{architecture} – Page 62

Weekend links 237

Le Palais des Merveilles, 1907 – 1927 – 1960 by Clovis Trouille.

• “Why is it OK to show a male ejaculation but not a female one? What are the qualifications of those who cobble together these rules?” Suzanne Moore on the latest batch of discriminatory restrictions against porn production in the UK. Porn laws in Britain have long been like the drug laws, sprouting fresh Hydra-heads of unwarranted bans and crackdowns after the previous bans and crackdowns have been discredited. Last month Zoe Williams talked to women who make niche porn for other women. This week she discovered that some of those she interviewed now find their work is illegal under the latest restrictions.

• “[Derek Jarman] considered In the Shadow of the Sun to be just as important as any of the feature films that he made in the 1970s.” Film producer and archivist James Mackay talking to Beatrix Rux about Derek Jarman’s Super-8 films. Related: Tilda Swinton is GQ’s Woman of the Year.

• The Art of Big O by Michael Fishel (author) and Nigel Suckling (editor), a collection of the fantastic and psychedelic poster art published by Peter Ledeboer’s company in the 1970s. Good to see but at $67 (really?) I’d expect a better cover design.

• New electronica: More “confusing English electronic music” from Moon Wiring Club; Shut-Eyed Stories, an album by Jim Cheff; and Shapwick by Jon Brooks, previously vinyl-only and out-of-print, now has a digital edition.

• JK Potter Mutates the Story: Christopher Burke & David Davis talk to the horror illustrator about his photographic work.

• Beth Maiden on The Fascinating Life of Pamela Colman Smith, artist of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck.

• Under the Influence: The Sexy, Sordid Surrealism of Clovis Trouille by Kirsten Anderson.

• Geoff Manaugh on The Fiery Underground Oil Pit Eating LA.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 137 by Teste.

• The Wild Horny Goat

• The Young People (2010) by Belbury Poly & Moon Wiring Club | Goat Foot (2012) by Belbury Poly | Walking Through Me (2014) by Moon Wiring Club

Weekend links 235

Shadows (1974) by Pawel Nolbert & Lukasz Murgrabia, one of three images recreating Francis Bacon’s Triptych–August 1972.

• Breaking the Code (1996), a BBC film by Herbert Wise based on Hugh Whitemore’s stage play about Alan Turing. Wise’s film has been linked here before but it’s relevant again thanks to the release of The Imitation Game. Derek Jacobi played Turing on stage and screen, and Whitemore’s script managed to deal with Turing’s life and work without insulting the man or the intelligence of its audience.

• “…if you listen to A Beacon From Mars by Kaleidoscope or if you listen to some Turkish taxim then something starts happening.” Robert Plant talking to Julian Marszalek about the music that excites him.

• “CGI has become wearingly dull and clichéd. Can its deep weirdness be recovered and filmgoers’ minds stretched again?” asks Jonathan Romney.

The cult of the Thirty-Seven Nats is unique to Burma. […] The junta’s attempts to subdue nat worship had an unintended effect: the role of the nat wife was embraced by an already marginalized group. Homosexuality is illegal in Burma and has been since its British colonizers instituted a late-nineteenth-century ban on “intercourse against the order of nature”. Government restrictions opened a professional vacuum, says scholar Tamara C. Ho. Becoming a nat kadaw offered the achauk—a Burmese term for gay and transgender men—both “a vocation and queer visibility”.

After the Green Death by Will Boast

• “Cat memes and other frivolities aren’t the work of an Internet culture. They’re the work of an American one, ” says Caitlin Dewey.

• Hear the cavernous reverb of Berlin’s Kraftwerk captured by Emptyset’s James Ginzburg and Yair Elazar Glotman.

• Take part in the first #psychedelicpride photoshoot in central London on Saturday, December 13th.

• Mix of the week: FACT Mix 470 by Jonny Trunk who also appears in the list of vinyl hoarders below.

• Queer Noise: Abigail Ward on the history of LGB music and club culture in Manchester.

• More photos of the steampunk exhibition at 751 D-Park, Beijing, China.

• A chronological list of synth scores & soundtracks.

• Animated photography by Julien Douvier.

• A Third Ear Band archive at SoundCloud.

• The secret lives of vinyl hoarders.

• Taxim (1968) by Kaleidoscope | Water (1970) by Third Ear Band | Love Is The Devil (1998) by Ryuichi Sakamoto

Steampunk in the Tank

Plague doctor mask by Tom Banwell.

Last month I wrote a little about the Steampunk: Art of Victorian Futurism exhibition that’s been running since the beginning of October in Beijing, this being the same event that was staged in Seoul earlier in the year. Five of my book cover designs have been featured in these shows, together with some very impressive artworks, designs and constructions by international artists. This week the organisers of the show, Artcenter IDA, sent their own photos of the event.

Locomotive Square.

As mentioned before, the venue is an exhibition space in 751 D-Park outside central Beijing, an area I’ve been told was formerly an industrial complex manufacturing armaments during the Cold War. If we occasionally find that life these days imitates the fictions of JG Ballard or Philip K Dick, 751 D-Park strikes me as a very William Gibson kind of place: Cold War industrial complex transmuted into an international art space—Beijing Design Week is hosted here each year—that on this occasion is showcasing antique science fiction. The 751 website has a map of the area with links to photos and other information. I’m rather taken with “Crached Furnace Square” and “Locomotive Square“.

Continue reading “Steampunk in the Tank”

Valette’s steam and smoke

Windsor Bridge on the Irwell (1909).

Adolphe Valette (1876–1942) was a contemporary of Lionel Walden, and where Walden was an American who spent some time painting views of Cardiff, Valette moved to Manchester in 1905 where he painted a series of celebrated views of the city. If it’s a commonplace that foreign eyes often see what locals ignore, this has certainly been the case in Manchester. Friedrich Engels catalogued the lethal living and working conditions of the city’s labourers in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845, and it took Valette to find a subject for his art in the city’s smogs and polluted atmospheres at a time when many British artists were still painting scenes from Tennyson or the tales of King Arthur.

India House, Manchester (1912).

Valette’s Manchester paintings now reside in the Manchester Art Gallery whose curators have always made much of his being “the Manchester Impressionist”. The term isn’t unjustified even though Impressionism was long gone by the time he began these paintings; there is something Monet-like to a few of them. The gallery contains a large amount of fairly typical Victorian art, including a couple of well-known Pre-Raphaelite pieces, so Valette’s work has always stood apart not only for its urban theme but for its looser technique. My favourite is the view of India House from the banks of the River Medlock. Many of the bridges and buildings in these paintings can be seen today, albeit cleaned and (in the case of India House) gentrified. Valette captures the final years of unrestrained industrial pollution when the air in Manchester, London and other cities was often as bad as it is in some parts of China today.

Bailey Bridge, Manchester (1912).

Continue reading “Valette’s steam and smoke”

The art of Fabrizio Clerici, 1913–1993

Un istante dopo (1978).

An Italian painter of the fantastic who’s managed to stay off my radar for one reason or another despite doing many of the things I like to see: weightless structures, imaginary architecture, and (towards the end of his career) a series of variations on Arnold Böcklin’s endlessly adaptable The Isle of the Dead. The latter paintings are some of the best Böcklin variants I’ve seen. These alone would have made him worthy of attention but the rest of his oeuvre is an equally accomplished development of late Surrealism (or, if you need another category, Fantastic Realism). The official website is a very good one so there’s plenty more to see. (Thanks to Michelangelo for the tip!)

La tromba d’aria (1965).

Latitudine Böcklin (1974).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A Picture to Dream Over: The Isle of the Dead
• The Isle of the Dead in detail
• Arnold Böcklin and The Isle of the Dead