Frans Masereel – { feuilleton }

The Idea, a film by Berthold Bartosch

Having mentioned Frans Masereel in the previous post, here’s a short animated film based on one of Masereel’s wordless novels. Masereel’s The Idea (1920) concerns the birth and progress of radical thought in an illiberal society, with the troublesome conception embodied as a naked woman. When the idea escapes into the world the authorities try to cover her nakedness, but their efforts fail to prevent her image being disseminated by the printing press…

Berthold Bartosch was a Czech animator whose 25-minute adaptation of the book was released in 1932. Frans Masereel helped with the creation of the film in its early stages but he lost his patience with the slow pace of the animation process. Bartosch’s film is significant for being one of the first animated dramas to aim self-consciously at art rather than comedy or entertainment for children. Also significant is the score by Arthur Honegger whose use of the ondes Martenot is claimed as the first use of an electronic instrument for cinematic purposes. Bartosch’s animation technique brings to life cut-out figures in nebulous, layered compositions that anticipate the films that Yuri Norstein would be making decades later. It’s a shame that all the online copies of the film are so poor, it ought to be seen in better quality. Watch it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Destiny, A Novel in Pictures by Otto Nückel
• Crime and Punishment, a film by Piotr Dumala
• Walls, a film by Piotr Dumala
• The Nose, a film by Alexandre Alexeieff & Claire Parker
• Yuri Norstein animations
• Gods’ Man by Lynd Ward
• Frans Masereel’s city

Destiny, A Novel in Pictures by Otto Nückel

Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward are the two names most commonly associated with the “wordless novel” of the 1920s and 30s, but there was another significant contributor to the form, Otto Nückel (1888–1955), a German artist whose Schicksal, Eine Geschicte in Bildern was one of the spurs for Ward to try something similar. I hadn’t seen Nückel’s book before, the pictures here being taken from an American reprint from 1930. The general tone is very similar to Masereel’s The City (1925), with the difference that Destiny depicts a single, tragic life in a nameless European metropolis where Masereel presents a tapesty of city-wide lives and events. The artistic styles differ but all three artists used engraving to create their pictures, a technique that no doubt helped sustain an aura of seriousness about these projects, keeping at bay any association with disreputable comic strips. Masereel and Ward used wood for their medium while Nückel preferred to engrave on lead plates. His book is still in print today via Dover Publications.

Continue reading “Destiny, A Novel in Pictures by Otto Nückel”

Weekend links 247

Encounter with the Priestess by Robert Buratti.

• “We were gothy, we loved the New York thing and people like Suicide, Dave loved Throbbing Gristle, we both loved the Sheffield bands…we loved the darkness to that kind of electro.” Marc Almond talking to Simon Price. Also at The Quietus, Cat’s Eyes choose their favourite soundtracks.

• “When he reveals that all he wants is to deliver a breakfast sandwich, the enigma of his desire is not so much dispelled as redoubled—why on earth would anyone want to do that?” Adam Kotsko on the unheimlich nature of old Burger King ads.

• “…commercial design is full of politics, to be a commercial designer is a political decision.” Jonathan Barnbrook talking to Katrina Schollenberger.

You need to know who Billy Wilder was. You need to know the names of people who are no longer alive. Because it’s very important—it’s what our history is made of. You need to see the movies the way they were—with the racism, the violence, and the censorship. All the things that let you see what the movie past had been so you understand where we are! But really nobody’s interested in that right now. Their interests are so bifurcated.

Joe Dante discussing film production past and present with Michael Sragow.

• From 1983: The Encyclopedia of Ecstasy, Vol. 1, a publication which creator Alistair Livingston describes as a “psychedelic goth punk fanzine”.

• Mixes of the week: No One’s There, a collection of post-punk electronica by Abigail Ward, and Secret Thirteen Mix 146 by Te/DIS.

• Frans Masereel’s My Book of Hours is “a crucial example of the power of stories without words,” says Stefany Anne Golberg.

• Miles Davis and band in concert, 18th August, 1970. Pro-shot, 45 minutes.

• Lots of good reading and cultural connections at Celluloid Wicker Man.

• A world map of micro-nations

• Tokyo in dense fog

• Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go? (1981) by Soft Cell | Tainted Love (1985) by Coil | Titan Arch (1991) by Coil with Marc Almond

Gods’ Man by Lynd Ward

I’ve never tried woodcut engaving—the closest was scraperboard and some linocuts when I was a teenager—but I’ve always admired the form and Lynd Ward (1905–1985) was one of its masters. Ward’s wordless “novels” were inspired by the similar work of Frans Masereel and you can see pages from two of these, Gods’ Man (1930) and Madman’s Drum (1930) at The Visual Telling of Stories. Ward’s work is frequently referred to as an inspiration by later illustrators, and comic artists especially have responded to these pictorial narratives. Woodcut illustration had a resurgence of popularity before and after the Second World War; most of MC Escher‘s early work is woodcut engraving, for instance. There are still a few contemporary practitioners, Clifford Harper being one of the most visible in the UK.

• Bud Plant’s Lynd Ward page
• A Lynd Ward site with examples from other books

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
• The illustrators archive

Frans Masereel’s city

Pages from Die Stadt (1925), a “novel in woodcuts” by anarchist artist Frans Masereel (1889–1972). See the other ninety-six pages here. And by the same artist, Die Idee.

A pacifist in World War I, he tried to make his art accessible to the ordinary man. His works were banned by the Nazis and widely distributed in Communist countries. But he rejected “political” art and party affiliation, condemning all enslavements, oppression, war and violence, injustice, and the power of money.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive