Lord Byron – { feuilleton }

John Martin: Heaven & Hell

The Great Day of His Wrath (1851) by John Martin.

I’ve written on a couple of occasions about having been a precocious youth when it came to art appreciation. My first visit to the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) when I was 13 was of my own volition during one of our annual school visits to London. I wanted to see Modern Art (capital M and capital A), and especially my favourite Surrealist and Pop artists. Those works were present, of course, and it was a thrill to discover artists I hadn’t heard of such as Brâncusi and Moholy-Nagy, but the greatest shock came in the room reserved for the enormous canvases filled with apocalyptic scenes by Francis Danby and John Martin.

The Last Judgement (1853) by John Martin.

Some of these paintings have become more visible over the years, especially Martin’s startling chef-d’oeuvre, The Great Day of His Wrath, which has found a new lease of life decorating various music releases. Yet for a long time these works were never seen in art histories, being dismissed as a kind of religious kitsch, interesting perhaps for their Romantic connections (he also depicted scenes from Milton and Byron) but with Martin regarded as deeply inferior compared to his contemporary JMW Turner. If you only look at painting as being about the surface of the canvas then Martin is inferior to Turner whose nebulous works contain the seeds of Impressionism and much 20th century art. But there’s more to art than the surface. What I saw was an astonishing audacity—this artist had dared to paint the end of the world!—and three deeply strange paintings, two of which feature deliberately confused perspectives which are almost Surrealist in their effect and quite unlike any other work produced in the 19th century.

The Plains of Heaven (1851) by John Martin.

Well things change, not least critical opinion, and with the emergence in recent years of (for want of a better term) Pop Surrealism, and also the current vogue for crappy disaster movies and apocalyptic chatter, Martin’s paintings have been deemed interesting enough to warrant an exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, which has been the permanent home of other Martin works for many years. The show will run there until June then travel to Sheffield (where I may pay it a visit) and Tate Britain. Of note for Martin enthusiasts will be the emergence from a private collection of the vast and lurid Belshazzar’s Feast, the painting which inspired some of the set designs in DW Griffith’s Intolerance. I once read that if the insanely huge banqueting hall in that picture had been a real construction it would have extended for at least a mile. Visitors to the new exhibition will be able to judge for themselves in close-up. And speaking of close-ups, Google’s Art Project has the three paintings above in their Tate collection; click the pictures for links.

Belshazzar’s Feast (1820) by John Martin.

• Derided painter John Martin makes a dramatic comeback

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Darkness visible
• Death from above
• The apocalyptic art of Francis Danby

Sherbet and Sodomy

Cover art by Coker.

We had Shock Headed Peters walking through Sodom yesterday so this novel from 1971 seems like a fitting follow-up. The eye-catching title is no doubt an allusion to Byron’s description of Turkish baths as “marble palaces of sherbet and sodomy”, an epithet which one imagines sent generations of sweet-toothed Uranians trekking to Constantinople throughout the 19th century. I’d seen the cover of this book before on sites which collect the gay fiction of the late Sixties and early Seventies—that doubly-phallic tower makes a good match for the cover of Bugger Boy—but I don’t recall reading a description of the contents before. Homobilia has an extract from the opening page:

My name is Jud. I am eighteen and a half. I was born from the felicitous conjunction of an anthropologist and an ethnologist under the sign of Capricorn. I have been called cute, handsome, pretty, and good-looking; actually, I am beautiful… my nose is classically English, along the line of Reynolds, maybe with a little Caravaggio thrown in around the nostrils. My athletic adolescence on the swimming team at Sterling High has given me a slender muscular body… my eyes are South Pacific blue. I have read Hesiod. I masturbate regularly. I have no concept of money or its value. I try to keep my farts silent. I have juvenile down on my ass. I have read the minor Elizabethan poets and I have looked at my anal sphincter in the mirror. Until last week I considered myself heterosexual…

Four art and literatures references in a single paragraph…yes, I’m intrigued. The book is out of print, unfortunately, but searching at Abebooks reveals copies for sale and an additional description:

How does a handsome young cat, newly out and grooving on the gay scene of Greenwich village, suddenly find himself in the silken clutches of El-Dahabi, an Arab sect which celebrates the attainment of perfect love through pain and submission?

So now the Byron reference makes sense. Many of these gay paperbacks were written under nommes de plume and IV Ebbing may well be another of these, there’s certainly no other reference to he (or, indeed, she…) on the web aside from this title. There’s a notable dearth of information about the fiction which emerged in a flood after the first flush of liberation in the late Sixties, when numerous titles for lesbians and gay men were published as cheap paperbacks. Strange Sisters and Gay on the Range document the cover art but I’d like to see a site which told us more about the writers and, where possible, the books themselves. The history of all kinds of pulp fiction has been extensively chronicled; isn’t it time that someone did the same for gay erotica?

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Bugger Boy
• Gay book covers

A wake for Arthur

That which you will miss: Arthur #1–25.

“And till Arthur comes againus and sen peatrick’s he’s reformed we’ll pose him together a piece, a pace.” Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

Awake, A Wake!

Come celebrate the happy, all-too-brief life of Arthur Magazine with free giveaways and a reading featuring Molly Frances, Oliver Hall, and Peter Relic.

Thursday, March 1, 7:30pm

Family Bookstore, 436 N. Fairfax Avenue (across the street from Canter’s Deli), Los Angeles, 90036.

Arthur‘s “New Herbalist” columnist Molly Frances incited a revolution nationwide by informing readers of the true powers of almonds, sprigs of mint, and Lord Byron’s secret potion (a.k.a. apple cider vinegar). Molly’s eerily prescient horoscopes have been known to strike the melodic funny-bone of even the most determined non-believer. Tonight Molly will be giving astrological readings as well tripling any double entendre at hand.

Oliver Hall penned Arthur‘s cover story on Kim Gordon and memorably profiled folk radicals Faun Fables. He is the statuesque guitarist with L.A.’s newest psych-rock sensation E.S.P.S., and is seldom seen without his trusty Patsy Cline t-shirt. Tonight Hall will be dispensing priceless aphorisms as well as deconstructing the pungent, multi-faceted phrase “no money, no honey.”

Peter Relic eulogized Jam Master Jay and went on the road with the Black Keys and Sleater-Kinney for Arthur. Relic’s profile of the Geto Boys, reprinted in Da Capo’s Best American Music Writing 2006, was deemed by Seattle’s The Stranger to be “easily one of the most surreal, violent, and ludicrous artists encounters ever documented.” Tonight Relic will be reading from his storehouse of pantoums, an unjustly obscure Malaysian poetic form.

We look forward to seeing you there—dressing in black not a requirement!

Update: Village Voice post-mortem.

Arthur #22

America’s most vital cultural bulletin. Free PDF download.

How nature droners GROWING found their flow. By Peter Relic. Photography by Eden Batki.

Swiss anthropologist-author JEREMY NARBY talks with Jay Babcock about what hallucinogens like LSD and the Amazonian drink ayahuasca have to teach us in the 21st century. Introduction by author Erik Davis, with a full-color illustration by Arik Moonhawk Roper.

How columnist DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF learned to stop worrying about current events.

Why power duo Al Cisneros and Chris Haikus reunited to make the meditation-suitable
heavy metal sound of OM.

‘Do the Math’ columnist David Reeves on the main reason why the USA should seal its border with Mexico.

The life, work and astounding impact of North Indian vocalist PANDIT PRAN NATH, guru
to Western minimalists La Monte Young and Terry Riley. By Peter Lavezzoli.

‘New Herbalist’ columnist Molly Frances on Lord Byron’s secret elixir and the Prophet Muhammed’s top condiment: VINEGAR.

How to recognize—and use—OCCULT FORCES, by the Center for Tactical Magic.

Notes from Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 2006 by the intrepid Gabe Soria.

Comics by Vanessa Davis, Chris Wright and PShaw.

Scenes from ArthurBall 2006, featuring Joanna Newsom, The 5:15ers (Joshua Homme & Chris Goss) and Moris Tepper and Polly Harvey.

Bull Tongue columnists BYRON COLEY & THURSTON MOORE review Richard Youngs, Pink Mountaintops, Parts & Labor, Oneida/Plastic Crimewave, Ex Models, Mouthus, The Bummer Road, Idea Fire Company, Taurpis Tula, Spykes, Ong Ong, Carson Cistulli, Starbird, 2673, Ladderwoe, Tovah Olson, Pan Dolphinic Dawn, Gastric Female Reflex, ANP Quarterly, Matt Chambers, The Colonial, Mineshaft, Little Claw, Black Lips, Zaat, Mystical Footprints of Asia, Whysp, The Story, Skarerkauradio, Jerusalem & the Starbaskets, Noise Nomads, The Nightjar Review, Shannon Ketch, Jeremy Rendina, Carousel, Quantum Noise, Lambsbread, Carlos Batts, Trenton Doyle Hancock, S.M.S.R., Tchernoblyad, Narrowmind, Sudanstrain, Blod, Sharon’s Last Part, Mnem, Edwidge, The Rita, Mania, Ashtray Navigations, Evenings, Septic Sores, Bottom Dweller, Paul Metzger, Tombi and Glass organ.

C & D riff into the dawn on Marvin Gaye’s The Real Thing: In Performance, 1964-1981 dvd plus new albums from Gnarls Barkley, Rufus Harley, The Black Keys, The Raconteurs, Eagles of Death Metal, The Cuts, Future Pigeon, The Aggrolites, The Fiery Furnaces, Espers, Josephine Foster, Scott Walker, Fred Neil, Belong, Boris and Howlin Rain. Plus: Peter Relic’s Book Corner spotlights new poetry collections by Alex Mitchell and John Tottenham.

And more…