Weekend links 44

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Poster by Will Bradley for Victor Bicycles (c. 1895).

• G. Wayne Clough, chief exective of the Smithsonian Institution, finally admits that he made a hasty decision in removing David Wojnarowicz’s video from the Hide/Seek exhibition of gay art. Related: “Finland’s cultural gifts to the world include Sibelius, the Moomins and an artist that the country has been less eager to celebrate.” The belated homecoming of Tom of Finland.

The Fiend with Twenty Faces: Jonathan Clements examines the legacy of Edogawa Rampo (Hirai Taro), the Japanese master of mystery and imagination.

• RIP Susannah York. The Guardian posted a selection of clips including one from Robert Altman’s Images (1972).

• More mixtapes: Trish Keenan’s Mind Bending Motorway Mix and a selection for Quietus by Chris & Cosey.

• “Ruin photos speak to our desperate desire to have our world re-enchanted.”

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Promo poster by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat for My White Bicycle by Tomorrow (1967).

The Raging Peloton: Iain Sinclair on two wheels good, four wheels bad.

The unknown Jorge Luis Borges: five new anthologies reviewed.

The French house untouched for 100 years (and also here).

Electrotypes on Drugs: old chemists’ labels.

South China Sea Pishkun by Dinh Q. Lê.

Bike (1967) by Pink Floyd | My White Bicycle (1967) by Tomorrow | Trip On An Orange Bicycle (1968) by Orange Bicycle.

Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #4

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Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. There isn’t a volume 3 in the Internet Archive collection, hence the jump in the series to volume 4 which covers the period from April–September 1899. This edition features a few more familiar names beginning with artist and illustrator Heinrich Vogeler whose illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde stories was featured here last year. Vogeler’s work isn’t always to my taste although I liked his Wilde drawings; the Tod und Alte piece above is an exception to his usual work of this period rather than the rule. Elsewhere there’s a feature on the graphic designs of Paul Bürck, a profile of Dutch Symbolist Jan Toorop and a report on the Dresden art exhibition of 1899 which includes an array of beautiful Art Nouveau interiors. As with all such idealised exhibition displays, they point the way to a future that was never to be.

More DK&D next week.

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Continue reading “Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #4”

Weekend links 43

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From the video for I See, So I See So by Broadcast.

RIP Trish Keenan of Broadcast. Tributes here and here. The Broadcast/Focus Group collaboration …investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was The Wire‘s album of the year for 2009. Joseph Stannard interviewed Trish Keenan and James Cargill in October of that year.

Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring, a new pay-what-you-please Arthur mixtape. Also at Arthur, Sunday Lectures by Freeman House here, here, here and here.

• Cormac McCarthy’s description of American pioneers in Suttree (1979) kept coming to mind during the past week:

Where hunters and woodcutters once slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, old teutonic forebears with eyes incandesced by the visionary light of a massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parables therein and mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark’s total restitution could appease.

Born This Way: “A photo/essay project for gay viewers (male and female) to submit pictures from their childhood (roughly ages 4 to 14), with snapshots that capture them, innocently, showing the beginnings of their innate LGBT selves. It’s nature, not nurture!”

Mischievous street art characters. Chris Marker wouldn’t want us to forget Monsieur Chat. Speaking of Chris Marker, there’s Plato’s Cave as Kino: Owl’s Legacy Excerpt & Becoming Imperceptible.

With the point of a knife Dr. LeBaron took from the little round box a small quantity of a dark, greenish-colored gum, which, as it was passed from one to another for inspection, gave off an agreeable, aromatic odor. Then, as he was engaged in filling two capsules from the box, he explained:

“As le docteur read from ze book of Monsieur Richet, ze favoreet méthode in ze Orient ees to take ze Haschisch by ze smoke in ze Persian pipe—ze hookah, ze nargileh. But zey also take eet in ze great varieté. Ze principal kind zat come to ze market of Europe, ees zat I show you—ze Haschisch, an’ ve take eet like ze dose of quinine,” said he, as he handed a well-filled capsule to both Smith and Arnold.

Throwing back his head, Smith bolted his dose without ceremony, and Arnold immediately followed his example.

Haschisch: A Novel (1886) by Thorold King. Related: Haschisch Hallucinations (1905) by HE Gowers.

• Dan Hill’s personal report from the drowned world of Brisbane. Related: Hayley Campbell recalls swimming in the city’s hazardous floodwaters when she was a wild child. Also: Canoeing in McDonald’s.

Cabinet Card Backmarks, florid advertisements from Victorian cabinet photos. Callum James made a post on the subject in 2008 and has a Flickr set showing his discoveries.

• The Brothers Quay made a public information film about AIDS in 1996. (Now deleted from YouTube…boo!)

The secret stories of book inscriptions. Related: The Book Inscriptions Project.

• Ani, Turkey: City of 1001 Churches, all of them abandoned and ruined.

Vulgar Army: Octopus in Propaganda and Political Cartoons.

• Designer John Gall makes collages in his spare time.

Phantasmaphile at Tumblr.

Witch Cults and I See, So I See So, both by Broadcast & The Focus Group.

Arcades panoramas

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Norwich Royal Arcade.

More arcades and more panoramas from that favourite haunt of mine, 360 Cities. The Norwich Royal Arcade is an Art Nouveau-styled affair by George Skipper which features the inevitable coffee shop among its offerings. The Milan Galleria, meanwhile, is probably the most ostentatious arcade in the world but its expensive fashion houses have to deal with a McDonald’s in their midst. 360 Cities regularly updates its views so this may become an ongoing series.

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Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan.

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Galerie de la Reine/Koninginnegallerij, Brussels.

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Arcades