January 2016 – Page 3 – { feuilleton }

The Song of the White Horse by David Bedford

Many of the old TV documentaries I link to are ones I saw when first broadcast and wanted to see again, but this edition of the BBC’s Omnibus from 1978 is one I missed. The late David Bedford is a familiar name in British music: in the 1970s he was as much known for his orchestral arrangements for Kevin Ayers, Roy Harper, Mike Oldfield, et al as for his own album-length compositions. The Omnibus film concentrates on the composition and performance of a new Bedford piece inspired by the ancient earthwork known as the White Horse of Uffington.

The first half of the film has Bedford visiting the White Horse and nearby Wayland’s Smithy before returning to his studio where he shows the film crew some of his electronic gear. Later we get to see Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine helping create an electronic equivalent of the sound made by the Blowing Stone. The second half of the film has a complete performance of Bedford’s piece which takes its libretto from The Ballad of the White Horse by GK Chesterton. The sound quality doesn’t do the composition any favours at all but Bedford did record the piece in 1983 for Mike Oldfield’s label.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Hill figures

The art of Frantisek Kobliha, 1877–1962

Untitled.

Another unfamiliar name, Frantisek Kobliha was a Czech Symbolist whose output includes a great deal of monochrome work in a variety of media: woodcuts, lithographs and the like. This may explain why he doesn’t make the larger Symbolist studies despite the quality of his work. Among his series of prints there’s that Symbolist perennial, the Temptation of St Anthony.

These examples may be found at larger size here (slow to load but many pages) and here. Thanks to Thom for the tip!

Untitled.

May (1911).

Continue reading “The art of Frantisek Kobliha, 1877–1962”

The art of Willem Arondeus, 1894–1943

Salomé (1916). “Your eyes are like black holes burned by torches in a Tyrian tapestry.”

This marvellous Salomé design is by a Dutch artist I hadn’t heard of before, Willem Arondeus, who might have had a longer career had his life not been cut short by a Nazi firing squad in 1943. Arondeus helped with the Dutch Resistance during the war, forging papers for fleeing Jews, and bombing the Amsterdam Public Records Office. His work warrants a place in the ever-popular gay artists archive not for any homoerotic qualities but because Arondeus was open about his homosexuality for his entire life, his last message to the world being “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.” The work that can be seen online is in that hybrid style that you see a lot from the 1920s on, a blending of the prevalent Art Deco manner with some hangover from the Art Nouveau period. The Salomé piece is particularly good for the way it entangles Salomé’s figure in writhing foliage and clustered architecture.

De Elfenzetel (1919).

Stamp advert (1923).

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Pierrot in Turquoise, or The Looking Glass Murders

A final Bowie post included here as much for its connections to Derek Jarman. Pierrot in Turquoise was a pantomime by Lindsay Kemp based on the characters of the Commedia dell’arte, and broadcast by Scottish Television in 1970. David Bowie is “Cloud”, a non-commedia character who provides songs while perched atop a step-ladder. The smaller independent TV stations like Scottish often used to fill out their end-of-day programming with oddities such as this, the kind of thing that would have been screened once to a bewildered audience then forgotten.

Kemp’s production reverses some of the commedia traditions by having his Pierrot challenge Jack Birkett’s Harlequin, the exchange of roles taking place after a Cocteau-like journey through a mirror. Pierrot lacks a hat but otherwise his costume resembles the one that Bowie wore in the Ashes to Ashes video. Two years and a gulf of reinvention separate this little pantomime from Kemp and Bowie’s next encounter in Mick Rock’s video for John, I’m Only Dancing, a film the BBC found too weird and/or queer, and refused to show.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Flowers: A Pantomime for Jean Genet
• Lindsay Kemp’s Salomé again

Weekend links 292

The Black Sun from Splendor Solis (1582) “attributed to the legendary figure Salomon Trismosin”.

Topic B predominates this week. The Black Sun of alchemy was the first thing I thought of when the title of David Bowie’s final album was announced late last year. The Black Sun symbolises the nigredo stage of the alchemical process when putrefaction or decomposition takes place; Carl Jung in Psychology and Alchemy equates the nigredo with the dark night of the soul. At the time I didn’t seriously think that the Bowie of 2015 would have had this in mind as a primary reference even though the Bowie of the early 1970s was immersed in Golden Dawn occultism, the Kabbalah, and a reader of Pauwels & Bergier’s The Morning of the Magicians, a book that informs the lyrics of the Hunky Dory album, and which contains a great deal of discussion about alchemy and other esoteric matters. And yet… Of all the outfits that Bowie might have worn in his final video the one that he chose for Lazarus is a match for the one he wore during the Station To Station Kabbalah-drawing photo session. At Sol Ascendans Alex Sumner and his commenters explored this twilight zone.

Back in the sublunary world, Jonathan Barnbrook’s cut-out sleeve design for the Blackstar album gained additional resonance this week: the black star as the hole that’s left when a more familiar star has been removed from its setting. Hindsight also makes poignant the observation that this was the only album without a picture of the artist on the cover. Elsewhere there were speculations about the title being a reference to Black Star by Elvis Presley (who shared a birthday with Bowie) or a term from oncology, two suggestions that fit so well they’re hard to ignore.

He began to develop a science fiction sensibility, drawing on the New Wave SF movement of Michael Moorcock and JG Ballard, other writers who used the genre such as Anthony Burgess and William S Burroughs, and an older fantasy tradition found in HP Lovecraft and Edward Bulwer-Lytton (whose The Coming Race is name-checked in Oh! You Pretty Things, 1971).

Jake Arnott on David Bowie’s literary influences

• In something-else-also-happened-this-week news, 2016 may see the long-awaited release of Andrei Tarkovsky’s films on Region B Blu-ray. Fingers crossed.

• International posters for The Man Who Fell To Earth. More Nicolas Roeg (and more shiny discs): Eureka (1983) will receive a Blu-ray release in March.

• Cracking the codes of Leena Krohn: Peter Bebergal on the Finnish writer of strange stories.

• Anthems for the Moon: Jason Heller examines David Bowie’s connections to science fiction.

• From 2013: Jon Savage on Bowie’s first meeting with William Burroughs in 1974.

• Mixes of the week: Bowie-esque Vol 1 and Bowie-esque Vol 2 by Abigail Ward.

• David Bowie Doing Shit: a Tumblr

• “Heroes” (1978) by Blondie & Robert Fripp | “Heroes” (2003) by King Crimson | “Helden” (2007) by Apocalyptica ft. Till Lindemann