendre now seems very apt), from 1973. The overall effect of Sewell’s narrative is to add to Dalí’s already considerable feet of clay but that’s the inevitable outcome of nearly any biography; real lives are always messy. Sewell nonetheless ends by reaffirming Dalí’s principal importance as one of the great painters of the 20th century and, in an interesting side note, declares him to be the last great painter of a religious work with his Christ of St John of the Cross. A great religious artist and also one who produced hundreds of pornographic drawings, some of which are seen in the film. In art, as in the life, the contradictions are everywhere.

• Dirty Dalí at Grey Lodge
• Homage to Catalonia: Robert Hughes on Dalí

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie revisited
• Dalí and Film
• Ballard on Dalí
• Fantastic art from Pan Books
• Penguin Surrealism
• The Surrealist Revolution
• The persistence of DNA
• Salvador Dalí’s apocalyptic happening
• The music of Igor Wakhévitch
• Dalí Atomicus
• Las Pozas and Edward James
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie

The art of Almacan

Metamorphosis (2006).

One of a series of “surrealistic digital portraits” by Almacan aka Kazuhiko Nakamura.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The sculpture of Christopher Conte
• Pierre Matter’s cyborg sculpture
• Insect Lab

Visions and the art of Nick Hyde

Cover painting: Holy Grove by Gage Taylor (1975).

Book purchase of the week was this American collection of what we have to call “hippy art” (or “California Visionary Art”, as its creators preferred) published by Pomegranate Publications in 1977. I’d seen this circa 1979 and many of the pictures inside were used by Omni Magazine to decorate the science fiction stories in their early issues. After that it vanished from view completely which leads me to believe that UK distributors Big O didn’t sell as many as they would have liked. The white cover design made me remember it for a long time as being part of the David Larkin series which I discussed in May but it isn’t, although the Larkin books were quite probably the model for the book’s presentation.

Finally acquiring a copy was something of a disappointment since it transpires I remembered the decent painters and forgot the terrible ones who comprise at least half the book. Cliff McReynolds is one of the better artists (Omni thought so too) and by coincidence I posted one of his Visions paintings, Landscape with Grenade, almost a year ago to the day.

BethAnn (1970).

Best of the bunch for me is Nick Hyde whose fantastically detailed works blend the fractal filigree of psychedelic art with the kind of dreamscapes and tableaux one sees in Surrealism. The print reproductions do little justice to his detail and the web degrades his work even further (see Abraxas for a good example). Happily there are posters available.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive