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Stonehenge Suite, No.10 (1977) by Malcolm Dakin. • “Part of me always wanted to write a teatime drama. That’s something that I wanted to get out of my system,” says director Peter Strickland. The results may be heard here. In the same interview there’s news that Strickland will be adapting Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape […]

Sebastiane Opens October 1976: Sebastiane opened at the Gate cinema in Notting Hill last night after a day of record attendances and good reviews. At the opening Barney James, who plays the centurion, sat next to my parents. At the end of the film he turned to Dad and said, “I don’t suppose forces life […]

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 […]

I’ve kept wondering when we’d hear more from The Irrepressibles following the release of their wonderful Mirror Mirror album. Here at last is a new song, Arrow, from a forthcoming album, Nude. Lyrical allusions to Saint Sebastian accompany two naked guys wrestling until…well, go and see. (Thanks to Thom for the tip!) Directed & choreographed […]

St Sebastian with wounded chest (c. 1906). The work of American photographer Fred Holland Day (1864–1933) has featured here in the past but it’s only recently that I came across the archive of prints at the Library of Congress. Not all the works there are digitised yet, and some are still unavailable for viewing, but […]

Pictures by Daniel Barkley (left) and John Dugdale (right). Two exhibitions worthy of note for those in the New York area. Jan Kapera of JKK Fine Arts notified me about a new show he’s curated, Naked Bodies, Naked Souls, currently running at the Loft Gallery in the Delaware Arts Center, Narrowsburg, NY. The realm of […]

Saint Sebastian appears rather unconcerned by his wounds in this contemporary version by Yves De Brabander, part of his Ecce Homo series which reworks some recurrent themes from western art history. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The gay artists archive Previously on { feuilleton } • The art of Robert Sherer • The art […]

Yukio Mishima’s extraordinary, little-seen 28-minute film Yûkoku aka Patriotism aka Rite of Love & Death (1966) was released on DVD earlier this year via Criterion. You can also see it now on Ubuweb. Playwright and novelist Yukio Mishima foreshadowed his own violent suicide with this ravishing short feature, his only foray into filmmaking, yet made […]

Evening: Fall of Day by William Rimmer (1869–70). This curiously sexless figure is a good example of a work by an artist whose reputation may not have been as elevated as many of his contemporaries but who nonetheless created an image which speaks to future generations. Rimmer (1816–1879) was an American artist who produced a […]

Sebastian (no date). There’s more about this Spanish artist at Bajo el Signo de Libra (text in Spanish). Also some biographical details here. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The gay artists archive Previously on { feuilleton } • Saint Sebastian in NYC • Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian • The art of Takato Yamamoto • […]

The Archer & Saint Sebastian by Lubomir Tomaszewski. Saint Sebastian is an exhibition of new interpretations of the image of the pierced saint currently running at the CFM Gallery, New York, in association with JKK Fine Arts, “the Gallery of Modern Symbolism”. The show runs from May 9th to June 8th, 2008, and among the […]

Takato Yamamoto was born in Akita prefecture (Japan) in 1960. After graduating from the painting department of the Tokyo Zokei University, he experimented with the Ukiyo-e Pop style. He further refined and developed that style to create his “Heisei Esthiticism” style. His first exhibition was held in Tokyo, in 1998. There’s much that’s superficially familiar […]