{painting} – Page 11 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 768

The Mona Lisa as it looks run through the Random Pixelate setting in Glitch Lab.

• “We don’t have enough Dada in this world of too much data. Something is needed to break-through the over-curated simulacrum that is the online world in order to let in a bit of non-artificial light. One way to make a break is through the deliberate cultivation of the glitch.” Justin Patrick Moore on circuit-bending, glitch music and Surrealist composition.

• The seventh installment of Smoky Man’s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi). There’s an extract in English at Alan Moore World.

• New music: Remember The Clouds by Philippe Deschamp, and Requiem For The Ontario Science Centre by Tony Price.

• Michael Brooke offers suggestions for where to begin with Polish film director Wojciech Has

• At Printmag: A new book shares the artistic odyssey of Iranian designer Farshid Mesghali.

• The Letraset Graphic Materials Handbook for the year 1987.

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

• Yet more Polish film posters.

• A cat’s eye view of Japan.

• RIP Roy Ayers.

• Glitch (1993) by Moody Boyz | Glitch (1994) by Autechre | Glitch (2011) by Brian Eno And The Words Of Rick Holland

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An Ideal Life (1950) by Leonor Fini.

• “…there has not been anything like a general, systematic discussion of what other, semantically different kinds of languages there can be, and the philosophical consequences of this. If reality has a certain structure, it would be a miracle if familiar languages contain all the resources to capture this structure.” Matti Eklund on the potential nature of alien languages.

• “As cats evolved from feral ratters into beloved Victorian companions, a nascent pet-food economy arose on the carts of so-called ‘cat’s meat men’. Kathryn Hughes explores the life and times of these itinerant offal vendors, their intersection with a victim of Jack the Ripper, and a feast held in the meat men’s honour, chaired by none other than Louis Wain.”

• Kinoteka, the UK’s Polish Film Festival, revealed its 2025 programme this week. Among the events will be a screening of the new Quay Brothers film, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (extract), at BFI Imax in London. Also in London (and with free entry), Swedenborg House will be hosting an exhibition of the Quays’ film decors.

• In a recent comment here I said that some of Charles Williams’ metaphysical novels were like John Buchan thrillers with an occult twist. At Wormwoodiana G. Connor Salter investigates the possible connections between the two writers.

• Alice Coltrane & Carlos Santana, 1974: Lossless downloads of previously unissued recordings from the Illuminations album and a live set with John McLaughlin at San Francisco’s Kabuki Theater.

• “‘The Köln Concert is the hit he wants to disown’: why Keith Jarrett shunned two new films about his unlikely masterpiece.”

• New music: Shards by Tim Hecker; and Some Other Morning by Memory Effect.

• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – February 2025 at Ambientblog.

• At Colossal: Outdoor light installations by Lachlan Turczan.

• Galerie Dennis Cooper presents…Paul Laffoley.

• Cat’s Eye (1977) by Van Der Graaf | Cat’s Eye (2015) by Patrick Cowley | No Cat’s Eyes (2017) by The Belbury Circle

Weekend links 763

I Live in Shock (1955) by Mimi Parent.

• At Public Domain Review: “Ben Hecht’s Fantazius Mallare (1922) is at turns obtuse, grotesque, and moralizing—and sought to provoke the obscenity trial of the century. Only it didn’t, quietly vanishing instead. Colin Dickey rereads this failed satire, finding a transcendent rhythm pulsing beneath the novel’s indulgent prose.”

• “There are no surprises when a pallet of CDs arrives at my office, but when a pressing plant alerts me to a shipment of records headed my way I start to worry.” John Brien, head of Important Records, on the problems involved in the manufacture of vinyl albums.

• The sixth installment of Smoky Man’s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi).

They were building a vast alternative religion with a lack of dictates but no shortage of rituals and icons. They’d pass through the end of the world to get there first; the next album was based on a vision of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse slaughtering their animals and constructing a earth-gouging machine from their jawbones, demonstrating they weren’t quite intending to settle down yet. It would take them far from mainstream culture, and indeed mainstream gay culture given their repeated disdain for sanitised queerness, and into enigmatic territory. Having scared away most fans of synth pop and industrial with provocation, and the weak and tyrannical with ambiguity, they were unencumbered and “allowed to mature in the dark”, sustained by a cult following (you rarely encounter a tepid fan of Coil, most are acolytes).

Darran Anderson looking back at Coil’s debut album, Scatology

• At Smithsonian Magazine: See 15 winning images from the Close-Up Photographer of the Year Competition.

• At The Daily Heller: How did pink become a colour? Meanwhile, Steven Heller’s font of the month is Vibro.

• New music: Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds by Lawrence English.

• SciURLs: A science news aggregator.

• Shackleton’s favourite albums.

• RIP Marianne Faithfull.

• The Pink Panther Theme (1963) by Henry Mancini | The Pink Room (1988) by Seigen Ono | Pink (2005) by Boris

Sabin Balasa animations

The Drop (1966).

Changing the appearance of a painting frame by frame is one of the techniques available to animators but you don’t usually see artists working in this manner as offshoots of their gallery careers. Sabin Balasa (1932–2008) was a Romanian artist who created a number of short films from 1966 to 1979, all of which are animated equivalents of the paintings he was producing at the time.

The City (1967).

Having discovered these in a week when I’ve been rewatching all of David Lynch’s films there’s a notable similarity between Balasa’s first film, The Drop, and the animated sections of Lynch’s The Grandmother (1969). This isn’t to suggest that there’s any influence at work, the similarities are more a consequence of both artists painting bold shapes on black backgrounds. Where Lynch’s film was soundtracked by disquieting combinations of organ drone and various noises, Balasa uses dissonant orchestral music which creates equally disturbing moods. None of the music is credited, these soundtracks appear to be collages of pre-existing recordings.

The Phoenix Bird (1968).

The Wave (1968).

Fascinations (1969).

Continue reading “Sabin Balasa animations”

Weekend links 760

Ermitaño Meditando (1955) by Remedios Varo.

• Public Domain Review announces the Public Domain Image Archive. I’ve added it to the list. Meanwhile, the PDR regular postings include Francis Picabia’s 391 magazine (1917–1924).

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The Well at the World’s End by William Morris.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: “See 25 incredible images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest”.

The ideas are more complex than the presentation suggests, but not vastly. Neither is it exactly breaking new ground. Art is everywhere, they say, from fingernails to fine dining; art is not a message to be decoded, but takes on new meanings in the mind of each viewer; art allows us to experience emotions in a “safe” context, like a form of affective practice; art helps us to imagine new worlds, thereby expanding the boundaries of what’s possible in the real world. The point isn’t to be original, though, but to distil a lifetime’s worth of practical wisdom and reflection. The result is a kind of joyous manifesto: just the thing to inspire a teenager (or adult) into a new creative phase. Eno and Adriaanse conclude with a “Wish”: that the book helps us understand that “what we need is already inside us”, and that “art – playing and feeling – is a way of discovering it”.

Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse talking to David Shariatmadari about their new book, What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory

• “Crunchie: The Taste Bomb!” DJ Food unearths four psychedelic posters promoting Fry’s Crunchie bars.

• New music: Music For Alien Temples by Various Artists, and Awakening The Ancestors by Nomad Tree.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine lays out a history of the Tarot in England.

• Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Research Arkestra live on German TV, 1970.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Chris Marker Day (restored/expanded).

• At the BFI: Anton Bitel on 10 great Mexican horror films.

• Matt Berry’s favourite albums.

• Tarot (Ace of Wands Theme) (1970) by Andrew Bown | Tarotplane (1971) by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band | Tarot One (2012) by Tarot Twilight