{ feuilleton }

Avatar

• • • Being a journal by artist and designer John Coulthart, cataloguing interests, obsessions and passing enthusiasms.

Archive for the {theatre} category

 

John Austen’s Hamlet

austen01.jpg

The 1922 edition of Hamlet “decorated” by British artist John Austen (1886–1948) is a lot more visible today than it was a few years ago, thanks to a reprint by Dover Publications in their Calla Editions series. The scans here are from an original printing at VTS. Austen’s Hamlet is often rated as his chef [...]

Posted in {art}, {black and white}, {books}, {illustrators}, {theatre} | No comments »

 


The Marat/Sade

maratsade1.jpg

The Marat/Sade (1967). Good to find this Peter Brook film on YouTube (for the time being…) as I’d been watching Ian Richardson in a couple of things recently and wanted to remind myself of how he fares here. He’s excellent, of course, as the serious foil to Patrick Magee’s equally serious Marquis de Sade. Brook’s [...]

Posted in {film}, {politics}, {theatre} | 3 comments »

 


Fenella Fielding reads Colette

fenella1.jpg

The latest post at Strange Flowers reminded me of some work of mine that appeared earlier this month which I can finally mention. Fenella Fielding reads Colette is another of those long-gestating recordings from Savoy’s audio division which has been released at last after a lengthy hiatus. This is a double-disc CD set of Fenella’s [...]

Posted in {art nouveau}, {books}, {design}, {theatre}, {work} | 3 comments »

 


I:MAGE: An Exhibition of Esoteric Artists

francov.jpg

El Trigono de las lesiones (2010) by Cristina Francov. I:MAGE is an exhibition of occult-inspired art which opens a week on Sunday, 19th May at the Store Street Gallery, Bloomsbury, London. As exhibitions go it’s modest in scale but with an impressive roster of contributors old and new: Agostino Arrivabene, Ithell Colquhoun, Denis Forkas Kostromitin, [...]

Posted in {art}, {occult}, {painting}, {photography}, {theatre} | Comments Off

 


Michael Powell’s Bluebeard revisited

powell1.jpg

Yesterday’s post prompted me to look again for one of Michael Powell’s scarcest films, his television version of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle made for  Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1963. Sure enough, it’s now on YouTube in a watchable copy taken from VHS tape. Herzog Blaubarts Burg (to use its German title) was made post-Peeping Tom when the [...]

Posted in {film}, {music}, {theatre} | Comments Off

 


Julius Klinger’s Sodom

klinger1.jpg

The more I look at the work of Austrian artist Julius Klinger (1876–1942), the more I like what I see. This Pinterest sample shows his versatility, equally at home with detailed illustration, often with a Beardsley-like quality, as he was with more Modernist design. Sodom (1689) (aka The Farce of Sodom, or The Quintessence of [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {film}, {illustrators}, {theatre} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 155

austin.jpg

Poster design by Mishka Westell for this month’s Austin Psych Fest. Billy Gibbons’ pre-ZZ Top psychedelic outfit, The Moving Sidewalks, surprised everyone by reforming for a New York gig last month, their first performance together in 44 years. • Pye Corner Audio played the Boiler Room, London, last week, and remixed a track from FC [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {burroughs}, {design}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {gay}, {illustrators}, {music}, {photography}, {psychedelia}, {theatre}, {typography} | Comments Off

 


Le Cantique des Cantiques

kupka1.jpg

An oddity from the career of František Kupka, Le Cantique des Cantiques (1905) in this version is a stage presentation of the Song of Solomon by Jean de Bonnefon. Kupka provided a series of illustrations in a style similar to his Symbolist paintings which in the original printing are decorated with coloured borders. The copies [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {symbolists}, {theatre} | 2 comments »

 


Brecht and Bowie

baal2.jpg

While David Bowie is still making the news it’s worth revisiting Baal, an hour-long BBC TV adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht play broadcast in 1981. Bowie stars as the title character, a thoroughly disagreeable poet and café singer who ruins the lives of those around him. This caused a stir at the time more for [...]

Posted in {film}, {music}, {television}, {theatre} | 1 comment »

 


Wildeana 9

dine.jpg

Dorian Gray (1968) by Jim Dine; one of a series of prints for an illustrated edition. Rainbows didn’t become a gay symbol until Gilbert Baker’s flag design ten years later. Continuing an occasional series. • “…the Public is a very curious thing; it is sometimes perverse, and even obstinate, and it has evidently made up [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {gay}, {politics}, {theatre} | Comments Off

 


Decapitations

heads03.jpg

Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1520–1540) by Lucas Cranach the Elder. It doesn’t take much effort to refute the jeremiads of those who complain that popular culture is exclusively violent, all that’s usually required is to direct attention to Titus Andronicus or The Revenger’s Tragedy. Compared to the stage, the art world seems at [...]

Posted in {art}, {painting}, {religion}, {theatre} | 10 comments »

 


Jon Finch, 1941–2012

finch1.jpg

Macbeth (1971). There are few actors I’ve ever felt sufficiently cultish about who could make me watch films or TV dramas I wouldn’t otherwise be interested in. Orson Welles would be one (up to a point, he was in a lot of crap in later years), Patrick McGoohan another and Jon Finch most definitely a [...]

Posted in {books}, {film}, {science fiction}, {theatre} | 3 comments »

 


Rhinoceros by Jan Lenica

lenica1.jpg

As noted here last year, Polish artist Jan Lenica (1928–2001) was also an animator as well as a celebrated poster designer. Die Nashörner (1964) is an 11-minute condensation of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros that no doubt works best if you’re familiar with the play but which nevertheless contains some funny moments, especially when “Rhinocerosism” starts to spread. [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film}, {theatre} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 141

nguyen.jpg

From the Beautiful Faces series (2012) by Tran Nguyen. • “What possessed a generation of young European artists, and a few Americans, to suddenly suppress recognizable imagery in pictures and sculptures? Unthinkable at one moment, the strategy became practically compulsory in the next.” Peter Schjeldahl on the birth of abstraction. • “A profanely mystical work [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {design}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {music}, {photography}, {politics}, {psychedelia}, {technology}, {theatre} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 133

woods1.jpg

Lower Manhattan (1999) by Lebbeus Woods. RIP Lebbeus Woods, an architect and illustrator frequently compared to Piranesi not only for his imagination and the quality of his renderings but also for the way both men built very little from a lifetime of designs. Lots of appreciations have appeared over the past few days including this [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {cities}, {comics}, {design}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {film}, {illustrators}, {music}, {psychedelia}, {science fiction}, {television}, {theatre} | 3 comments »

 


Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets

quays1.jpg

It’s not exactly the most appropriate moment to be recommending an exhibition in New York given the chaos in the city following the recent hurricane. However… Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets has been running at MoMA since August, and will continue into early 2013. A copy of the catalogue turned [...]

Posted in {animation}, {art}, {books}, {design}, {film}, {theatre}, {typography} | 5 comments »

 


Weekend links 130

teraoka.jpg

Sarah and Writhing Octopus (New Wave Series, 1992) by Masami Teraoka. Strange Flowers continues to push all my buttons. For a while now I’d been intent on writing something about the strange (unbuilt) temples designed by German artist/obsessive naturist Fidus (Hugo Höppener) but I reckon James has done a better job than I would have [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {comics}, {cormac}, {electronica}, {film}, {horror}, {illustrators}, {magazines}, {music}, {painting}, {science fiction}, {theatre}, {work} | 3 comments »

 


Weekend links 129

proffer.jpg

Daughters of Maternal Impression by Arabella Proffer. A genre’s landscape should be littered with used tropes half-visible through their own smoke & surrounded by salvage artists with welding sets, otherwise it isn’t a genre at all. M. John Harrison, incisive as ever, on what he memorably labels “Pink Slime Fiction”. Elsewhere (and at much greater [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {borges}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {magazines}, {music}, {painting}, {science fiction}, {sculpture}, {theatre} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 128

wrongeye.jpg

Seven-inch sleeve design by Savage Pencil for Wrong Eye (1990) by Coil. • “Can you use sensory deprivation to explore ESP? And then make music from the process?” Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt of Matmos decided to find out for their new EP. Related: Occult Voices—Paranormal Music, Recordings of Unseen Intelligences, 1905–2007 at Ubuweb. Details [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {comics}, {design}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {gay}, {music}, {occult}, {psychedelia}, {theatre} | 9 comments »

 


Weekend links 127

whirlpool.jpg

M15, The Whirlpool Galaxy photographed by Martin Pugh. The overall and deep space winner of Astronomy Photographer of the Year, 2012. • The Final Academy, the series of William Burroughs-themed events that took place in London and Manchester in 1982, will be celebrated at the Horse Hospital, London, on 27th October. Academy 23, a publication [...]

Posted in {animation}, {architecture}, {art}, {black and white}, {books}, {burroughs}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {photography}, {science}, {theatre} | 2 comments »

 


 




 

tracker

 


 

“feed your head”