December 2017 – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Gustave Doré’s Contes Drolatiques

I mentioned Gustave Doré in the Émile Bayard post last week so here’s something from the man himself. I’ve known a couple of the pictures in this 614-page volume for a long time but it’s taken me until this week to look through them all. Doré began his career as a creator of humorous illustrations, and his early illustrated books were at the lighter end of the scale. His flair for the comic and the grotesque are combined in this 1855 edition of Balzac’s stories with a total of 425 drawings, some of which feature the artist’s taste for violent death. As always with Doré, his drawings were filled and embellished by a team of engravers but this is still a remarkable amount of work. What you see here is a necessarily small selection of the full-page pictures; the entire book may be browsed at the Internet Archive.

Continue reading “Gustave Doré’s Contes Drolatiques”

Weekend links 390

French poster by Basha (Barbara Baranowska) for Andrzej Zulawski’s extraordinary Possession (1981).

• “Alive from Off Center, renamed Alive TV in 1992, was an American arts anthology television series aired by PBS between 1984 and 1996. Each week, the series featured experimental short films by a mixture of up-and-coming and established directors. Notable episodes included As Seen on TV, starring comic actor Bill Irwin as an auditioning dancer who becomes trapped in a television, wandering among daytime dramas, MTV, and PBS’s own Sesame Street and the atmospheric puppet melodrama Street of Crocodiles, adapted by the Brothers Quay from the Bruno Schultz story. […] Arguably the series’ best-known episode was What You Mean We? a short film written by, directed by, and starring Laurie Anderson, which aired in 1986.” Alive from Off Center, 11 episodes at Ubuweb.

• “[Count] Stenbock was a homosexual convert to Roman Catholicism and owner of a serpent, a toad, and a dachshund called Trixie. It was said that toward the end of his life he was accompanied everywhere by a life-size wooden doll that he believed to be his son. His poems and stories are replete with queer, supernatural, mystical, and Satanic themes; original editions of his books are highly sought by collectors of recherché literature.” Of Kings and Things: Strange Tales and Decadent Poems by Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock will be published by Strange Attractor in March, 2018.

• Music news of the week (in this house, anyway) is a new song, The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra, by Anna von Hausswolff. A new album, Dead Magic, is due in March, and I’m doubly-thrilled to read that Randall Dunn of Master Musicians of Bukkake (and producer/engineer for Earth, Sunn O))), etc.) is involved.

• “Why do Texas prisons ban Freakonomics but not Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf?” asks Lauren McGaughy. On the banned list is the three-volume The Graphic Canon, edited by Russ Kick, which includes my adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

• “To understand how other planets are made, exogeologists are synthesizing those planets in miniature in the earthbound equipment in their labs.” BLDGBLOG on speculative mineralogy.

• “What does the Bardo sound like?” Lauria Galbraith on Éliane Radigue‘s Trilogie de la Mort, three hour-long electronic compositions based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

• And speaking of Earth, Joseph Stannard talked to Dylan Carlson (Earth) and Kevin Martin (The Bug) about their recent collaboration.

• Mixes of the week: FACT mix 630 by Hanz, XLR8R Podcast 519 by Setaoc Mass, and Secret Thirteen Mix 239 by Blush Response.

• The League’s seven deadly sins: Reese Shearsmith on the cinematic influences behind The League of Gentlemen’s TV series.

• Donnie & Laurie, a jam from the late 1970s with Laurie Spiegel on Electrocomp 101 synthesizer, and Don Christensen on drums.

• Guests and dates for the Dublin Ghost Story Festival have been announced.

• David Bowie sang for Devo, and Mark Mothersbaugh might have the tapes.

• The albums of the year according to The Quietus.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Isabelle Adjani Day.

• Possessed (1979) by MX-80 Sound | Possession (1988) by Danzig | Possessed (1992) by Balanescu Quartet

Émile Bayard’s Histoire de la Magie

Regular readers may have noticed my persistent urge to trace the provenance of certain images or designs. The latest candidate is the above illustration of a witches sabbat, a picture familiar to readers of occult histories in addition to appearing on at least two album covers. It’s the use in occult books which no doubt drew it to the attention of composer John Zorn who used it as a cover image in 2004 for his Magick album, one of a series of occult-themed recordings. The album credits the artwork to Gustave Doré, a plausible candidate given the engraving style but I’m familiar enough with Doré’s work to doubt that it was one of his.

Earlier this week I was looking for more occult-related imagery so finally conducted a proper search for the sabbat picture. The origin is a French volume by Paul Christian, Histoire de la Magie, Du Monde Surnaturel Et de la Fatalite a Travers Les Temps (1870), and the full-page illustrations are by Émile Bayard (1837–1891). The Doré identification was partially correct since Bayard was a contemporary of Doré’s, and the drawings were engraved by François Pannemaker, an engraver who worked on many of Doré’s books as well as the Hertzel editions of Jules Verne. Émile Bayard is one of those artists whose name is unknown today even though people throughout the world would recognise one of his drawings; his illustration of Cosette from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables provided the face seen on all those posters and hoardings promoting the popular musical.

“Paul Christian” was the nom de plume of Jean-Baptiste Pitois (1811–1877), and his study of occult history was a popular book when it first appeared. I can’t say much about its contents but the illustrations (of which these are a selection via this page) show a range that encompasses various myths and religions as well as the expected variants of Western occultism. I’d seen several of Bayard’s other illustrations in a more recent French history of the occult, where the pictures are uncredited. I’ve suspected for years that they might be by the same artist responsible for the sabbat picture so this discovery has laid another nagging question to rest.

Histoire de la Magie isn’t among the scanned books at the Internet Archive, unfortunately, but a copy may be viewed at Gallica. It’s a shame this is one of Gallica’s older scans which spoils the artwork but you can at least seen the book in full. An English translation was published in the US in 1969, containing notes and additions by living occult experts, but I’ve yet to discover whether this edition retained Bayard’s pictures.

Continue reading “Émile Bayard’s Histoire de la Magie”

Weekend links 389

I Had Sweet Company Because I Sought Out None. Collage by Helen Adam.

• Readers of The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges continue to be compelled to either illustrate the impossible archive or create virtual equivalents. The Library of Blabber by nothke is a procedural version for home computers in which each volume on the shelves contains randomly-generated content.

• The Japanese American Toy Theatre of London presents: James Bonk in Matt Blackfinger (1987). Directed by Akiko Hada, with music by David Toop, and a song from Frank Chickens’ Kazuko Hohki (who also co-wrote the script).

• Music, Time and Long-Term Thinking—The Long Now Foundation (and a fair amount of Brian Eno) by Austin Brown, Alex Mensing and Ahmed Kabil.

• A Return to Normilcy: Bernie Brooks talks to post-punk group Normil Hawaiians about their 1982 album More Wealth Than Money which has just been reissued.

• Sound artist and theremin player Sarah Angliss has reworked music by Bernard Herrmann for an upcoming stage adaptation of The Twilight Zone.

• Does the world need another reissue of A Secret Wish by Propaganda? Not really but there’s a “deluxe” vinyl and CD edition on the way.

• “What Would [Bernard] Wolpe Do?” Talking Wolpe, Albertus and book cover design with the Faber & Faber Art Department.

• Mixes of the week: FACT mix 629 by Idle Hands/Chris Farrell, and XLR8R Podcast 518 by Cassy.

• At Phantasmaphile: Neglected collage artist Helen Adam (1909–1993).

• Collectors’ corner: photos of book and music libraries

• The Black Meat (Deconstruction Of The Babel-Tower of Reason) (1994) by Automaton | Babel (2010) by Massive Attack feat. Martina Topley-Bird | Branching (2016) by The Library of Babel