Weekend links 812

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• RIP Béla Tarr. I came late to Tarr’s films, he’d retired from directing by the time I worked my way through most of his oeuvre in 2019. As I’m always saying: better late than never. What I never expected from reading reviews was the irreducible strangeness at the heart of the later films, as well as their meticulous construction. With regard to the latter, mention should be made of the director’s regular collaborators: Ágnes Hranitzky (wife, editor and co-director), László Krasznahorkai (writer), and Mihály Víg (composer).

More Tarr: “The whole fucking storytelling thing is everywhere the same. That’s why I decided I have to do my movies.” Tarr talking to R. Emmet Sweeney in 2012; and at Criterion, Béla Tarr: Lamentation and Laughter by David Hudson.

• “When [Fela Kuti] first saw Lemi Ghariokwu’s work, he said, ‘Wow!’ Then he plied him with marijuana and asked him to design his album sleeves. The artist recalls their extraordinary partnership – and the day Kuti’s Lagos HQ burned.”

• At Smithsonan Mag: “Hundreds of mysterious Victorian-era shoes are washing up on a beach in Wales. Nobody knows where they came from.”

• At Ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon: The collage art of Wilfried Sätty.

• At the BFI: Leigh Singer selects 10 great Lynchian films.

• At Unquiet Things: The vast luminous art of Andy Kehoe.

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s another Jan Švankmajer Day.

• New music: Light Self All Others by Tarotplane.

• At I Love Typography: Heart-shaped books.

• At Colossal: Luftwerk.

• Sailin’ Shoes (1972) by Van Dyke Parks | Dead Man’s Shoes (1985) by Cabaret Voltaire | New Shoes (2007) by Angelo Badalamenti.

Thirteen views of snow

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Lingering Snow at Asukayama, from the series Eight Views of the Environs of Edo (1837–38) by Utagawa Hiroshige.

We’ve had one of our mild falls of snow this week, hence the subject. Snow is a very common theme in Japanese prints, a part of the cultural interest in all the different aspects of the yearly seasons. There are many more examples out there.

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Mountains and Rivers of Kiso (1857) by Utagawa Hiroshige.

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Plovers Flying Across a River above Snow-Laden Reeds, from the series Worlds of Things (1909–10) by Kamisaka Sekka.

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Snowy Ravine at Harinoki, from the series Twelve Scenes in the Japan Alps (1926) by Hiroshi Yoshida.

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Snow at Shiba Park, Tokyo (1930) by Kawase Hasui.

Continue reading “Thirteen views of snow”

Weekend links 811

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A still from The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), a feature-length animated film by Lotte Reiniger.

Hélice 39 is a speculative-fiction journal (in Spanish) whose current issue includes an article by Marcelo Sanchez: “What did Borges think of Lovecraft?”

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.

• Old music: Hydrophony For Dagon by Max Eastley & Michael Prime; The Adventures Of Prince Achmed by Morricone Youth.

Public Domain Review lists some of the writers whose works will enter the public domain this year.

• “Modern Japanese Printmakers celebrates vibrant mid-20th-century innovation“.

• At Nautilus: “Here’s what’s happening in the brain when you’re improvising.”

• At the BFI: Pamela Hutchinson selects 10 great films of 1926.

• New music: The Future Is Now by Pietro Zollo.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Phil Solomon Day.

• 2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse.

Runaway Horses (“poetry written with a splash of blood”) (1985) by Philip Glass | Unicorns Were Horses (1996) by New Kingdom | Red Horse (2002) by Jack Rose

02026

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The Basket of Bread (1926) by Salvador Dalí.

Happy new year. 02026? An affectation via the Long Now.

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The Cello Player (1926) by Edwin Dickinson.

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Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926) by Otto Dix.

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The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Eluard and the Artist (1926) by Max Ernst.

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The Musician’s Table (1926) by Juan Gris.

Continue reading “02026”

The art of Benvenuto Disertori (1887–1969)

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L’arco di Tito (1918).

Benvenuto Disertori was an Italian artist with a parallel career as a musicologist. I forget how his prints came to my attention but they’re just the kind of thing I like to see: meticulous monochrome views with an emphasis on architecture and eroded mineral surfaces. Some printmakers tend to concentrate on a single medium—wood engraving, for example—but Disertori embraced a wide range of etching and engraving techniques. Once again, the influence of Piranesi is discernible in some of these views (another point in their favour), especially those that depict Roman ruins or older Italian buildings like the medieval towers in San Gimignano.

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Il Pensatore (1909).

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L’edera (1911–13).

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Gubbio. La Campanella di S. Giovanni Battista (1912-13).

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La Nicchia (1913).

Continue reading “The art of Benvenuto Disertori (1887–1969)”