{books} – Page 294 – { feuilleton }

Julius Klinger’s Sodom

The more I look at the work of Austrian artist Julius Klinger (1876–1942), the more I like what I see. This Pinterest sample shows his versatility, equally at home with detailed illustration, often with a Beardsley-like quality, as he was with more Modernist design. Sodom (1689) (aka The Farce of Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery) is the notorious Restoration drama attributed to John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, which is here illustrated by Klinger for an edition privately published in Leipzig in 1909. The play is one of the most flagrantly outrageous works in the English language, with a cast of characters that includes Bolloxinion, the King of Sodom, Cuntigratia, his Queen, and so on; you can see parts of it performed in The Libertine (2004) with Johnny Depp playing Rochester, and taking the role of Bolloxinion.

Klinger produced 16 illustrations in all. His picture of Salomé gets linked to this series on a number of websites but I’ve seen other sites that list it as a separate piece. Since Salomé isn’t mentioned anywhere in Sodom I’d also be inclined to keep them separate.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #21
• Julius Klinger’s Salomé

Weekend links 155

Poster design by Mishka Westell for this month’s Austin Psych Fest. Billy Gibbons’ pre-ZZ Top psychedelic outfit, The Moving Sidewalks, surprised everyone by reforming for a New York gig last month, their first performance together in 44 years.

• Pye Corner Audio played the Boiler Room, London, last week, and remixed a track from FC Judd’s Electronics Without Tears. Also on the latter is Chris Carter who talks about his own remix (and the “Radiophonic” Mr Judd) here.

• Tom Bianchi’s Fire Island Pines, Polaroids of New York’s gay enclave from 1975–1983. Related: In Conversation with the Violet Quill: Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, and Edmund White.

• From 2011: Sex, prison and lost ligatures: The story of Herb Lubalin’s Avant Garde typeface. Related: The ITC Avant Garde Gothic group at Flickr.

• Music reissues: Tape Works 1981–1982 by Laughing Hands is out now, and Scott Walker’s early solo albums will be reissued in the summer.

Drugs and the Mind (ii), a cover design from 1957 by Eric Fraser (1902–1983) whose illustrations and designs are in exhibition at the Chris Beetles gallery, London.

• At Ubuweb: William S. Burroughs + Brion Gysin + Genesis P-Orridge – Cold Spring Tape (1989).

• The World According to John Coltrane, an hour-long documentary.

• Neko Font: for when you need a word made of cats.

• Fuck yeah, Sarah Bernhardt

• Sordid Spheres!

• 99th Floor (1967) by The Moving Sidewalks | Over Fire Island (1975) by Brian Eno | Ledge (1980) by Laughing Hands

Le Cantique des Cantiques

An oddity from the career of František Kupka, Le Cantique des Cantiques (1905) in this version is a stage presentation of the Song of Solomon by Jean de Bonnefon. Kupka provided a series of illustrations in a style similar to his Symbolist paintings which in the original printing are decorated with coloured borders. The copies here are from a bad scan at Gallica whose page I’ve been unable to find again. For the moment there are better copies to be seen at eBay. The drama is very much oriented towards the sexual exotica which Oscar Wilde had rendered notorious in Salomé, and which underpins so many of the obsessions of the period. A few years after this Kupka was in a different world entirely, following new directions into abstract art.

Continue reading “Le Cantique des Cantiques”

The Web by Joan Ashworth

Another animated gem, The Web (1987) is an eighteen-minute film based on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels which dramatises the lethal duel between Flay and Swelter. Director Joan Ashworth reduces the cast to manservant, cook, and bedridden earl, no doubt for reasons of economy since the film was originally a student work. Economy or not, for me this has always captured more of the flavour of the books than the BBC’s well-intended but ultimately unsatisfying television adaptation. Watch The Web here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Peake’s glassblowers
• Mervyn Peake in Coronation Street
• The Worlds of Mervyn Peake
• A profusion of Peake
• Mervyn Peake at Maison d’Ailleurs
• Peake’s Pan
• Buccaneers #1
• Mervyn Peake in Lilliput
• The Illustrators of Alice

Memories

Untitled cartoon by Gerald Scarfe (early 1980s).

Margaret Thatcher saved career of police chief who made Aids remarks

Margaret Thatcher helped save the career of a police chief constable who said Aids patients lived in a “human cesspool of their own making”, newly-released documents show.

THE TELEGRAPH, 04 Jan 2012

Sir James Anderton, then chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, faced calls to quit after making the comments, which were perceived as homophobic.

Now documents secured by the Manchester Evening News give an incredible insight into the 1986 political storm – and show how close the country’s second largest police force came to meltdown.

It can revealed that the government staged a series of crisis meetings aimed at keeping Sir James in post, and that other chief constables accused Sir James of ‘bringing ridicule’ on the police service.

The papers also show that senior civil servants were dismayed over the top cop’s ‘religious overtones’ and feared he had a ‘taste for martyrdom’, but that Mrs Thatcher, the then Prime Minister, privately backed Sir James’s right to speak out – and stamped down demands for a public inquiry into the state of the force. (more)

Belgrano Nightmare – Thatcher Wakes Screaming (1982) by Gerald Scarfe.

Cartoon by Steve Bell (2000).