Bugs Bunny meets Fantômas in the Aquarium of Love

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Pop Surrealism, 1949.

More from the Chicago Surrealists. The discovery of the first item comes via a comment from Paul (thanks!) in the post about Arsenal magazine which directed my attention to Monoskop where there’s another publication, Cultural Correspondence, related to the Chicago Surrealist Group. Cultural Correspondence was a US journal which ran for 14 issues from 1975 to 1981. Searching around for more information revealed an archive of the entire run at Brown University:

A journal born from the collapse of the New Left and hopes for a new beginning of a social movement, but also of left-wing thinking about culture, Cultural Correspondence was in many ways a unique publication.

Its founding editors, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, had both served on the editorial board of the journal Radical America, founded in 1967. Buhle had been the founder of that bi-monthly journal, creating it out of a network of activist-intellectuals in the Students for a Democratic Society; Wagner was officially “Poetry Editor,” but after its shift from Madison, Wisconsin, to the Boston area in 1971, he became a member of an expanded board of editors. Together they taught at the Cambridge-Goddard Graduate School, then Wagner left for Europe and Buhle left the editorial board, moving to Yonkers. An exchange of letters from these locations spawned the notion of a new publication. It was to be the first radical magazine put out by members of a generation that had since childhood watched television and appreciated as well as enjoyed a considerable portion of it, also films and “pulp” literature.

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The issue at Monoskop was the penultimate one (numbered 10/11), guest-edited by Franklin Rosemont who took the opportunity to give the readers an exploration of “Surrealism and Its Popular Accomplices”. The final issue (numbered 12–14) continued the theme with a Surrealist supplement.

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Even without the Surrealist content, Cultural Correspondence is an interesting magazine, closer to the era’s underground magazines than an arts publication, especially in its attention to the underground cartoonists. Given my general antipathy to arts magazines I find this very much in its favour. The Rosemont-edited issue shows a different side of the Chicago group when compared to the more pugnacious Arsenal, with no sign of the scowling ideologues that fill the pages of the Surrealist journal. HP Lovecraft turns up once again (musings about Surrealism from his very last letter), together with Rosemont’s beloved blues musicians. Rosemont also reprints the short essay about pulp fiction by Robert Allerton Parker, Explorers of the Pluriverse, which appeared in the catalogue for First Papers of Surrealism.

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Meanwhile, at the Internet Archive there’s Marvellous Freedom, Vigilance of Desire, the exhibition programme for the World Surrealist Exhibition which was staged in Chicago in 1976. Penelope Rosemont refers to this event several times in Surrealist Women so it’s great to be able to see some of the artworks which are only described in brief in the book. Many exhibition catalogues are mere lists of pictures with an essay or two but this one looks like it took the First Papers of Surrealism catalogue as its model, being filled with essays, poems, small illustrations and so on. The early Surrealist exhibitions were never satisfied with scattering artworks around an otherwise empty room, several of them extended their themes into the exhibition space in early manifestations of the installation or environment concept. For the Chicago event the visitor passed through “Sleepwalker’s Hill” into the “Corridor of the Forgotten Future”, which led to the heart of the exhibition and eleven “Domains of Surrealist Vigilance” dedicated to significant figures: Lewis Carroll’s Alice, the Duchess of Towers (from one of Andre Bréton’s favourite films, Peter Ibbetson), Sade’s Juliette, Harpo Marx, T-Bone Slim, Peetie Wheatstraw, Robin Hood, Bugs Bunny, Alfred Jarry’s Doctor Faustroll, Melmoth the Wanderer, and the Surrealists’ favourite master criminal, Fantômas. The imperishable wise-cracking rabbit had already appeared in the pages of Arsenal, as well as on the cover of the first issue of Cultural Correspondence, but this is where he becomes a genuine Surrealist icon.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The Surrealism archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion

Weekend links 662

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Pierrot le Fleur by Marina Mika.

• I’ve been saying for years that Andrzej Zulawski’s On the Silver Globe should be given a proper blu-ray release, and that’s what Region B viewers will receive soon courtesy of Eureka. Andrzej Zulawski: Three Films will be released in May, a set that comprises the director’s unfinished SF film, his debut feature, The Third Part of the Night (1971)—which I still haven’t seen—and also The Devil (1972), which I have seen but only as a poor copy that’s been circulating via illicit channels for many years.

• “The album’s 18-minute, multi-section standout Jenny Ondioline acquired a crucial role. It became the first track I’d play whenever I boarded a train, slipped on my headphones, and settled in beside an anonymous rail rider.” Hayden Merrick on travelling across the USA to the sounds of Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements by Stereolab.

• At Aquarium Drunkard: E. Hehr explores musical exotica via Technicolor Paradise: Rhum Rhapsodies & Other Exotic Delights, “…a compilation that touches upon the noir side of exotica, far more gritty and raw compared to the lavish production on the esteemed exotica albums from Capitol and Liberty.” I own this collection. It’s a good one.

“My own experience,” Leda muses “tells me that more love goes into the thought of homosexuality than the practice.” Other gays are neither radical heroes nor the pathetic, self-hating fairies of, say, Mart Crowley’s Boys in the Band. This frankness makes Love, Leda a singular work; a contemporary portrait of working-class gay London in the years running up to decriminalisation that neither flatters nor sensationalises. In doing so, Hyatt transforms gay sex and love from an abject taboo to a deeply human intimacy.

Huw Lemmey on Love, Leda by Mark Hyatt, a candid tale of gay life in the Britain of the 1960s

• “It became something like a ritual, an exhumation of long-unheard music reanimated as glacial drones and ghostly symphonic movements—the sound of the cathedral transmuted into an enveloping shadow of pulsation, echo and glitch.” Orgelwerk by Ted Reichman.

Max Richter answers 50 questions. Sleep, Richter’s 8-hour ambient epic, is still my favourite among his compositions that I’ve heard to date: 8 CDs and a blu-ray disc from Deutsche Grammophon.

• RIP Alastair Brotchie, publisher of books at Atlas Press, and biographer of Alfred Jarry. Also a commenter here on one occasion when he corrected an erroneous photograph caption.

• A trailer for Suzume, a new feature film by Makoto Shinkai. Related: A Gathering of Cats.

• The story behind Jack Pierson’s homoerotic new photo book.

• The Strange World of…Phew.

Why Do I Still Sleep (1983) by Popol Vuh | Sleep I (1995) by Paul Schütze | The Dreamer Is Still Asleep (1999) by Coil

Weekend links 644

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Yoshitoshi’s Ghosts (2004) by Paul Binnie.

• “The later Grand Etteilla series, printed well into the nineteenth century, and the present-day proliferation of Tarot decks, following ephemeral fads and fashions, all trace their origins to this beautiful and beguiling creation from the enigmatic Egyptophile at 48 Rue de L’Oseille.” Kevin Dann on the Livre de Thot Tarot (ca. 1789) by Jean-Baptiste Alliette, better known as “Etteilla”.

• “Death is not a subject he has ever shied away from, in his fiction or conversation. Indeed, he has measured other writers by how seriously they address it.” Richard B. Woodward on his friend, Cormac McCarthy, and McCarthy’s new novels. There’s an exclusive extract from The Passenger here.

• “…addicts, psychopaths, lovelorn outsiders, cult leaders, lesbian and gay icons…you name it, the vampire has become it.” Christopher Frayling on the perennial popularity of the vampire, and a new book collection of vampire film posters.

Robert Wilson‘s new production of Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry is “a sinister, multilingual pantomime bathed in red light and looped in noise…fittingly violent, absurd, ominous and infantile”.

• “What kind of music goes with a show that originates in deep space?” Aquarium Drunkard on Sonny Sharrock’s final recordings, the soundtrack music for Space Ghost Coast To Coast.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine takes a fresh look at the health of secondhand bookshops in Britain.

• Tokyo nightlife photographed by Hosokawa Ryohei.

• New music: Approach by Lawrence English.

The Passenger (1977) by Iggy Pop | The Passenger (1987) by Siouxsie And The Banshees | The Passenger (1997) by Lunachicks

Fuzz Against Junk & The Hero Maker

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This is another of those posts in which I brag about finding an old book in a charity shop for a lot less than you’d have to pay for it online. But it does give me the opportunity to say something about American writer/artist Norman Rubington and his alter ego Akbar Del Piombo, something I was sure I’d done already. One of the weekend posts linked to an article about Rubington’s work but my discussion of his collages is in the essay I wrote about Wilfried Sätty for the Strange Attractor Journal, a piece which isn’t available here.

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The engraving collages of Norman Rubington (1921–1991) were probably the first to use the form developed by Max Ernst for explicitly humorous purposes. They’re certainly among the earliest to take the lead from Ernst while aiming themselves at an audience outside the art world. There is humour in some of Ernst’s collages, of course, but it tends to be the black variety favoured by the Surrealists (and actually defined by them; André Breton’s 1940 Anthology of Black Humour was a pioneering study). Rubington’s small books exploit the comic potential of antique illustrations by repurposing them as the primary content in a series of absurd narratives; these aren’t “graphic novels”, they’re more like heavily-illustrated comedy routines. There were four books in the original series—Fuzz Against Junk (1959), The Hero Maker (1959), Is That You Simon? (1961) and The Boiler Maker (1961)—with a fifth title, Moonglow, appearing in 1969. Olympia Press published the books in France, with US editions appearing around the same time under the Far-Out imprint used by Citadel Press. My charity purchase is the 1966 New English Library reprint of an Olympia Press collection of the first two volumes. The olive-green Olympia covers always provoke a Pavlovian grab response when I see one on a shelf although I’ve yet to find a copy that wasn’t an NEL reprint.

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Continue reading “Fuzz Against Junk & The Hero Maker”

Silver Machines

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1: How to Construct a Time Machine, 1899

III: Description of the Machine

The Machine consists of an ebony frame, similar to the steel frame of a bicycle. The ebony members are assembled with soldered copper mountings.

The gyrostats’ three tori (or flywheels), in the three perpendicular planes of Euclidean space, are made of ebony cased in copper, mounted on rods of tightly rolled quartz ribbons (quartz ribbons are made in the same way as quartz wire), and set in quartz sockets.

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Alfred Jarry testing a time machine, 1898

The circular frames or the semicircular forks of the gyro stats are made of nickel. Under the seat and a little forward are located the batteries for the electric motor. There is no iron in the Machine other than the soft iron of the electromagnets.

Motion is transmitted to the three flywheels by ratchet-boxes and chain-drives of quartz wire, engaged in three cogwheels, each of which lies on the same plane as its corresponding fly wheel. The chain-drives are connected to the motor and to each other through bevel gears and driveshafts. A triple brake controls all three shafts simultaneously…

Alfred Jarry


2: Dead Singers (aka All the Dead Singers), 1971

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“That’s all in the past now.” Beesley waddled to the other the side of the tiled room and wheeled the black Royal Albert gent’s roadster across the clean floor. He paused to flip a switch on the wall. Belly Button Window flooded through the sound system. They were turning his own rituals against him. Now the devil had all the songs.

“All aboard, Mr C.” Reluctantly, Jerry mounted the bike. He was getting a bit too old for this sort of thing.

[…]

In London he slowed down, but by that time he’d blown it completely. Still, he’d got what Beesley wanted. Nothing stayed the same. Tiny snatches of music came from all sides, trying to take hold. Marie Lloyd. Harry Champion, George Formby, Noël Coward, Cole Porter, Billie Holliday, MJQ, Buddy Holly, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Hawkwind. He hung on to Hawkwind, turning the car back and forth to try to home in, but then it was Gertrude Lawrence and then it was Tom Jones and then it was Cliff Richard and he knew he was absolutely lost. Buildings rose and fell like waves. Horses, trams and buses faded through each other. People grew and decayed. There were too many ghosts in the future. In Piccadilly Circus he brought the Mercedes to a bumping stop at the base of the Eros statue and, grabbing the Royal Albert, threw himself clear. He was screaming for help. They’d been fools to fuck about with Time again. Yet they’d known what they were getting him into.

Michael Moorcock, Ink Magazine


3: Silver Machine, 1972

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Cover design by Tony Vesely with Pennie Smith (not the work of Barney Bubbles as stated elsewhere).

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A dead singer.


4: The Dancers at the End of Time, 1974

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Dedication by Michael Moorcock in the 1974 Mayflower paperback of An Alien Heat—The First Volume in the Dancers at the End of Time Trilogy.

Outside the station they found themselves in the Strand and now Jherek saw something leaning against a wall on the corner of Villiers Street.

“Look!, Mrs Underwood—we are saved. A time machine!”

“That, Mr Carnelian, is a tandem bicycle.”

He already had his hands on it and was trying to straddle it as he had seen the others do.

“We would do better to hail a cab,” she said.

“Get aboard quickly. Can you see any controls?”

With a sigh, she took the remaining saddle, in the front. “We had best head for Regent Street. It is not far, happily. The other side of Piccadilly. At least this will prove to you, once and for all, that…”

Her voice was lost as they hurtled into the press of the traffic, weaving between trams and omnibuses, between horses and motor cars and causing both to come to sudden stops and stand stock still in the middle of the road, panting and shuddering.

Jherek, expecting to see the scene vanish at any moment, paid little attention to the confusion happening around them. He was having a great deal of trouble keeping his balance upon the time machine.

“It will be soon!” he cried into her ear, “it must be soon!” And he pedalled harder. All that happened was that the machine lurched onto the pavement, shot across Trafalgar Square at considerable speed, up the Haymarket, and was in Leicester Square almost before they had realized it. Here Jherek fell off the tandem, to the vast entertainment of a crowd of street urchins hanging about outside the doors of the Empire Theatre of Varieties.

“It doesn’t seem to work,” he said.

Michael Moorcock, The Hollow Lands—The Second Volume in the Dancers at the End of Time Trilogy


5: Machine music

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6: “’Pataphysics is the science”, 1981

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Robert Calvert and Noel Redding testing a time machine, 1976.

I read this essay by Alfred Jarry called, “How to Construct a Time Machine”, and I noticed something which I don’t think anyone else has thought of because I’ve never seen any criticism of the piece to suggest this. I seemed to suss out immediately that what he was describing was his bicycle. He did have that turn of mind. He was the kind of bloke who’d think it was a good joke to write this very informed sounding piece, full of really good physics (and it has got some proper physics in it), describing how to build a time machine, which is actually about how to build a bicycle, buried under this smoke-screen of physics that sounds authentic.

Jarry got into doing this thing called “’Pataphysics”, which is a sort of French joke science. A lot of notable French intellectuals formed an academy around the basic idea of coming up with theories to explain the exceptions to the Laws of the Universe, people like Ionesco the playwright.

The College of metaphysics. I thought it was a great idea for a song. At that time there were a lot of songs about space travel, and it was the time when NASA was actually, really doing it. They’d put a man on the moon and were planning to put parking lots and hamburger stalls and everything up there. I thought that it was about time to come up with a song that actually sent this all up, which was Silver Machine.

Silver Machine was just to say, I’ve got a silver bicycle, and nobody got it. I didn’t think they would. I thought that what they would think we were singing about some sort of cosmic space travel machine. I did actually have a silver racing bike when I was a boy. I’ve got one now, in fact.

Robert Calvert, Cheesecake fanzine no. 5

• Related: Marcus O’Dair on ’Pataphysics: Your Favourite Cult Artist’s Favourite Pseudoscience.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Notes from the Underground
Hawkwind: Days of the Underground
The Chronicle of the Cursed Sleeve
Rock shirts
The Cosmic Grill
Void City
Hawk things
The Sonic Assassins
New things for July
Barney Bubbles: artist and designer