Weekend links 350

eaton.jpg

Transition H50 (2016) by Jessica Eaton.

• One of my weekend posts in 2012 contained details about Taking Tiger Mountain, a low-budget feature film put together in 1983 by Tom Huckabee using footage originally shot in Tangier and Wales in the 1970s. Huckabee’s film is a strange “experimental” work of science fiction, based in part on William Burroughs’ Blade Runner script (no relation to the Ridley Scott film apart from the title), and described here as “a psychotropic apocalyptic odyssey”. The most notable aspect of the film for many will be the presence of a young Bill Paxton in the lead role, something I was reminded of when Paxton’s death was announced earlier this week. Five years ago there was only a short clip of Taking Tiger Mountain available on YouTube but since then a full copy has appeared; watch it here while you can. (The widescreen frame is cropped, and the sound is all in one channel but it’s still watchable.) Tom Huckabee talked about the film’s production (and the Burroughs connections) to Beatdom. A curio that deserves wider attention.

• “With Biller, the references come thick and fast. In The Love Witch, she channels, among others, 50s Hitchcock, Douglas Sirk’s lurid lushness, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s deadpan gaze, Nicholas Ray’s poetry, Sam Fuller’s tabloid style and Todd Haynes’s revisionist sexual politics. […] Then add the Technicolor, widescreen, haute-Hollywood “women’s pictures” of the 50s, a touch of Hammer Studios, The Wicker Man, Rosemary’s Baby and any number of studio melodramas and musicals.” John Patterson talks to director Anna Biller about her new film, The Love Witch.

• Mix of the week is the Anxious Heart Mix by Moon Wiring Club, another excellent blend of electronica, industria and dialogue samples from the outer limits of the televisual sphere. Also of note this week: VF Mix 83, an Adrian Sherwood selection by Pinch, XLR8R Podcast 479 by Chris SSG, and Secret Thirteen Mix 213 by -N.

• “Anthropologically, this was going on all around me: it was amazing and nobody was dealing with it like that, so I just went for it.” Hal Fischer on his photo-art series, Gay Semiotics, which is on display at Project Native Informant, London, until 1st April.

• Coming in May from Luaka Bop, World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, the first-ever compilation of Alice Coltrane’s scarce releases on the Avatar Book Institute label.

Cinephilia looks back at Robert Wise and Nelson Gidding’s film of The Andromeda Strain (1971).

• Psychedelic Speed Freak: Remembering the blistering experimentalism of Hideo Ikeezumi.

• More witchery: S. Elizabeth talks to Pam Grossman about art, film and hex power.

• At The Quietus: Harry Sword on the strange world of Surgeon.

Leonor Fini playing cards

The Feathered Tiger (1969) by Kaleidoscope | Taking Tiger Mountain (1974) by Brian Eno | Plain Tiger (1985) by Cocteau Twins

Spanish Salomés

salome1.jpg

Uncredited painting based on Modern Salomé (1927), a poem by Emilio Carrere.

Yet more on this indefatigable theme, the examples this time being by Spanish artists and illustrators. All the pieces are from this page, and the artists involved aren’t well-known at all so checking details isn’t easy. Take the references with a pinch of salt. Thanks to Thom for the tip!

salome2.jpg

Illustration by José Moya del Pino for The Death of Salomé (1915), a poem by Emilio Carrere.

Continue reading “Spanish Salomés”

The art of Guido Reni, 1575–1642

reni01.jpg

Atalanta and Hippomenes (c. 1612).

More golden apples appear in this painting by Guido Reni, not the most famous ones in art history—those would be all the Apples of Discord seen in the various Judgements of Paris—these are the fruit of the sacred tree in the Garden of the Hesperides which Hippomenes drops to prevent Atalanta from beating him in a race. The object of interest here isn’t the apples but the near-naked male, a favourite subject for Baroque artist Guido Reni whose work strikes viewers today as significantly homoerotic. This interpretation is by no means a recent one: Oscar Wilde was famously smitten with Reni’s depiction of Saint Sebastian (below) when he saw the painting in Genoa; in the 20th century the same painting (or one of Reni’s other Sebastians) excited the 12-year-old protagonist in Yukio Mishima’s novel Confessions of a Mask. Here’s what GLBTQ has to say about Reni:

Given the fierce homophobia prevailing in Europe during the Baroque era, historians seeking to reconstruct the lifestyles and works of queer artists often have to depend upon undocumented anecdotes and innuendoes.

Utilizing this type of evidence (including rumors about his supposed disdain of women, his possible romantic involvement with his long-time assistant, his interest in cross-dressing, and his “delicate” mannerisms), recent scholars interpret Guido Reni (1575–1642) as a gay artist.

The disdain of women is referred to in an earlier account, as are other pertinent details:

He was accustomed to paint with his mantle about him, gathered gracefully over his left arm. His pupils, of whom he had a great number—at one period no less than eighty, drawn from nearly every nation of Europe—vied with each other to serve him, esteeming themselves fortunate to have opportunities to clean his brushes or to prepare his palette. He had no dearth of models in the multitude of youths and disciples which surrounded him; but all that Guido cared of them was to refresh his memory by viewing their limbs and torsos, and after that he could adjust them and correct their imperfections.

In the same way any head sufficed him for a model. Being once besought by Count Aldovrandi to confide in him who the lady was of whom he availed himself in drawing his beautiful Madonnas and Magdalens, he made his color-grinder, a fellow of scoundrelly visage, sit down, and commanding him to look upward, drew from him such a marvelous head of a saint that it seemed as if it had been done by magic. Better than any other artist he understood how to portray upturned faces, and boasted that he knew a hundred ways of making heads with their eyes lifted to heaven. He often declared that his favorite, models were the ‘Venus of Medici’ and the wonderful heads in the Niobe group.

He was always in great fear of sorcery and poisoning, and for that reason could not endure women in his house, abhorring to have any dealings with them, and, when such were unavoidable, hurrying them through as rapidly as possible. Old women were his especial detestation, and he always fled from them, and lamented grievously if one of them should appear when he was about beginning or closing some commission.

From Guido Reni (1903)

That’s one way of either justifying your misogyny or explaining to the neighbours why your house is full of young men with no women.

reni10.jpg

Saint Sebastian (1615).

Speculation about the sexuality of artists from past centuries seldom leads anywhere but it can be a fun parlour game, provided you take accounts like the one above with a pinch of salt. In Reni’s case you’d have to point to the many paintings where a religious subject is used as the merest pretext for some shirtless male pulchritude. This was a common ploy in other areas of art: landscape painting evolved as a genre in its own right when post-Renaissance artists began to shrink the religious figures who were the ostensible subject of their commissions into the corner of a field or the shadows of a valley; the imagination could be given free rein by the expedient of painting an apocalypse or a Temptation of St Anthony.

Reni lets loose his temperament by returning to a range of religious subjects that happen to feature attractive youths. Even his picture of Sacred Love defeating Profane Love (below) shows a divine figure who seems to represent more of the libido than the subject should require. Elsewhere he follows Caravaggio with a youthful John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness in an almost total state of nature. Reni’s angels are some of the most androgynous figures you’ll find in Baroque painting; the model for his very girlish Archangel Gabriel also appears as Jesus in another painting, raising a somewhat scandalous implication as to the real paternity of Christ.

reni07.jpg

David with the Head of Goliath (1605).

The following selection of paintings is a prejudiced choice, of course. Some of these can be seen at a much larger size at the Google Art Project. Frivolous speculation aside, at his best Reni could be very good indeed as in this superb portrait of Saint Matthew with another androgynous angel. It’s no surprise to read that his work was in great demand throughout his life.

Continue reading “The art of Guido Reni, 1575–1642”

Weekend links 21

nagai.jpg

A poster by Kazumasa Nagai.

• Franco Maria Ricci creates the world’s largest maze. “The former publisher said he first confided his ambition to Jorge Luis Borges, who characteristically told him the world’s largest maze already existed and was called a desert.” Related: Mirror, Mask, Labyrinth, a review of two new collections of Borges’ poetry.

FACT mix 164 is a dubstep collection by Pinch and a promotion for the Dark Matter compilation which I designed earlier this year.

• One of the monuments of 20th century music, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, is released in another new (and expensive) edition next month by Sony. Nice packaging, and there’s a vinyl edition included, but these things always come across as a cyncial attempt to milk the hardcore fans one more time. And have you noticed how all vinyl releases are now described as “audiophile”? If the big record companies had shown this much dedication to quality in the 1980s when they were jobbing out sub-standard vinyl pressings their reputation might be slightly higher today.

• More Gysin: Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, and the secret life of a building on the Bowery. And Ubuweb’s page of Gysin sound works and recordings.

Michael Moorcock: “I think I preferred my own imagination”. A two-part interview about the cover designs for Moorcock books.

The Pansy Project: “Artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at the site of homophobic abuse, he finds the nearest source of soil to where the incident occurred and generally without civic permission plants one unmarked pansy. The flower is then photographed in its location and posted on his website, the image is entitled after the abuse … The Pansy Project also marks locations where people have been killed as a result of homophobic attack”

This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities. Jim Rossignol’s book is available as a free download.

Lost London. Also, the Victorian Catacombs of South London.

Dedalus Books had its Arts Council grant reinstated.

’Zine Lutefisk: fashion/art/escape.

Time Will Show The Wiser (1968) by Fairport Convention | She Moves Through The Fair (1969) by Fairport Convention | She Moved Through The Fair (1994) by Jam Nation.

Aerial by 2562

2562_1.jpg

This minimal CD cover is my design for Aerial, the debut album from 2562, aka Dutch musician Dave Huismans. This is another release on the Tectonic label who released Underwater Dancehall, the Pinch album I designed last year. As with that release the photos on Aerial are by Liz Eve.

This is a really excellent album but then I would say that since it’s just the kind of electronica I enjoy, in this case being pitched somewhere between the infectious rhythms of Monolake and the sparse dub sounds of Pole. Mr Huismans knows what’s he’s doing and Aerial has already picked up some rave reviews. The CD will appear on June 2nd with a double-vinyl version to follow.

2562_2.jpg

Previously on { feuilleton }
New things for November