Jean Cocteau – Page 7 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 141

From the Beautiful Faces series (2012) by Tran Nguyen.

• “What possessed a generation of young European artists, and a few Americans, to suddenly suppress recognizable imagery in pictures and sculptures? Unthinkable at one moment, the strategy became practically compulsory in the next.” Peter Schjeldahl on the birth of abstraction.

• “A profanely mystical work of hyperpurple theory-porn, ObliviOnanisM is an auto-erotic intellectual fiction envisioning the phantastical unending odyssey of a young woman, Gemma, whom you will never know.”

• Psychedelia—An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way of Life, a 520-page history of psychedelic culture by Patrick Lundborg. Related: Ken Kesey talks about the meaning of the Acid Tests.

[Hodges] made a convincing case that Turing’s teenage crush on a fellow schoolboy, Christopher Morcom, was an important catalyst for his lifelong preoccupation with the relationship between brain and mind. Morcom’s unexpected death at the age of eighteen was a shattering blow to Turing, who began to reflect on whether his friend’s consciousness might survive after death or whether it was simply a result of complex material processes and expired when life did. Hodges also linked the famous “Turing Test”, in which a computer attempts to pass as an intelligent human being, to Turing’s own dilemma as a gay man in a homophobic world. (Turing called his test the “imitation game”, and Hodges observed, “like any homosexual man, he was living an imitation game, not in the sense of conscious play acting, but by being accepted as a person that he was not”.)

Michael Saler reviews three books about computing pioneer Alan Turing

• Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds looks at Flowers, Lindsay Kemp’s theatrical staging of Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers.

• David Pearson designed a new edition of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for Penguin.

• Quadtone – Lumisonic Rotera: Mariska de Groot plays a light-to-sound instrument.

• “Cash Mobs” Go Global—Battle Spreads Against Chain Store Dominance.

• Cities and the Soul: a feast of Italo Calvino links at MetaFilter.

• 25 dessins d’un dormeur, Jean Cocteau, 1929.

• Haunted Decor: a Flickr group.

• Computer In Love (1966) by Perrey & Kingsley | Computer Love (1981) by Kraftwerk | Computer Love (1992) by The Balanescu Quartet

Weekend links 137

Self-portrait by Jon Jacobsen from his Home series.

• Steven Arnold: Cabinet of Curiosities is “a retrospective exhibition of this groundbreaking yet under-recognized queer artist at the ONE Archives Gallery & Museum in West Hollywood. The exhibition celebrates Arnold’s radical imagination, presenting many of his tableaux vivant photographs alongside never before exhibited drawings, sketchbooks, paintings and original poster art. In conjunction with the exhibition, ONE will screen Arnold’s four films, including Luminous Procuress (1970), which featured The Cockettes and was lauded by Salvador Dalí.” The exhibition runs to January 12, 2013.

• “The boundary-pushing techno/sound design duo Emptyset will transform London’s cavernous industrial space Ambika P3 into an immersive sound installation for one night only—and here’s how they’re going to do it”.

• “At one time he was a well-known figure in Montparnasse, where he had a reputation as a master of the occult sciences.” Aleister Crowley is interviewed about his expulsion from France in 1929.

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness… No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded… [T]hey forbid our premature closing of accounts with reality.

William James (1842–1910) quoted in What Should We Do With Our Visions of Heaven—and Hell? by John Horgan at Scientific American.

• Screws is an album of piano music by Nils Frahm that’s currently available as a free download (inc. aiffs).

• At Pinterest: Art Visonnaire. Related: Ain’t We Got Fun: The magical surrealism of Jen Ray.

• Rowan Somerville “challenges the purpose and legitimacy” of the Bad Sex Awards.

• Jimmy’s End: the website for the film by Alan Moore & Mitch Jenkins.

• Douglas Rushkoff in conversation with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

• Linda Rodriguez McRobbie explores The History of Boredom.

• Recreating the sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

• Alchemical Emblems, Occult Diagrams, and Memory Arts.

• Rocaille: A Blog about Decadence, Kitsch and Godliness.

• A new video for Goddess Eyes II by Julia Holter.

• The complete audio recordings of Jean Cocteau.

• The Rumpus interview with Russ Kick.

• Forgotten Bookmarks

• RIP Spain Rodriguez

• Astradyne (1980) by Ultravox (produced by Conny Plank) | Biomutanten (1981) by Les Vampyrettes (Conny Plank & Holger Czukay) | Never Gonna Cry Again (1981) by Eurythmics (feat. Holger Czukay, produced by Conny Plank).

The art of Gregorio Prieto, 1897–1992

Predicadors del be i del mal (c. 1928–1930).

My thanks to Will at 50 Watts for sending these experimental photos by Spanish artists Eduardo Chicharro (1873–1949) and Gregorio Prieto, neither of whose work I’d looked at before. Prieto is of most interest here (that’s him in photo five with the metalwork wrapped around his head) for the homoerotic quality of his other work, a quality which no doubt explains why some of these pictures set the gaydar bells ringing. I thought that Javier at Bajo el Signo de Libra might have featured Prieto already but it seems not.

Iluita (c. 1928–1930).

The photos are from Les avantguardes fotografiques a espanya, 1925–1945. The superimposed images are reminiscent of those that Emil Cadoo was producing in the 1950s albeit with more of a deliberate Surrealist flavour; the ruins and Classical references are also a feature of Prieto’s paintings, some of which can be seen here. (Also a coloured print of the first photo above.) The homoerotics is most evident in his line drawings, some of which can be seen here. His reclining youths and embracing sailors look rather Cocteau-like but they probably owe more to the etchings of Picasso’s Vollard Suite which were being produced around the same period. There’s more Picasso-esque Prieto at Flickr including a drawing dedicated to Lorca.

Metamorfosi (c. 1928–1930).

Continue reading “The art of Gregorio Prieto, 1897–1992”

Brothers Quay scarcities

Igor: The Paris Years (1982).

More animation, and scarce in the sense that some of these films were omitted from the core Quay Brothers canon released in the UK by the BFI as Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003. Quay obsessives such as myself would have been happy to pay for an extra disc featuring more of their oeuvre but we can at least turn to YouTube to fill in some gaps. This is by no means everything so I may add more discoveries at a later date. Some of the DVD-issued films can be seen on the BFI’s official Daily Motion channel.

I was eager to see the Stravinsky film again having watched it one time only in a Channel 4 screening some 25 years ago. After a fresh viewing it’s not as impressive as I remembered, in part because the Quay’s distinctive approach to animation—and filmmaking generally—developed a great deal following the unforgettable Street of Crocodiles (1986). Igor: The Paris Years concerns the composer’s relationship with Jean Cocteau and Vladimir Mayakovsky, all of whom are animated as cut-out figures in a Modernist cityscape with The Rite of Spring playing on a piano.

Leos Janácek: Intimate Excursions (1983). Part 2 is here.

In a similar vein, but more successful, is this portrait of Czech composer Leos Janácek. This uses the same cut-out character style but places the composer in Eastern European settings similar (down to the floating tram pantographs) to those seen in the very first Quay film, Nocturna Artificialia (1979). Among the other puppet characters there’s one figure singing an aria who later appears as Enkidu in This Unnameable Little Broom (1985).

Old Piano (1988).

A very short (and poor quality) ident for MTV.

Continue reading “Brothers Quay scarcities”

Elie Grekoff’s Tirésias

Elie Grekoff (1914–1985) is the illustrator, a Russian-born French artist. Tirésias (1954) is a short work of homoerotica originally published anonymously in an edition of 150. The Grekoff website describes the volume (via Babel Fish) thusly:

One of the most beautiful text of the homosexual literature, a work which circulated under the coat, and which was condemned by the courts in 1964 and which make also this work an extremely rare publication. Publication of 92 pages.

The author, Marcel Jouhandeau (1888–1979), apparently spent much of his life oscillating between licentiousness and guilt thanks to his Catholicism but nevertheless managed to produce an acclaimed piece of gay fiction. Us Anglophones have to take the acclaim on faith, however, since the story doesn’t yet appear to have been translated into English. Given the increasing interest in gay fiction past and present this is a surprising oversight but we can still appreciate Grekoff’s illustrations, a rather fine series of fifteen wood engravings. There was also an additional run of fifteen copies of the book containing five “refusées” prints.

Grekoff illustrated a variety of novels and poetry in different styles. His work for Tirésias is reminiscent of Jean Cocteau’s in its outline figures and especially the stars for nipples, the star being a recurrent Cocteau motif. Jouhandeau’s wife, Élisabeth Toulemont, was a friend of Cocteau’s so this may have been deliberate although it’s hard to tell either way given the scarcity of information.

The excellent Bibliothèque Gay should be commended for making these rare illustrations public. See the complete set here. At the same site recently was a substantial post about Jean Cocteau’s Le livre blanc (1930).

Continue reading “Elie Grekoff’s Tirésias”