Viktor Wynd – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 509

The Art of the Occult: A Visual Sourcebook for the Modern Mystic by S. Elizabeth. The book will be published in September by White Lion Publishing, and includes some work of mine.

• “The structure of the film as a memory palace consists of scenes intercutting different movies, depicting similar situations lived by the same actors in similar locations and, yes, similar sexual positions building over the course of its run-time.” Memory Palace: on Ask Any Buddy and the Golden Age of Gay Porn. Caden Mark Gardner writes on a kaleidoscopic, experimental archive piece of gay pornography. • Related: Paul P., the artist making dreamy paintings from vintage gay erotica.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on…Terry Southern The Magic Christian (1959), and Bill Hsu presents…High Anxiety: tense, dark films from 2010-2019 (for fans of Robert Aickman and Brian Evenson).

• Green (1986) by Hiroshi Yoshimura, a welcome reissue of an album of minimal electronica. More green: The Green Fog by Guy Maddin has been on Vimeo for a while.

• Mixes of the week: Time is on our hands by Beautify Junkyards, and Textural Hominini Cognition by The Ephemeral Man.

• How John Waters and Mink Stole made Pink Flamingos, and Mink Stole on the inside story of John Waters’ greatest films.

• Viktor Wynd: “I was offered a mummified arm—but I didn’t have €2,000 on me”.

• At Dangerous Minds: the solitary Surrealism of Gertrude Abercrombie.

• Cats and Domino

• Webcam in Italia

• The Green Chinese Table (1988) by Seigen Ono | Green Water (1996) by Coil | Green Evil (1997) by Paul Schütze

The art of Robin Ironside, 1912–1965

Rossetti’s Willow Wood (1944).

In one of those odd coincidences that occur from time to time, a picture by Robin Ironside is featured in a book I’ve been reading this week just as news arrives of a forthcoming talk about Ironside’s strange paintings. The book is Baroque Baroque by Stephen Calloway, while the talk is being given by the artist’s niece, Virginia Ironside, at the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History in London on April 21st. (Details here.)

Secret burial (1954).

I have to admit that I’d not encountered Ironside’s work until now despite a long-term fetish for unusual or unfashionable art. This isn’t too surprising since he and his fellow Neo-Romantics (a term he coined) had the misfortune to be working during a period that was deeply antagonistic towards this kind of painting. Rex Whistler is the most popular exponent of the style but Ironside’s art has the added attraction of a vaguely Surrealist flavour without any of the absurdities that usually ruin English attempts to follow Dalí and company. The Ironside website has further examples of his paintings plus designs for the theatre and some illustration work. For those who can’t attend The Last Tuesday Society there’s a lengthy reminiscence by Virginia Ironside about her fascinating uncle.

Weekend links 82

At the Mountains of Madness (1979) from Halloween in Arkham by Harry O. Morris.

• Golden Age Comic Book Stories always pulls out the stops in the run up to Halloween. In addition to a wonderful collection of Harry O. Morris collages, Mr Door Tree has also been posting Virgil Finlay’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe, Lynd Ward’s tremendous illustrations for a collection of weird tales entitled The Haunted Omnibus, Barry Moser’s woodcuts for an edition of Frankenstein, and Virgil Finlay’s illustrations for stories and poems by HP Lovecraft.

• “Eugene Thacker suggests that we look to the genre of horror as offering a way of thinking about the unthinkable world. To confront this idea is to confront the limit of our ability to understand the world in which we live – a central motif of the horror genre. In the Dust of This Planet explores these relationships between philosophy and horror.”

• “…the reader […] becomes a conscious participant in the process of imposing a linear sequence, while at the same time remaining aware that all narrative is an act of memory, and that memory is necessarily random.” Jonathan Coe reviews Marc Saporta’s book-in-a-box, Composition No.1, recently republished by Visual Editions.

• Nearly fifty years after its first performance, Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade is still disturbing playgoers. And nearly ninety years after its release, Alla Nazimova’s silent film production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé is touring the UK with live musical accompaniment.

• Tom of Sinland at Homotography, in which illustrator Bendix Bauer portrays some of the fashion world’s notable male designers as Tom of Finland-style characters for Horst magazine.

• Neil Gaiman Presents is a new audiobook imprint which launches with works by Jonathan Carroll, Alina Simone, Keith Roberts, M. John Harrison and Steven Sherrill.

• The Weird Wild West: Paul Kirchner has put all his Dope Rider comic strips online.

• Leonora Carrington prints at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London, from November 5th.

• The Fall to Earth: David Bowie, Cocaine and the Occult.

• Photos of New York City, 1978–1985.

• Kathy Acker recordings at Ubuweb.

• The Occupied Times of London.

• The Golden Age of Dirty Talk.

• Pushkin silhouettes.

• This week I’ve been lost in the Velvet Goldmine (again): John, I’m Only Dancing (1972) by David Bowie | The Jean Genie (1972) by David Bowie | Drive-In Saturday (1973) by David Bowie.

Weekend links 77

Art by Tessa Farmer.

• An exhibition of Tessa Farmer’s art is running at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London, until October 30th. On Saturday, October 1st, Strange Attractor hosts Good Neighbours: Faeries, Folklore and the Art of Tessa Farmer also at Viktor Wynd.

• Unearthing The Psychedelic Harp: “David Moats talks to harpist and songwriter Serafina Steer about her work with John Foxx and Patrick Wolf, being classically trained, the difficulties of doing live soundtracks and psychedelia.”

• And speaking of psychedelia, Arkhonia is still blogging up a storm here, here and here about the lost Beach Boys album, Smile, the farthest Brian and co. ventured into the tripped-out weirdness of 1967. The complete original recordings will finally be released in November.

• “‘We’ve arrived at a level of commodification that may have negated the concept of counterculture,’ Gibson says in the Paris Review.” William Gibson profiled by Thomas Jones.

One of the qualities I always stress when talking about this design work influenced by Surrealism is its enormous boldness and creative freedom, which is something of a paradox in many cases, since the Czech and Polish designs were created under communist regimes. So, while Uncanny documents a significant current in the history of 20th-century visual culture, the show also has a polemical intention aimed, quite deliberately, at our circumstances now. Students who encounter these images in lectures sometimes feel constrained by their conception of what they — or their teachers — regard as acceptable in today’s marketplace. At times, this has struck me as being a form of insidious self-censorship. (more)

Rick Poynor: Jan Svankmajer and the Graphic Uncanny.

• The exhibition curated by Mr Poynor last year, Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design, is now showing at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam until early December. Related: MizEnScen’s somber, surrealist collages.

• Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (1921) at Golden Age Comic Book Stories, the Urtext of buccaneer imagery.

Another of those homoerotic religious pictures: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1876) by Léon Bonnat. Via Babylon Baroque.

• Celebrating the 250th anniversary of Laurence Sterne’s marbled page: Emblem of My Work.

• John Martin’s Pompeii painting finally restored after 1928 Tate flood damage.

• The Spectral Dimension: “where the paranormal and popular culture collide”.

• The Writing of Stones (1970) by Roger Caillois at 50 Watts.

• Mercury Arc Rectifiers.

• When silliness was an avant garde strategy: video from 1974 of Brian Eno performing China My China and (in better quality) The Seven Deadly Finns. (Go here for lyrics of the latter.)

Strange Attractions

Giant Squid of the Newfoundland Banks. From a painting by Herbert B Judy.

Today’s Giant Squid comes to you courtesy of the University of Washington’s Digital Collection and their Freshwater and Marine Image Bank. This book plate is from Sea-shore Life; The Invertebrates of the New York Coast and the Adjacent Coast Region (1905) by Alfred Goldsborough Mayor, and the Internet Archive happens to have copies of the entire book.

Which facts have nothing whatsoever to do with Ken Hollings’ photos of the Strange Attractor Salon which is in its final week at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London. I was pleased to see the picture above which shows my pieces on the same wall as work by Julian House whose covers for the Ghost Box CDs I’ve enthused over in the past. Strange Attractor curator Mark Pilkington has posted further photos on his Flickr pages as has artist Ali Hutchinson whose beautiful work is also featured there.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Strange Attractor Salon
• Readouts
• Welcome to Mars
• The Séance at Hobs Lane
• SAJ again
• Strange Attractor Journal Three
• Ghost Box
• The Major Arcana