{architecture} – Page 4 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 797

Bloomsbury Roofs (no date) by J. Elspeth Robertson.

• “Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge…are only offshoots of a huge central corpus of mad experimental writing, prose and poetry and just research notes. Pages and pages and pages of this lunacy.” Iain Sinclair describing to Robert Davidson the genesis of his influential poem/book Lud Heat. Related: Serious houses: The Lud Heat Tapes.

• At Criterion Current: Deeper into Robert Altman, a look at five lesser-known films from the director’s expansive filmography. Good to see Quintet receiving some attention, a science-fiction film that’s not without flaws but is still closer to the written SF of the 1970s than the decade’s box-office hits.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Short Fiction, by Charles Beaumont.

• Mix of the week: Ambient Focus 26.06.21 by Kevin Richard Martin aka The Bug.

• At the BFI: Rory Doherty chooses 10 great films set in 1970s America.

• At Colossal: Frédéric Demeuse’s photos of ancient forests.

• RIP Claudia Cardinale and Danny Thompson.

• New music: If the Sun Dies by Greg Weeks.

• The Strange World of…Rafael Toral.

• Silver Forest (1969) by Organisation | A Forest (1980) by The Cure | A Forest In The Sky (2024) by Hawksmoor

Weekend links 793

Shinagawa, Tokyo Tower (Tokaido Station 1) (1967) by Sekino Jun’ichiro.

• “The historical figures who interested [Cormac] McCarthy the most, judging by the number of books he owned about them, were Albert Einstein (114 books), Winston Churchill (88) and James Joyce (78). Architecture is the dominant subject in the collection, with 855 books. The human being whom McCarthy most admired, Dennis confirms, was Ludwig Wittgenstein. The team catalogued a staggering 142 books by or about the philosopher, with a high proportion annotated.” Richard Grant for Smithsonian Magazine reports on the cataloguing of Cormac McCarthy’s personal library.

• The Real City of the Future: a long read by Charles T. Rubin taking in William Gibson’s urban fictions and Paolo Soleri’s towering Arcologies.

• At Colossal: “Atmospheric oil paintings by Martin Wittfooth illuminate nature’s timeless cycles.”

• Old music: White Souls In Black Suits by Clock DVA, receiving its first reissue since 1990.

• At the BFI: Carmen Gray on where to begin with Sergei Parajanov.

• At Ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon: The art of Sekino Jun’ichiro.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Unica Zürn Day (restored and expanded).

• New music: Imploded Versions by The Bug vs. Ghost Dubs.

• The Strange World of…Van Morrison.

• Dev Hynes’ favourite albums.

• Carnival Of Souls (1989) by David Van Tieghem | All Souls (1989) by Opal | The Cult Of Souls (2011) by The Wounded Kings

Weekend links 791

Cover design by Marian Bantjes for a 2009 series of Nabokov reprints.

• “It is quite unlike the bland featurelessnesses of the current fiction in which dull creative writing students chat to dull creative writing students (there is today a generalised fear of imaginative invention and giving offence).” Jonathan Meades on late style and Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things.

• Cathi Unsworth remembers the late Roger K. Burton, founder of London’s unique exhibition and venue space, The Horse Hospital.

• New music: Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea by Pan American & Kramer; Glass Colored Lilly by Yuki Fujiwara.

• Mixes of the week: DreamScenes – August 2025 at Ambientblog, and Bleep Mix 307 by On-U Sound.

• At the BFI: Michael Brooke chooses 10 great Eastern European science-fiction films.

• At The Wire: David Toop and Ania Psenitsnikova on moving beyond music and dance.

• At Colossal: Weird Buildings celebrates architects who think outside the box.

• Verbal #12 includes new fiction by Michael Moorcock, among others.

• At Unquiet Things: Exquisite incantations in clay by Forest Rogers.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Experimo.

• Dale Cornish’s favourite albums.

• Tenth Letter of the Alphabet

• Ecstasy Symphony/Transparent Radiation (Flashback) (1987) by Spacemen 3 | Almost Transparent Blue (1996) by David Toop | Transparent (1997) by Reflection

Vincenzo Mazzi’s caprices

More Italian theatrical design. A few years ago I put together a collection of production sketches and paintings for scenes set inside vast prisons, a popular setting in opera and theatre during the Baroque and Romantic periods. Piranesi’s etching series, Carceri d’Invenzione, is the ultimate expression of the form, where the prints exist to show architectural invention and nothing more, but Piranesi wasn’t the first or last artist to concern himself with views like these.

Caprici di Scene Teatrali (1776) is a collection of fifteen printed plates by Vincenzo Mazzi showing suggestions for theatrical settings, several of which are prison settings. All of the scenes are distinctly Piranesian, especially the title plate which has the name of the artist and his series carved on stones inside the artwork. The prints seem to be the bulk of Mazzi’s surviving designs although a few additional examples turn up when you search around. There’s also at least one Mazzi portrait of an actor which suggests that most of the artist’s output confined itself to the theatre.

Continue reading “Vincenzo Mazzi’s caprices”

Weekend links 785

A 1933 poster for the second of Fritz Lang’s Mabuse films.

• Good news for those who missed the original run (from 2002–2013), Arthur Magazine is now available for the first time as a complete set of free PDFs. I was laterally involved with the magazine from the outset, mostly as a remote supporter, but I also did several covers and interior illustrations for the early issues.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler by Norbert Jacques (translated by Lilian A. Clare); and two books by J. Sheridan Le Fanu: Short Fiction, and a novella, The Room in the Dragon Volant.

• New music: Spilla by Ensemble Nist-Nah; and Sea-swallowed Wands by Jolanda Moletta and Karen Vogt.

With his compulsions for systems and architecture, his command of shadows and symbolism-imbued sets and props, Lang is never less than arresting. Yet few of the films make complete statements; Lang’s art, in this period, is seemingly as much a fugitive as are his archetypal characters. That is, until the moment that his long journey to the direct subject matter and cultural framework of the 1950s United States, addressed in the terms and by the means available to him in Hollywood, abruptly comes to superb fruition with The Big Heat.

Jonathan Lethem on Fritz Lang in Hollywood and one of the greatest noir pictures of the 1950s

• This week in the Bumper Book of Magic: an enthusiastic review at The Joey Zone. My thanks to Mr Shea!

• Mixes of the week: A mix for The Wire by Nina Garcia; and Isolated Mix 133 by Pentagrams Of Discordia.

• At Colossal: David Romero’s digital recreations of Frank Lloyd Wright’s unrealised buildings.

• At Smithsonian magazine: John Last investigates the history of the Tarot.

• At Planet Paul: An interview with artist Malcolm Ashman.

• At the Daily Heller: A porno gag mag with attitude.

• Hodgsonia

• Das Testaments Des Mabuse (1984) by Propaganda | (The Ninth Life Of…) Dr Mabuse (1984) by Propaganda | Abuse (Here) (1985) by Propaganda