June 2016 – { feuilleton }

The Mountain of Dead Selves

John Bradburn, an artist/filmmaker who also performs as Ferric Lux, notified me recently about his David Bowie-related project, The Mountain of Dead Selves, a video piece that was showing earlier this month at Vivid Gallery, Birmingham. Bradburn’s video, part of a group show, Constructing The Self: David Bowie, takes the occult influences of the Station To Station album as its subject. A short version of the video may be seen here although the gallery version was a looping piece which would no doubt appear very different when seen in situ.

Back in January I linked to some of the posthumous theorising around Bowie’s final album, Blackstar, including musings which looked back to Station To Station‘s Kabbalistic elements. It used to seem that discussion of Bowie and the occult would remain fixed on the 1970s so one of the many surprises about his final statement was the way the esoteric was brought to the fore again. The Mountain of Dead Selves won’t be the last exploration of this. There’s more from Ferric Lux here.

Weekend links 315

The Deluge (1920) by Winifred Knights.

• Dennis Cooper‘s favourite fiction, poetry, nonfiction, film, music, art & internet of 2016 so far. (Thanks again for the nod to this blog!)

• At Literary Hub: Jonathan Russell Clark on Jorge Luis Borges, and Jon Sealy on why indie presses [in the US] are opening bookstores.

• “It’s not just about the music.” A conversation on the occult practices in the arts between poet Janaka Stucky and Peter Bebergal.

• Daisy Woodward talks to Andreas Horvath about Helmut Berger, Actor, a documentary about Visconti’s muse and lover.

• More Fritz Leiber: Brian J. Showers on his decision to republish Leiber’s horror novel, The Pale Brown Thing.

• Mixes of the week: Sextape 4 by Drixxxe, and Radio Oscillations #96 (Richard Pinhas/Heldon) by Iron Blu.

• The 5th Young One: Pay No Attention to the Girl Behind the Sofa; John Reppion on a television mystery.

• More reading suggestions: Cheerless beach reads for gloomsters and saddies by S. Elizabeth.

• Never the same film twice: Seances by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson.

• How painter Winifred Knights became Britain’s “unknown genius”.

• The Journey & The Destination: An interview with Hawthonn.

• Robert Latona goes in search of the grave of Constance Wilde.

• Invisible by Day: photos by Mikko Lagerstedt.

• A Queer Lit Q&A with Evan J. Peterson.

• RIP Michael Herr and Bernie Worrell.

• Bridget Riley: The Curve Paintings.

• The typography of Blade Runner.

• Japanese matchbox labels

• SOS by Portishead

• A Rainbow In Curved Air (1969) by Terry Riley | The Great Curve (1980) by Talking Heads | Dangerous Curves (2003) by King Crimson

The art of Paul Thévenaz, 1891–1921

This portrait of Jean Cocteau by Swiss artist Paul Thévenaz isn’t included in the artist’s memorial book, Paul Thévenaz, A Record of His Life and Art (1922) which was published after Thévenaz died suddenly at the age of 30. Everything else in this post is, however, and there’s more in the book itself which shows Thévenaz ranging through society portraits (and self-portraits), designs for the theatre (I’ve included a Salomé below), murals and sketches.

Thévenaz is another candidate for the pantheon of lost gay artists although the work in the book isn’t especially homoerotic. There are fauns, however, which might be connected to his romantic association with poet Witter Brynner. The latter’s A Canticle of Pan was written in 1918, and is one of the many manifestations of the horned god in the literature of the period. As for Thévenaz, I like his drawing style a great deal; in places it resembles Wyndham Lewis in its sweeping curves and stylisations. (Thanks to Callum for the tip!)

Continue reading “The art of Paul Thévenaz, 1891–1921”

Weekend links 314

Avebury Kite (2006) by David Alderslade.

• “Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann, author of Mephisto, was one of the first in Germany to write gay novels and plays.” Walter Holland reviews Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann by Frederic Spotts.

• The Pale Brown Thing, a shorter/alternate version of Fritz Leiber’s supernatural masterwork, Our Lady of Darkness, is given a limited reprinting by Swan River Press next month.

• “Not only is metal not directly harmful to adolescent minds, as the thinking goes, it may actually be helpful.” Christine Ro on the reappraisal of a once-suspect musical genre.

Something of that tension between past and future is visible in Beardsley’s work. It is the art of a dying era peering, with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, into the next. For all the prancing and bravado, Beardsley’s art was really about finding something in which to believe—and if Beardsley came to believe in anything it was the deep black line. Shading held little interest for Beardsley, and color fascinated him not at all. The black line and white space were all he needed.

Morgan Meis on Aubrey Beardsley

• More of my art for Bruce Sterling’s forthcoming Dieselpunk novella, Pirate Utopia, has been revealed. Tachyon will be publishing the book in November.

• “Secretly, though, I frequent junk shops because I am wishing for some kind of transcendence,” says Luc Sante.

• Mixes of the week: Gizehcast #28 by Christine Ott, and a mix for The Wire by Asher Levitas.

• “It took centuries, but we now know the size of the Universe.” Chris Baraniuk explains.

• Barnbrook Studios creates identity for Kubrick exhibition at Somerset House.

• Watch a haunting video from Subtext Recordings and Eric Holm.

• Folklore Tapes: A Rum Music Special by Joseph Burnett.

• Brion Gysin’s Dreamachine is on sale again.

• Rhys Chatham’s favourite albums.

• A Guide to Occult London

• Skulls and Bones

• Zero Time (1979) by Chrome | Zero-Gravity (1996) by Sidewinder | Zero Moment (2016) by Contact

The Labyrinth

I may no longer post every day but I maintain some traditions so here’s the annual post for Bloomsday. This year all the offerings are courtesy of the British Library who recently expanded their online literary archives. Among the Joycean material there are these Ulysses-related items including one of the first editions published by Shakespeare and Company in 1922. I saw one of these up close in 1995 at a charity auction of banned books in London, not only a first edition but one of the copies that Joyce had signed. Salman Rushdie was in attendance at that event (and still being shadowed by a police escort), and ended up with the book after bidding something like £2000. If you want a signed first of Ulysses today then expect to add another zero to the price.

Also at the British Library is this copy of The Little Review from April 1920. The magazine was prosecuted for obscenity in the US after publishing the Nausicaa chapter (wherein Mr Bloom masturbates on the beach).

And another edition of the novel, the first US printing after the legal case against Ulysses was overturned in 1934. This is the edition of the book that opens with an arrestingly page-filling capital S.

The title of this post, incidentally, is taken from Anthony Burgess’s Joyce study Here Comes Everybody (1965), an excellent guide to the author’s works whose section on Ulysses is named after the structure built by Daedalus (Dedalus), The Labyrinth.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Duc de Joyeux
• Dubliners
• Covering Joyce
• James Joyce in Reverbstorm
• Joyce in Time
• Happy Bloomsday
• Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
• Books for Bloomsday