March 2019 – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Sundial and Mile End Purgatorio

The Black Tower.

I ought to have devoted this post to The Black Tower (1987), John Smith’s short and sinister film which I linked to at the weekend. It was good to watch it again after seeing a TV screening (no doubt the only one) on the UK’s Channel 4 in 1988. It also reminded me of the two shorter films linked here, both of which were also shown on Channel 4 a few years later in Benjamin Woolley’s excellent Midnight Underground series. All three films are linked by their London locations and their different solutions to the perennial problem of the micro-budget filmmaker looking to make the most of limited resources.

Sundial.

Smith’s film is the more substantial work, and of particular interest to those looking for examples of weird (or horror) cinema that avoids Hollywood cliches. The Black Tower combines static views of an unusual building with voiceover and sound effects to turn a mundane piece of architecture into a growing menace. Using a voiceover to craft a narrative from unrelated shots has always been a useful and flexible technique, especially if money is limited; Peter Greenaway did this with all of his early films, and it’s an approach also favoured by Patrick Keiller and Terrence Malick.

Mile End Purgatorio.

Guy Sherwin uses the same technique for Mile End Purgatorio (1991), an East-End riff on Dante, Hamlet and the Bible, with words by Martin Doyle. William Raban’s Sundial (1993) has no voiceover but it follows The Black Tower in making the Canary Wharf tower the centre of its attention, the fixed point in the passing of a single day. Sherwin and Raban also show how much can be done with a single minute of film.

Weekend links 455

• At Expanding Mind: Tarot expert Mary Greer talks with Erik Davis about Tarot artist Pamela Colman Smith, the Golden Dawn, the art of illustration, Jung’s active imagination, Smith’s musical visions, and the recent study of Smith’s life and work, Pamela Colman Smith: the Untold Story.

• Almost five years have passed since the last album from Earth (if you discount the Bug vs. Earth collaboration Concrete Desert) but the band will release a new album, Full Upon Her Burning Lips, in May. Cats On The Briar is a taster.

• Charles Bramesco on Sergei Bondarchuk’s astonishing 7-hour adaptation of War and Peace. I watched the whole thing last weekend: all superlatives are justified.

• The History of the Future: James Conway on leaving Australia for a life in Berlin and publishing. Related: Where is Rixdorf?

• At Spoon & Tamago: Keisuke Aiso‘s artworks, including the Ubume sculpture that became the face of the Momo Challenge hoax.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 282 by Tourist Gaze, and Big Sister’s Scratchy Singles Vol 1 by radioShirley.

• Alexander Rose on the 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument Hidden in Plain Sight.

• Rebecca Cole and Janise Elie go in search of the Brocken spectre on Burley Moor.

• M. John Harrison: Critical Essays, edited by Rhys Williams and Mark Bould.

• Forest of Resonating Lamps – One Stroke, Cherry Blossoms by teamLab.

• Tour de France: Jonathan Meades selects 13 exercise-bike Classics.

• At Greydogtales: The Cthulhu Mythos for Beginners.

• The Black Tower (1987), a short film by John Smith.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Jean Rollin Day.

• Ishmael Reed doesn’t like Hamilton.

• Babylonian Tower (1982) by Minimal Compact | The Tower (Black Advance) (2007) by Mordant Music | The Tower (Empty Fortress) (2007) by Mordant Music

The Dial

Yet another fin de siècle journal which we can now see in its entirety, The Dial was a short-lived British publication which expired at a time when more prominent titles were being launched. The publishers were Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, a couple who were partners in life as well as art and publishing, and members of Oscar Wilde’s small circle of circumspect gay and lesbian friends. Ricketts and Shannon published some of Wilde’s poetry—notably a beautiful edition of The Sphinx—and followed the William Morris ideal of using traditional techniques for art and printing rather than relying on the line block. Most of the illustrations in The Dial are woodcuts although Ricketts and Shannon also produced etchings and the occasional painting, as with Ricketts’ Moreau-like piece below. Many of the Dial pieces have been reprinted in books about the pair but these never show you everything so the journals contain a number of smaller works I hadn’t seen before. The Dial ran for five issues from 1889 to 1897. The Internet Archive has a couple of sets of which these are the better copies:

• Issue 1 | Issue 2 | Issue 3 |Issue 4 | Issue 5

Continue reading “The Dial”

Weekend links 454

Octopus and Pike (1937) by Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald.

• At Expanding Mind: writer and avant-garde publisher Tosh Berman talks with Erik Davis growing up in postwar California, hipster sexism, the hippie horrors of Topanga canyon, his impressions of family friends like Cameron and Brian Jones, and his charming new memoir Tosh, about growing up with his father, the remarkable underground California artist Wallace Berman.

• At Haute Macabre: A Sentiment of Spirits: Conversations with Handsome Devils Puppets.

• “We felt a huge responsibility.” Behind the landmark Apollo 11 documentary.

Jarman’s work was a statement that conservatism did not, or at least should not, define the perception of Britishness. His vision extended all of the way back to the likes of William Blake, John Dee and Gerard Winstanley, the radicals, mystics and outcasts of English history. His era, on the other hand, looked inwards and pessimistically so. The outward world was solely a free market. Our projected national identity was little else but the retread of colonial fantasies, a faux benevolence to the world that handily discarded the violence and tyranny that built it. Jarman saw through this imaginary landscape, often skewering it in his films.

Adam Scovell on the much-missed radicalism of Derek Jarman

• Director Nicolas Winding Refn: “Film is not an art-form any more.”

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 281 by Blakk Harbor.

• At Greydogtales: Hope Hodgson and the Haunted Ear.

• Hans Prinzhorn’s Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922).

• Michael Rother‘s favourite albums.

• Renaissance metal

• Puppet Theatre (1984) by Thomas Dolby | Puppet Motel (1994) by Laurie Anderson | Maybe You’re My Puppet (2002) by Cliff Martinez

The art of James Marsh

Laughing Stock (1991).

The paintings of James Marsh came to mind this week following news of the death of Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis. Marsh’s art was a feature of all the Talk Talk releases, singles as well as albums, but his work was equally prominent throughout the 1980s on a range of book covers, particularly the series he produced for Angela Carter and JG Ballard. The hard-edged, post-Surrealist style favoured by Marsh was a popular one in the 70s and 80s (among British illustrators, Peter Goodfellow and the late John Holmes worked in a similar manner), and I’ve often had to look twice to see whether a cover is one of his. But while the Magritte-like visual games may be replicated elsewhere, Marsh has a preoccupation with animals—birds and butterflies especially—that sets his paintings apart.

The Bloody Chamber (1981).

I never saw Mark Hollis discuss Marsh’s work but the use of the paintings across all the Talk Talk releases has given the group’s output a coherent look lacking in many of their fashion-chasing contemporaries. The consistency also meant that the cover art was unlikely to overly influence prior perception of their music; there was little warning in 1988 of the musical gulf separating The Colour Of Spring from Spirit Of Eden until stylus met vinyl. Mark Hollis was remembered this week by Rob Young who interviewed him in 1998 when his one and only solo album was released. More from James Marsh’s prolific career may be seen at his website.

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1982).

The Terminal Beach (1984).

Talk Talk (laserdisc, 1984).

Continue reading “The art of James Marsh”