{art} – Page 301 – { feuilleton }

The Hell Courtesan

The Enlightenment of Jigoku-dayu (1890) from the series New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

Jigoku-dayu of Takasu was a courtesan adopted by the Zen Priest Ikkyu (1394–1481), who converted her to a religious life and gave her a literary education. She is seated in meditation with a ghostly vision of a procession of the skeletons of a courtesan and her entourage, thus showing her the impermanence of life.

Jigoku-dayu is portrayed here as a high-ranking courtesan. Her white robe is embossed with fine key patterns and her outer robe is decorated with the Goddess of Mercy on the front and at the back with scenes of hell. Her name consists of Jigoku (hell), a term for the lowest form of unlicensed prostitute and dayu (respect) for a courtesan of the highest rank. (via)

See also Junko Mizuno‘s contemporary drawings of Jigoku-dayu.

Jigoku-dayu (date?) by Kawanabe Kyosai.

Jigoku-dayu (another version) by Kawanabe Kyosai.

Continue reading “The Hell Courtesan”

The art of Léon Spilliaert, 1881–1946

Self-portrait (1907).

Yesterday’s post gives me an excuse to draw further attention to Belgian Symbolist Léon Spilliaert, an artist whose gloomy and mysterious early style is easy to recognise once you’ve seen a couple of his pictures. Spilliaert grew up in Ostend so the Belgian coast dominates his pastels which renounce sunlit beach scenes in favour of windswept vistas. The Impressionists flocked to the coast to paint fluffy clouds and waves and parasols; Spilliaert gives us monochrome shades and oppressively empty views.

One of my books says Spilliaert suffered from insomnia which may explain his fondness for nocturnal scenes. But when you see the self-portraits where he looks less like a human being and more like a refugee from a film by the Brothers Quay you can assume a predilection for the dark. Later Spilliaert pictures are brighter and more representative of the seaside actuality but it’s the gloomy and mysterious fare for which he’s remembered today.

Dyke and Beach (1907).

Dyke at Night (1908).

Vertigo (1908).

The Night (1908).

Continue reading “The art of Léon Spilliaert, 1881–1946”

Dunes

Sand Dunes near Boulogne-sur-Mer, France (c. 1870) by Joséphine Bowes.

Dunes. Having visited the sand dunes that run along the French and Belgian coast it’s notable how much dune art has taken them as a subject. Belgian Symbolist Léon Spilliaert returned to them frequently, and managed to invest the littoral with a greater sense of mystery than many of his contemporaries.

Dune Landscape (1911) by Piet Mondrian.

Girls on a Dune (1913) by Léon Spilliaert.

Dunes, Oceano (1936) by Edward Weston.

Dune (1961) by Alexander MacKenzie.

Pale Dunes (1970) by Ronnie Landfield.

Weekend links 214

San Francisco Sound (1967). Art by Wallace Studio, Seattle.

• RIP gay porn pioneer Peter de Rome. BUTT posted de Rome’s surprisingly daring Underground (1972), a film in which two men have an unfaked sexual encounter on a New York subway train. That film and others are available on the BFI’s DVD collection. Related: Brian Robinson remembers a director of films whose supporters included Andy Warhol, William Burroughs and John Gielgud.

• “My stuff is implicitly critical of television as it is now,” explains Jonathan [Meades], “Television used not to be as openly moronic as it has become…” A lengthy and typically pugnacious Meades interview with Remy Dean.

• Thurston Moore remembers the Burroughs-themed Nova Convention staged in New York in 1978. William Burroughs 100—Nova Convention is a retrospective exhibition running at Red Gallery, London, next month.

How are we expected to take seriously…any work which appears to have engaged less than the whole passionate attention of its author? To be fobbed off, at the last, with something which we feel to be less true than the author knew it to be, challenges the importance of the whole art of writing, and instead of enlarging the bounds of our experience, it leaves them where they are.

Katherine Mansfield was also a book reviewer.

• JG Ballard’s Crash is reissued in August by Fourth Estate with an introduction by Zadie Smith. There’s a tantalising extract from the intro at the NYRB or you can read the whole thing if you’re a subscriber.

• “Between 1959 & 1980 Shirley Collins changed the course of folk music in England & America. Thirty years after disappearing, she’s back.”

• Photos by Anne Billson of one of the more attractive Parisian arcades. Related (in a flâneur sense): Christina Scholz‘s Vancouver dérive.

• “Why did Borges hate soccer?” asks Shaj Matthew. Related: George Orwell on the same subject.

• Mixes of the week: FACT mix 447 by Forest Swords, and Programme 13 from Radio Belbury.

• At Dangerous Minds: Roland Topor’s cheerfully violent illustrations from Les Masochistes.

• Rainy Day Psychedelia: Ben Marks on Seattle’s neglected 1960s poster scene.

• Strange Flowers looks at Oskar Schlemmer‘s Triadic Ballet designs.

• A Journey to Avebury: Stewart Lee interviews Julian Cope.

• It’s All Over Now (1963) by The Valentinos featuring Bobby Womack | It’s All Over Now (1964) by The Rolling Stones | It’s All Over Now (1974) by Ry Cooder

Weekend links 213

No Tears for the Creatures of the Night (2005) by Will Munro.

• Steve Barker’s On The Wire show on BBC Radio Lancashire is one of the longest-running music shows on British radio but it’s not broadcast in London so you seldom hear it mentioned at all. (It’s also the only radio show I’ve appeared on, oddly enough.) Some of Barker’s shows, which predominantly feature dub and reggae artists, can now be heard at Mixcloud.

• “As protagonist after protagonist is undone by temptation and lust, one can’t help but divine a sinister double entendre in the book’s title – something nocturnal and obscene.” James Lovegrove on the reissue of Robert Aickman’s 1964 collection of “strange stories”, Dark Entries.

• Coil vs. Kenny Loggins sounds like no contest, and so it proved in 1988 at the Mike Tyson/Michael Spinks fight. There’s another surprising connection between Tyson and Industrial culture with the poster that Neville Brody designed for the boxer’s Tokyo bout.

• Ventriloquism: Unheimlich manoeuvres: Sarah Angliss (who performs as Spacedog) on the history of ventriloquist dummies. With a bonus appearance from the great Ray Alan and Lord Charles. Related: the Vent Haven Museum.

• I’ve been wanting to read Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu for years but always hesitate over which translation to choose. As Leland de la Durantaye shows, the arguments about translating Proust into English are still unresolved.

• Music For A Good Home 3: a collection of 31 rare or unique tracks by a variety of artists including Belbury Poly, Pye Corner Audio, and Grumbling Fur. All proceeds go to Shelter.

• David Cronenberg – The Exhibition is running throughout the summer at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam showing props and other materials from the director’s films.

• “’I’m in pictures,’ John Wayne explained when Nabokov cordially inquired about his line of work.” Blake Bailey on Vladimir Nabokov’s unpublished Lolita screenplay notes.

• Original artwork for the Linweave Tarot (1967) at Sweet Jane’s Pop Boutique. As noted before, the full set of cards is probably the grooviest ever created.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 118 by Ensemble Economique, and a Wyrd Daze Solstice mix from The Ephemeral Man.

• At One With Chaos & Abandonment: The Irrepressibles’ Jamie McDermott talks to Joseph Burnett about his music.

• From the Zodiacal Light, a new track from Earth with vocals by Rabia Shaheen Qazi.

• The Ultimate Chinatown Filming Location Map of Los Angeles.

• Tuxedomoon at Pinterest.

• Dark Companion (1980) by Tuxedomoon | Dark River (1990) by Coil | Dark Turn Of Mind (2011) by Gillian Welch