Tom Phillips – Page 7 – { feuilleton }

Thursday Afternoon by Brian Eno

Cover painting by Tom Phillips, design by Russell Mills.

A post for a Thursday.

Brian Eno’s ambient music receives a lot of playing time here, especially Music for Airports, On Land, The Shutov Assembly and, when something really minimal is required, Neroli. But it’s Thursday Afternoon that receives the most attention. Recorded at the request of Sony Japan in 1984, Thursday Afternoon is a single piece that originally accompanied seven of Eno’s “video paintings”, each of them showing Christine Alicino warped and blurred by ultra-slow motion and video noise. Like his earlier static views of the New York skyline, Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan, filming vertically means that proper viewing can only be achieved by turning the TV on its side. The soundtrack is a beautifully rendered composition which uses Eno’s customary process of letting a number of looped phrases form a shifting musical moiré.

Compositionally, Thursday Afternoon belongs to the family of works which also includes Discreet Music and Music for Airports. Like them it is an even-textured, spacious and contemplative piece in which several musical events appear and recur more or less regularly. Each event, however, recurs with a different cyclic frequency and thus the whole piece becomes an unfolding display of unique sonic clusters. Eno has characterised this style of composition as “holographic”, by which he means that any brief section of the music is representative of the whole piece, in the same way that any fragment of a hologram shows the whole of the holographic image but with a lower resolution. (From the album notes.)

Daniel Lanois, Roger Eno and Michael Brook were all involved in the creation and production of Thursday Afternoon and the piece works as well played very quietly as it does at louder volume. When played louder more of the background detail becomes apparent, including some very faint birdsong which is most discernible at the end when much of the music has faded away. Perfect for colouring the atmosphere of a room whilst reading, working or talking with friends. It’s also a favourite of mine for playing in the bedroom with someone special.

Thursday Afternoon was released on video cassette then appeared on CD in 1985. As a single track of 61 minutes, this was one of the first original recordings which made specific use of the extended running time of the CD format. The cover painting was by {feuilleton} favourite, artist Tom Phillips, with design by artist and designer Russell Mills. Ten years earlier, Eno had used a detail of Phillips’ painting After Raphael on the cover of Another Green World.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that you can now see the original sound and vision version of Thursday Afternoon at Ubuweb. Not ideal by any means but it gives you an idea of the complete work rather than the trunctated versions on YouTube. Eno’s video paintings, Thursday Afternoon included, are now available on DVD should you require them in higher quality. Just be prepared to turn your TV on its side.

Update: Eno’s ambient processes have now reached the iPhone with the Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers app, Bloom.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Tiger Mountain Strategies
• 20 Sites n Years by Tom Phillips
• Generative culture
• Exposure by Robert Fripp
• My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Maps of the Inferno

Dante’s Inferno, Map of Whole Hell (1587?).

Continuing the theme of yesterday’s post, Wikimedia Commons has a substantial section devoted to Dante’s Inferno including some maps, the best being this one and another, both by Giovanni Stradano aka Stradanus (1523–1605).

And taking a broader view, there’s Michelangelo Cactani’s depiction of Dante’s entire cosmos showing the pit of the Inferno, Mount Purgatory and the spheres of Heaven. This was the version we used in Robert Meadley’s A Tea Dance at Savoy (2003) and includes my addition of titles and a frame.

La Materia della Divina Commedia di Dante Aligherie (1855).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A TV Dante by Tom Phillips and Peter Greenaway
• The art of Lucio Bubacco
• The last circle of the Inferno
• Angels 4: Fallen angels

A TV Dante by Tom Phillips and Peter Greenaway

More cult stuff from Ubuweb, you lucky people. Being a big Tom Phillips enthusiast I’ve been watching A TV Dante (1989) for years, having taped the one and only broadcast of the series. I also bought the accompanying booklet (below).

This ambitious program, produced by the award-winning film director Peter Greenaway and internationally-known artist Tom Phillips, brings to life the first eight cantos of Dante’s Inferno. Featuring a cast that includes Sir John Gielgud as Virgil, the cantos are not conventionally dramatized. Instead, the feeling of Dante’s poem is conveyed through juxtaposed imagery that conjures up a contemporary vision of hell, and its meaning is deciphered by eminent scholars in visual sidebars who interpret Dante’s metaphors and symbolism. This program makes Dante accessible to the MTV generation. Caution to viewers: program contains nudity. (8 segments, 11 minutes each)

Given the nature of the collaboration, this can’t be compared to many other TV productions. Greenaway wasn’t staging a drama, he was using the TV screen as a flat space like a moving painting, or a series of diagrams and connected symbol systems. The division of the screen has a parallel in some of Phillips’s paintings (and his artist’s book of the Inferno) and makes use of Phillips’s familiar stencil lettering. There are actors: as mentioned above, Sir John Gielgud took the role of Virgil, with Bob Peck as Dante and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as Beatrice. And there are recurrent motifs: triangle, concentric circles, cardiograph displays, Muybridge animations and so on. “Footnotes” were provided by a company of experts who appear in small inset panels to comment on the text while it’s being read. Phillips himself is one of the principal commentators since it was his translation being used.

Peter Greenaway’s feature films have never interested me very much, I prefer him when he’s doing things like this which probably explains why I like Prospero’s Books, his version of The Tempest; much of that film’s approach seems to have been developed from A TV Dante. It’s a shame that only eight of the Cantos were filmed in this way. There were plans to film all thirty four using other directors (with Greenaway to return at the end) but this endeavour took place at the end of the period when Channel 4 was still a haven for unusual arts projects. Regime change subsequently charted a course for the lowest common denominator. And with the two leading actors now dead it wouldn’t be possible to resume the project. In the end this doesn’t matter too much. What remains is an introduction to a perennially fascinating book and an example of how television could—if someone had the courage—ditch the clichés of drama documentary and try something genuinely new.

• The official Tom Phillips website
• The Tom Phillips blog

Previously on { feuilleton }
• John Osborne’s Dorian Gray
• 20 Sites n Years revisited
• The last circle of the Inferno
• 20 Sites n Years by Tom Phillips

Mark Beard’s artistic circle

The Fencing Team by Bruce Sargeant.

Artists in the 20th century used to be multifarious in their activities, often taking their work through different stages or periods of evolution; Picasso and Max Ernst are two good examples of this. In today’s inflated art market this is no longer a wise move. As Brian Eno has noted in the case of the polymathic Tom Phillips, the pressure is there to establish yourself as a person who does one thing only, to turn yourself into a brand.

American artist Mark Beard isn’t happy with that situation. In order to satisfy a desire to create in whatever styles he chooses, he’s developed a number of distinct artist personalities, each with their own detailed biographies and even photographs (below). This isn’t entirely unprecedented, Marcel Duchamp famously had a female alter-ego named Rrose Sélavy, and was photographed by Man Ray in feminine attire, but offhand I can’t think of another artist going as far as creating six distinct personas. The painting above is one of a homoerotic sports-themed series by artist Bruce Sargeant who died, we’re told, in 1938 as a result of a wrestling accident. Examples of Beard’s other influences follow. For the complete artist biographies, see the Mark Beard pages at the Carrie Haddad gallery.

The artists

top left: Mark Beard (b. 1956); right: Bruce Sargeant and model (1898-1938)
middle left: Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon (1849-1930); right: Brechtolt Steeruwitz (1890-1973)
bottom left: Edith Thayer Cromwell (1993-1962); right: Peter Coulter (b. 1948)

Their works

Ideology: The Politically Correct Disdain the Frivolous by Mark Beard (1989).

Avant la Fuite by Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon (1894).

Swimmer Drying Himself, Berlin Olympics (1936), Young Athlete by Bruce Sargeant.

On the Strand by Edith Thayer Cromwell.

Das Krakenhaus by Brechtolt Steeruwitz (At the Hospital) (1923).

Cabinet by Peter Coulter.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

20 Sites n Years revisited

South London Dreaming by Tom Phillips (2007).

Tom Phillips’ ongoing art project, 20 Sites n Years, is now presented on his site with a facility which allows the viewing of all the photos for each location. (And if you haven’t come across the project before, the specifications are here.) Nice being able to step through the photos year by year especially if you don’t have a copy of Phillips’ Works and Texts. In an earlier description of the project he speculates on its possible manifestations in the future since the plan is that it be continued indefinitely after its creator’s death. This small web manifestation is one development that wouldn’t have been anticipated in 1973. Other possibilities, such as the likelihood of South London being eventually submerged by a rising Thames, were fanciful in the Seventies but no longer seem so remote.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Tom Phillips blog
• 20 Sites n Years by Tom Phillips