Jean-Pierre, teilsolarisation, Paris (1951).
Photography by Herbert Tobias, 1924–1982.
The art of André Beuchat
Sancta sanctorum (1999).
O temps, suspends ton vol… (1992).
Architectural and other fantasies at Galleria del Leone and the artist’s own site.
Once again, small reproductions. Some of the same works in slightly larger size here.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
Robert Anton Wilson, 1932–2007
There are few people who really change your life but Robert Anton Wilson—who died earlier today—certainly changed mine. Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy (written with Robert Shea) was my cult book when I was at school in the 1970s, a rambling, science fiction-inflected conspiracy thriller that opened the doors in my teenaged brain to (among other things) psychedelic drugs, HP Lovecraft, James Joyce, William Burroughs and Aleister Crowley as well as being a crash-course in enlightened anarchism. I’ve had people criticise the books to me since for their ransacking of popular culture but this was partly the point, they were collage works, and they worked as a perfect introduction for a young audience to worlds outside the usual circumscribed genres.
The philosophical side of Wilson’s work was probably the most important at the time (and remains so now), his “transcendental agnosticism” made me start to question the adults around me who were trying to force my life to go in a direction I wasn’t interested in at all. I’m sure I would have resisted that kind of pressure anyway but the value of RAW’s writings in Illuminatus! and the later Cosmic Trigger came with being given an intelligent rationale for those decisions; I couldn’t necessarily articulate why I was “throwing my life away” by wanting to drop out of the whole education system but Wilson’s work had convinced me it was the right thing to do. I still mark the true beginning of my life as May 1979, the month I left school for good.
He wouldn’t want us to be maudlin, I’m sure. It’s typical for a writer who spent so much of his life writing about drugs and coincidences that he managed to die on Albert Hofmann’s birthday. So I’ll just say thank you Robert, for changing my life. And Hail Eris!
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Absolute Elsewhere
Albert Hofmann
The art of Yves Doaré
Ange (1981).
Le réservoir (1979).
Yves Doaré is well known for his paintings and drawings but better known for his haunting etchings, drypoints and wood engravings. Doaré began exhibiting his art in France in 1966 and since that time his art has been the subject of one man exhibitions at the Gallery Sumers, New York (1975), the Gallery Michele Broutta, Paris (1982), the House of Culture, Orleans (1985), the Gallery Dom Quichotte, Rome (1987), Workshop of Arts, Douarnenez (1993) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chamalieres, Belgium (1994). His art is now included in such public collections as the Museum of Annecy, the Museum of Morlaix, the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco, and the National Library of Paris.
Many of Doaré’s original etchings and engravings explore the theme he has termed, “a kind of geological memory.” Using as his starting point the actual etching plate or engraving block, Doaré explores the surface’s capacity to reveal its own forms and figures. Much like a sculptor, Doaré thus orchestrates the emergence of the random forms which the surface suggests.
More pictures at the Fitch-Febvrel Gallery, Galleria del Leone and the artist’s own site.
Update: more reproductions at Velly.org.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive