A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Seduction.
One of a series of paintings by a British artist, and what a great series it is with echoes of ancient art as well as Gustav Klimt. Also further evidence that this theme isn’t a wholly masculine preoccupation.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Salomé archive
Gertrude Hoffmann dressed for her opera role as Salome (1908).
Continuing an occasional series. Some people may be surprised to hear that Al Pacino loves Oscar Wilde’s Salome. He acted in a stage version of the drama in 1992 playing Herod to Sheryl Lee’s Salome (the Godfather versus Laura Palmer), and in 2006 announced an intention to make a drama documentary about the play. He talks about his interest in Wilde’s work here. IMDB currently has a page showing a 2011 release for Wilde Salome by Al Pacino but the film’s release has already been subject to delays. Related: Clive Barker’s Salome from 1973; Derek Jarman meets Hammer Horror.
• A post from last year that I should have linked to a lot earlier: A Wilde Library at Little Augury, being a detailed exploration of Wilde’s Tite Street furnishings and interior decoration.
• Oscar Wilde at Tumblr: Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde and Oscar Wilde Assembly. Then there’s Youth is wasted on the young, a charmingly obsessive Dorian Gray blog.
• Actor Brian Bedford (again) is interviewed by Kevin Sessums about playing Lady Bracknell in a New York production of The Importance of Being Earnest.
• What Oscar Wilde could teach us about art criticism by Jed Perl.
• Oscar Wilde, classics scholar by Daniel Mendelsohn.
• Scarlet letters lift the lid on Wilde’s dalliances.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Oscar Wilde archive
Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Volume 7 covers the period from October 1900 to March 1901 and features a set of ornamental capitals throughout this edition designed by Karl Lürtzing, part of a presentation of typefaces in the Art Nouveau style. The figures in Lürtzing’s alphabet all seem to be Biblical or mythological (as with David and Eve above) although some are easier to decipher than others. Volume 6 paid a visit to the Exposition Universelle in Paris and there’s a few more examples from that event here, along with further examinations of the best in German art and design. As usual, anyone wishing to see these samples in greater detail is advised to download the entire volume (which comprises over 300 pages) at the Internet Archive. There’ll be more DK&D next week.
Remarkable interiors by Richard Riemerschmid.
Symbolist? Arguably. Decadent? Certainly. Watching Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992) again this weekend I thought it worth making note of some of these resonances. The real age of Symbolist cinema was the Silent Era from around 1910 onwards, something I discussed in more detail here. That being so, several films made since can be taken as Symbolist (more usually Decadent) productions even if this was never their original intention. Kenneth Anger‘s Magic Lantern Cycle comes immediately to mind, so too Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.
Bram Stoker’s novel was published in 1897 at the ebbing of the fin de siècle but vampires and vampirism were already recurrent Symbolist themes. Aesthetic magus Walter Pater wrote of the Mona Lisa in 1893, “She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave…” Dracula almost demands a Symbolist interpretation, and for now Coppola’s production is the closest we get. I’ve found this makes the film more satisfying in a way: you can ignore the shoddy performances by secondary characters and concentrate on the decor and details (and the tremendous score by Wojciech Kilar). Some of the following screen grabs argue my point.
Oh look, peacock feathers. I loved the artificiality of this film, the excessive palette, the obvious models and miniatures, the layering of images. The dissolve from a peacock feather to Jonathan Harker’s infernal train journey is a great moment.
Salomé (1901).
Monsieur Wiley prompted this post by drawing my attention to the picture above. I’d already seen another Salomé by Gustav Adolf Mossa on this page a few days ago but resisted the temptation to mention it. A bit more searching revealed yet another Mossa rendering of the theme which perhaps isn’t so surprising given the artist’s obsession with lethal women. The first exceeds all previous depictions of the Biblical temptress by having her actually licking blood from the executioner’s sword. In the third picture she’s content merely to use a severed hand as a page-turner while John the Baptist’s mutilated body is carted away by servants.
The search for pictures turned up a blog I hadn’t seen before, Women in the Bible (“This is no religious blog!”), which has several Salomé postings. And there’s also Les voiles de Salomé: Labyrinthique errance, virevoltes et volutes.
Encor Salomé (1905).
Salomé (1908).
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Salomé archive