Avebury – Page 3 – { feuilleton }

Jarman (all this maddening beauty)

February 2014 will see the 20th anniversary of the death of Derek Jarman. Between then and now I expect we’ll see some retrospectives, although we’ve already had an excellent cinematic one, Isaac Julien and Tilda Swinton’s memorial/documentary Derek (2008). I’d be pleased to see more of Jarman’s films given a decent release on disc: In the Shadow of the Sun has never been available on DVD, and Sebastiane has yet to be released in an uncensored print. When the BFI is releasing Peter de Rome’s gay porn uncut on DVD there’s no longer any excuse for this.

Stephen Benedicto filmed by Ben Carver.

Jarman (all this maddening beauty) is a multimedia solo performance work by playwright Caridad Svich currently in production, with plans for performance in the US later next year. Most of us are unlikely to see this but there is a short promo/trailer by Ben Carver featuring some Jarmanesque imagery, albeit a lot more high-def than Derek was usually allowed. I’d have been tempted to use slowed-down Super-8 if you can still find the cameras or film stock. Production company force/collision has more information about the project in pdf form. Via Towleroad.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Sebastiane by Derek Jarman
• A Journey to Avebury by Derek Jarman
• Derek Jarman’s music videos
• Derek Jarman’s Neutron
• Mister Jarman, Mister Moore and Doctor Dee
• The Tempest illustrated
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman
• Derek Jarman at the Serpentine
• The Angelic Conversation
• The life and work of Derek Jarman

Callanish panoramas

Photo by Serge (SEB) Bogdanov.

A post for the Summer Solstice. I’ve linked to panoramas of the Callanish standing stones before but these are more recent photos at 360Cities where the full-screen views are more immersive, especially if you have a large monitor. The stones are situated on the Isle of Lewis in north-west Scotland, and still tend to be overshadowed by the reputation of their more visible relations in the south of England. Stonehenge and Avebury may be more famous but they’re ruined cathedrals next to the Callanish stones which have survived four thousand years of harsh Atlantic weather very much intact by virtue of being so remote. In that respect they retain some of their original aura: anyone planning a visit has to really want to see these things, you can’t simply drive past them on the way to somewhere else.

Photo by Alan McLean.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Sebastiane by Derek Jarman

Sebastiane Opens
October 1976: Sebastiane opened at the Gate cinema in Notting Hill last night after a day of record attendances and good reviews. At the opening Barney James, who plays the centurion, sat next to my parents. At the end of the film he turned to Dad and said, “I don’t suppose forces life was ever like that.” To my surprise Dad replied, “I was out in the Middle East before the war and it’s really quite accurate.”

After its opening at the Gate, where it played for four months before moving into the West End, Sebastiane opened all over the world to wildly different reviews. The Germans found our Latin untuned to their ears, and the French, at least so I was told, panned it. In the States it was classed S for Sex and we were unable to advertise it – so the audiences turned up expecting hardcore and were disappointed. However in Italy and Spain it was a stunning success with lyrical reviews. In Rome, Alberto Moravia came to the first press show and praised the film in the foyer saying that it was a film that Pier Paolo would have loved.

Derek Jarman, Dancing Ledge (1991)

Pasolini would indeed have loved Sebastiane (1976) which owes much to the Italian director’s historical films, especially Oedipus Rex (1967) and Medea (1969). The film was Jarman’s first feature (co-directed with Paul Humfress), produced on a very small budget, and filmed on the coast of Sardinia. Brian Eno provided the music, and Lindsay Kemp has a memorable cameo appearance in the opening scene. The events which lead to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (Sebastianus) are dramatised from the point of view of a group of Roman soldiers who have Sebastianus among their company. The film is notable for its all-Latin dialogue, and for being the first non-porn film to feature a male erection, although that detail is often missing from prints which judiciously crop the lower portion of the screen.

The copy linked here has somehow turned up at the Internet Archive, and is the same erection-free version which has circulated for some years on DVD. The sneaky censorship would have been justified ten or more years ago but makes no sense today when far more explicit films are easily available. But if you haven’t seen Sebastiane then you have an opportunity for as long as this copy remains available…which may not be for long since I’m sure its copyright can’t have lapsed.

The late, unlamented and very reactionary British film critic Leslie Halliwell once complained that Pasolini’s “Trilogy of Life” films featured “a forest of male genitalia”. The same might be said of Sebastiane which, judging by the intemperate comments one sees on review sites, provokes a similar splenetic reaction. “It’s just gay porn!” they shriek, to which the obvious response is “No, it isn’t”, and “So what if it was?” A century of cinema has paraded the bodies of women for the gaze of the heterosexual male, the same male who chokes on his dudgeon when faced with the very thing he carries between his legs. Grow up, boys. Also at the Internet Archive (for the time being) is Derek Jarman’s The Garden (1990), the most personal of his later films until his final feature, Blue, in 1993.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A Journey to Avebury by Derek Jarman
• Derek Jarman’s music videos
• Derek Jarman’s Neutron
• Mister Jarman, Mister Moore and Doctor Dee
• The Tempest illustrated
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman
• Derek Jarman at the Serpentine
• The Angelic Conversation
• The life and work of Derek Jarman

Hill figures

Last year I was searching out various works of American land art via Google Maps. This is a similar post looking for some of Britain’s hillside figures, all of which are far older than any 20th-century artworks even if some of them aren’t as old as people hope. The antiquity of the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire has been established, however, the figure being estimated to be at least three thousand years old. The debate in this case is whether it represents a horse, a dragon or some other creature. What’s most fascinating about the figure is that it can’t be seen from any of the surrounding area, it’s only visible at the top of the hill; all other hill figures are intended to be viewed from a distance. There are other white horse figures carved into southern England’s chalky hillsides but the rest look like distinctly modern creatures. The Uffington carving resembles the kind of animals seen in cave paintings.

The Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex provokes endless speculation as to its age and purpose. In the case of this figure and the Cerne Abbas Giant (below) there are no written records of them earlier than the 16th century whereas the Uffington horse is mentioned in medieval texts. This doesn’t rule out their being far older but it implies that their origin may be more recent and more mundane than some would like to believe. The satellite view of the Long Man currently on Google Maps shows that local wags have given the figure a smiley face.

The most famous erect penis in Britain can be found near the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset. In the 1930s the Bishop of Salisbury petitioned the Home Office to have the giant phallus covered over, to no avail.

Not a hill figure, this is the remains of a crop circle I noticed when looking at Avebury from the air. There are no doubt more to be found, Wiltshire is apparently a popular area for circle makers.

Uno (1974) by Uno.

Given the usual subjects of concern here I have to mention these two album covers which make use of hill figures. The Uno sleeve is a design by Hipgnosis which is a lot more well-known than the album it decorates. The original XTC vinyl sleeve designed by Ken Ansell was textured card with the horse and lettering embossed into the surface. I’ve not been able to find a cover featuring the Cerne Abbas Giant although that doesn’t mean to say there isn’t one.

English Settlement (1982) by XTC.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Land art
• How to make crop circles

Painting the Henge

Wiltonia sive Comitatus Wiltoniensis; Anglice Wilshire (1649) by Atlas van Loon.

Avebury doth as much exceed Stonehenge in grandeur as a Cathedral doth an ordinary Parish Church.

John Aubrey

John Aubrey (1626–1697) was the pioneering antiquarian and archaeologist whose interest in the ancient sites of southern England made him the first person to subject Avebury to any serious study. As a consequence his comparison between Avebury and Stonehenge may contain some bias—Stonehenge’s site on the desolate Salisbury Plain made its presence well-known even if it was little understood—but it should be noted that in Aubrey’s time there were more stones at Avebury than there are today, and the long avenues leading to and from the outer circle were still intact. The stones of Avebury were unfortunately small enough to be broken up by the locals for building materials.

Stonehenge (1835) by John Constable.

The size of the stones, and the isolation of the site explains why Stonehenge has proved more attractive to the arts than other Neolithic monuments. William Macready in the 19th century added Stonehenge-like trilithons to his stage designs for King Lear, an addition that persisted for decades; Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) famously ends with a scene at the stones, while in the 20th century Stonehenge was shoehorned into Night of the Demon (1957), Jacques Tourneur and Charles Bennett’s film adaptation of Casting the Runes by MR James. James was an antiquarian himself so may well have approved of the inclusion, especially the way the stones are used in the opening scene.

Stonehenge at Sunset (1835) by John Constable.

Painted renderings of the stones tend to be a mixture of archaeological studies and depictions like those featured here. The site had an understandable attraction to the Romantics, and drew both Constable and Turner there. (See Turner’s paintings and sketches here.) Constable’s watercolour of the stones against a turbulent sky is oft-reproduced. Some of the stones seen in 19th paintings and drawings lean more than they do today, having been restored to the vertical in the 20th century.

Stonehenge – Twilight (c. 1840) by William Turner of Oxford (not to be confused with his more famous namesake).

Closer to our own time there’s Henry Moore’s marvellous series of lithograph prints from 1973 which study the stones from a variety of angles. These include close views, something few other artists seem to attempt. The photo print below shows the site as it was in the 1890s with cart tracks passing nearer to the stones than visitors today are allowed to venture.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Stonehenge
• Stonehenge panorama