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Suchard at the Exposition Universelle

A pair of adverts from the Guide Lemercier for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, available as either a PDF or individual page scans at the University of Heidelberg’s archive. This looks like it would have been a very usable guide, with coloured maps and a good selection of photographs. The Suchard adverts provide splashes of colour throughout and this is the only guide I’ve seen to date which favours a single company this way. The space for notes on each ad page is rather generous as well as being something you can’t imagine anyone trying now.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Esquisses Décoratives by René Binet
• Le Palais de l’Optique, 1900
• Exposition Universelle films
• Exposition jewellery
• Exposition Universelle catalogue
• Exposition Universelle publications
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900

Weekend links 39

The Divine Punishment (1986) by Diamanda Galás. Design by Paul White/Me Company.

What the Catholic League and certain members of the House presumably wish to remove from their consciousness is thirty years of death sentences handed down to their parishioners and citizenry, who were told not to wear condoms, and the mistreatment of those stigmatized as miscreants and sinners by their viral status and/or homosexuality and/or status as drug addicts.

• Diamanda Galás responds in her usual forthright manner to the censoring of David Wojnarowicz’s film (and her music which accompanied it) by the Catholic League and members of the House of Representatives earlier this week. Related: Demonstrators gather to protest removal of Wojnarowicz art from NPG | Is the censored David Wojnarowicz video really ‘anti-Christian’? | Vengeance is hers: a conversation with Diamanda Galás.

• Update: Hide/Seek: Too shocking for America. One of the exhibition curators speaks out against the censorship.

“Their attitude is: ‘Next time you think of writing about sex, don’t,'” said Susie Bright, who was the editor of the Best American Erotica anthology series for 15 years. “I can’t think of any other fundamental human experience that writers would be encouraged to keep to themselves.” Melissa Katsoulis, a literary reviewer for the Times of London, certainly seemed to conform to Bright’s impression when asked to comment on the award by the BBC: “Sex is a subject best avoided altogether,” she said. “If I was writing a novel, I wouldn’t attempt to write it except in the most Victorian and prim way, because it’s awful. It’s a cliché, but the moments of genuine frisson in books are when hardly anything happens.” Speak for yourself, missy.

• Laura Miller dissing the Literary Review‘s annual Bad Sex Award. Good to find more voices being raised against this drivel and the admission of failure which it implies.

• The latest offbeat experiment from filmmaker David Lynch: pop singles. He gets crazy with the vocoder here. Related: David Lynch talks new music projects.

Scena Illustrata (1914). Cover by Ezio Anichini (?). Via this set of magazine covers from 1880–1920.

• Tumblrs of the week: Heart Killer and Pretty Pictures from the Paleo-Future Blog.

• The Big Picture’s 2010 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar.

• National Geographic‘s Best Underwater Views of 2010.

• A seasonal gift from a famous Northampton resident.

• Paris versus New York: A Tally of Two Cities.

• This is your browser on drugs.

• Double-Barrel Prayer (1988) by Diamanda Galás, with a video directed by the late Peter Christopherson.

The art of Hunter Stabler

Magick Kruller Alefbet Lamen of the Golden Dawn.

People cast around the superlatives when describing Hunter Stabler’s hand-cut paper artworks with good reason. The skull below is an ink drawing but the artist’s website features many paper works which are just as intricate. Via Phantasmaphile.

Hare Christmas Maharishi.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Sapphire Museum of Magic and Occultism

Ecce homo redux

Piss Christ (1987) by Andres Serrano.

If the news of the past few weeks has felt like a re-run of the 1980s—ongoing recession, government cuts, riots in London, Tories casting aspersions on the undeserving poor, the threat of another royal wedding—then add to the list of déjà vu moments a flurry of outrage concerning art and religion in America that’s like a recapitulation of the Helms vs. NEA spats of 1989. On that occasion Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ was in the firing line, accused of being a blasphemous portrayal. This week it’s been the turn of a video installation of a short film made the same year, A Fire in My Belly, by David Wojnarowicz, a work featured in an exhibition I linked to a couple of weeks ago, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC. A Los Angeles Times piece previewing the exhibition also connected Hide/Seek and the earlier attacks by the right against the NEA, ending by saying “Times and attitudes change”. Well, not always…

A Fire in My Belly (1987) by David Wojnarowicz.

Piss Christ notoriously shows a plastic crucifix immersed in urine; A Fire in My Belly is a 30-minute film which features among its blizzard of images a crucifix besieged by marauding ants. Wojnarowicz’s work wasn’t even mentioned in the LA Times piece but this week’s furore has made it the focus of the entire show after the gallery withdrew the video following protests from the usual suspects, the Catholic League and a right-wing politician, Rep. John Boehner. The complaints are the standard bluster about blasphemy (again) and taxpayers funding “filth”. None of the complainants appear to care that Wojnarowicz’s film is a tribute made by a gay artist to his friends as they were dying from AIDS during the 1980s, a disease which also killed him in 1992, they see the work only as an offensive act. It’s too much to expect anyone reacting with such fervour to consider that the artist may have been comparing the suffering and treatment of people with Aids in that decade with Christ’s suffering on the cross, to do so would be to admit that the artist might have a point. In response to the work’s withdrawal the Transformer Gallery in Washington DC has been screening the film and organised a protest at the National Portrait Gallery. (Update: They also issued an open letter urging the reinstatement of the work.)

Continue reading “Ecce homo redux”

Outcrops

Hvítserkur, Vestur-Hunavatnssysla, Iceland. By Flickr user jónr.

I hadn’t come across this feature of north-west Iceland before until a view turned up in Flickr’s Explore. The place is a tourist site so there are many more such views.

Ailsa Craig by Flickr user atomicjeep.

Hvítserkur reminded me of Aisla Craig, a volcanic island a few miles from Girvan on the west coast of Scotland. I’ve seen Aisla Craig from the shore and can testify to its imposing presence, and also the way its appearance changes depending on the weather and time of day.

Both these pale into insignificance next to Ball’s Pyramid, a volcanic stack in the Tasman Sea which is 562 meters in height and looks like it might be Cthulhu’s second home. Flickr has further views of this spectacular eruption but not as many as you might hope.