Savage Pencil – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

The weekend artists, 2012

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (2012) by Lesley Barnes. She also has peacock wrapping paper.

The most popular post of the year was one I made last December featuring all the artists whose work had appeared throughout 2011 in the weekend links posts. (The surge of views occurred early in January when it was linked on Stumbleupon.) Since I’ve been away this week there aren’t any links so here’s a retrospective of things that caught my eye in 2012.

Heartsick (2011) by Kelly Durette.

Self-portrait by Jon Jacobsen from his Home series.

Der Triumph des Tintenfisches from Meggendorfer-Blätter (c. 1900). Via Beautiful Century.

Two Grove Press covers by Roy Kuhlman. From Arden Kuhlman Riordan’s Pinterest page collecting her father’s cover designs.

Technological mandala 02 (The beginning) (2012) by Leonardo Ulian.

Continue reading “The weekend artists, 2012”

Weekend links 128

Seven-inch sleeve design by Savage Pencil for Wrong Eye (1990) by Coil.

• “Can you use sensory deprivation to explore ESP? And then make music from the process?” Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt of Matmos decided to find out for their new EP. Related: Occult Voices—Paranormal Music, Recordings of Unseen Intelligences, 1905–2007 at Ubuweb. Details of the original CD release can be found here.

• Gorgeous Gallery: The Best in Gay Erotic Art is a new book by David Leddick featuring the work of contemporary gay artists. Howard G. Williams has a review at Lambda Literary.

• Trip or Squeek by Savage Pencil, a book collection of the artist’s comic strips for The Wire magazine, forthcoming from Strange Attractor Press.

The novels of the middle period are Burgess’s most vital because it was in these that he forged what we might now recognize as the Burgessian – the antic puns and wordplay, the etymological digressions, the opacity, the glamorous pedantry, the tympanic repetitions, and an alliterative, assonantal musicality that makes every sentence seem vivid and extrovert: “Seafood salt with savour of seabrine thwacking throat with thriving wine-thirst”; “the lucent flawlessness of the skin, of the long fleshly languor that flowered into visibility”; “he was in a manner tricked, coney-caught, a court-dor to a cozening cotquean”. This is Burgess’s description of an Elizabethan brothel: “He entered darkness that smelled of musk and dust, the tang of sweating oxters, and, somehow, the ancient stale reek of egg after egg cracked in waste, the musty hold-smell of seamen’s garments, seamen’s semen spattered, a ghost procession of dead sailors lusting till the crack of doom”.

Ben Masters on A Clockwork Orange and its creator, fifty years on

• A streaming album for the beginning of autumn, the self-titled debut by Eraas, available in a range of formats at Bandcamp.

• “How Collecting Opium Antiques Turned Me Into an Opium Addict.”

• Ted Hughes reads from Crow. Related: Raptors by Leonard Baskin.

• Janitors of Lunacy: Jonny Mugwump remembers Coil.

Back in June I suggested Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ paintings as potential artwork for Penguin’s Modern Classics series. Last week Clive revealed that Penguin will be using one of his painted maquettes for a new edition of Equus next year.

• 150 Years of Lesbians and Other Lady-Loving-Ladies

• Color Sound Oblivion: a Coil/TG/related Tumblr.

• Tune in, psych out: the new black psychedelia.

• The Hills Are Alive (1995) by Coil | QueenS (2012) by THEESatisfaction | Goldblum (2012) by Oddience.

Weekend links 93

One of a series of tremendous designs by Malika Favre for a new Penguin edition of the Kama Sutra.

• New interviews: “…Americans — mired in individualism — prefer to think in terms of identity than in terms of roles and masks. An American would never have called a novel Confessions of a Mask.” Nicholas Currie, better known via his Momus mask. | “The horror in music comes from the silence,” says John Carpenter. | “It’s dangerous to be an artist. That’s what we talk about in Naked Lunch — and it’s dangerous on many different levels. Politically it can be dangerous, but psychologically it can be quite dangerous too. You make yourself very vulnerable. You put yourself out there and of course you open yourself up to criticism and attack.” David Cronenberg at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

• New books: Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, a Joycean memoir by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot. | A stack of new works from Strange Attractor including a collection of Savage Pencil‘s Trip or Squeek comic strips. | Robert Irwin’s Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights. A shame about the high price on the latter but I’m sure it looks wonderful.

• The Blu-ray release of Wings (1927), William A. Wellman’s silent drama about air aces during the First World War, has prompted renewed attention for the passionate relationship between its two male leads, especially this deathbed scene which is tagged as the first same-sex kiss in cinema. That’s arguable, of course, but it’s certainly a touching moment.

• From 2009: Searching the Library of Babel, a list of all the stories in all 33 volumes of The Library of Babel, a 1979 Spanish language anthology of fantastic literature edited by Jorge Luis Borges.

• Lots of newpaper attention in the past week for the not-so-fresh news that magic mushrooms could help fight depression. Nature went into the detail of the latest studies.

• French group Air have written the score for a rare colour print of Le voyage dans la lune (1902) by Georges Méliès. Air’s YouTube channel has extracts.

• From 1989: The Merchant of Shadows by Angela Carter.

• Will Hunt on the Ghost River of Manhattan.

• Selected Letters of William S. Burroughs

• Sexy Boy (1998) by Air | Surfing On A Rocket (2003) by Air | Mer Du Japon (2007) by Air.

Weekend links 47

DG-2499 (1975) by the fantastic (in every sense of the word) Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929–2005). See the Dmochowski Gallery for a comprehensive collection of the artist’s work. Thanks to BibliOdyssey for the tip.

• More ICA events: From Animism to Zos: Strange Attractor Salon will be “a series of weekly events, consisting of a talk and a film, exploring some lesser-known intersections of culture, history, mind and nature” running from 10 March–12 May, 2011.

• And on May 10, the London Word Festival presents a Dodgem Logic evening with entertainment provided by contributors to that magazine:

Alan Moore’s reinvigoration of the underground fanzine, Dodgem Logic, comes alive in the non-conformist surroundings of Hackney’s Round Chapel. A night of art, comedy, comment and put-something-back localism. (…) With Robin Ince heading up a colossal stand-up bill, artists Steve Aylett, Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie and Kevin O’Neill panel-up to talk about their comic work, while music comes from hyperactive racketeers The Retro Spankees. With an exhibition of artwork from the magazine, and conducted by editor-in-chief Alan Moore.

• Taschen publishes a collection of Dennis Hopper’s photographs this week. The Independent has a small selection here. Also new from Tachen, Alex Steinweiss, The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover.

• Bass Notes: The Film Posters of Saul Bass at the Kemistry Gallery, London.

DG-2507 by Zdzislaw Beksinski.

While riding through the bustling streets of London from 1603 to 1621, one was liable to hear the shout “Long live Queen James!” King James I of England and VI of Scotland was so open about his homosexual love affairs that an epigram had been circulated which roused much mirth and nodding of the heads: Rex fuit Elizabeth: nunc est regina Jacobus—”Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen.”

There’s more about the private life of the man who gave his name to the King James Bible here.

• Addams and Evil, a Tumblr devoted to the great Charles Addams.

• Hannes Bok again at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

• Caravaggio’s crimes exposed in Rome’s police files.

• Deserted City, photographs by Kim Høltermand.

• The blue sand dunes of the planet Mars.

• A map of the ghost signs of Chicago.

• The movie title stills collection.

• The pitfalls of e-book buying.

• Life On Mars? (1971) by David Bowie | Uncle Sam’s On Mars (1979) by Hawkwind | Eyes On Mars (1980) by Chrome | Cache Coeur Naif (1997) by Mouse on Mars.

Dodgem Logic again

Look what the postman delivered. Well, not the peacock feather and candle, obviously… Dodgem Logic #4 is now in print and my cover design looks as splendid as I hoped, gold ink included. The bonus item for this delirious issue is the rather wonderful poster you see in the background, a Joe Brown & Alan Moore collaboration entitled Bohemia which features a burgeoning growth of Bohemians through the ages, from Sappho through to more contemporary cultural icons. Inside there’s Dick Foreman discussing psychedelia, comics from Steve Aylett, Barney Farmer, Lee Healey, Kevin O’Neill and Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie’s gorgeous paintings, Debbie Delano on how to be an openly gay school teacher, Steve Moore asking for no more war, and Mister Alan Moore giving us his personal history of science fiction. You can order it online here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dodgem Logic #4
• Dodgem Logic