Tag: Luigi Serafini

The Spring Codex

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Lou Taylor Pucci in Spring.

It was good to finally see Spring (2014) at the weekend, the film that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead made in between their connected time-twisters, Resolution (2012) and The Endless (2017). Halfway through Spring there’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment of intertextuality when the poster above is shown among the pictures that cover the apartment walls of the mysterious Louise (Nadia Hilker). Most of the other pictures in the room are charts that depict the stages of animal evolution; Louise’s poster also depicts a process of evolution but one that occurs only within the pages of the Codex Seraphinianus (1981), the celebrated guidebook to an invented world by Luigi Serafini. If you’re familiar with Serafini’s drawing, which originally filled two pages of the Codex, then the reference is especially enjoyable. Spring‘s themes of sexual obsession and physical transformation are neatly paralleled here, as is the Italian setting of the film, Serafini being an Italian artist whose work is still more visible in Italy than elsewhere. Many other directors would give more attention to this but Benson & Moorhead leave the reference in the background.

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Spring is available on blu-ray in the UK from 101 Films. For more on the Codex Seraphinianus there’s this piece of mine written a few years ago for Fantastic Metropolis.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Codex Seraphinianus

Weekend links 317

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Alphonse Mucha’s Le Pater, a book of mystical Symbolism written, designed and illustrated by the artist, was published in a limited edition in 1899. The book has been out of print ever since but Thomas Negovan at Century Guild will be reprinting it later this year.

• “Five axioms to define Europe: the coffee house; the landscape on a traversable and human scale; these streets and squares named after the statesmen, scientists, artists, writers of the past; our twofold descent from Athens and Jerusalem; and, lastly, that apprehension of a closing chapter, of that famous Hegelian sunset, which shadowed the idea and substance of Europe even in their noon hours.” George Steiner explores his idea of Europe.

• Journey To The Edge Of The Universe by Upper Astral, 43 minutes of cosmic ambience, is a cassette-only release from 1983. The album has never been reissued so secondhand copies command excessive prices but it may be downloaded here.

• Mixes of the week: Three hours of ambience by Gregg Hermetech, XLR8R Podcast 446 by [Adrian] Sherwood x Nisennenmondai, and Secret Thirteen Mix 190 by Shxcxchcxsh.

Today [Angela] Carter is well known, widely taught in schools and universities, and much of what she presaged—in terms of recycling and updating (“old wine in new bottles”, she called it), or gender role play and reversal—has become commonplace in the culture. Despite this, many critics find it difficult to situate her work properly. This is partly because Carter is so sui generis (she has literary offspring but few antecedents), and partly because many struggle with the relationship of politics and aesthetics in her writing.

Kate Webb reviews two new books about Angela Carter

• Words that will forever pursue us: Tim Page on the late Michael Herr, “rock’n’roll voice of the Vietnam War”.

• From 2015: Luigi Serafini on how and why he created an encyclopedia of an imaginary world.

• James Campbell on Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs: celebrating the Beats in Paris.

• Fragile Beasts, an exhibition of grotesque print ornaments at Cooper Hewitt, NYC.

• Not before time, Guy Gavriel Kay wants to see an end to the plague of writing tips.

• David Bowie and Buster Keaton by Steve Schapiro.

• Tom Charity on the films of Michael Cimino.

• Alison Goldfrapp: photographer.

• Golem Mecanique

• European Man (1981) by Landscape | Europe After The Rain (1981) by John Foxx | Trans Europe Express (1994) by The One You Love