{books} – Page 366 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 59

Or So It Seems (1983) by Duet Emmo. Design by The Brothers Quay.

• “Make things, no rules, but be quick.” Bruce Gilbert, musician in (among others) Wire, Dome and Duet Emmo is interviewed. Related: Daniel Miller, Mute label boss and another member of Duet Emmo is interviewed (and provides a mix) at The Quietus. For more electronica with nothing at all to do with Duet Emmo there’s this Matmos interview.

Design by Dick Smith.

“It’s psychedelic not because we were stoned before we wrote the songs, or stoned during composing them, but the experiences of searching for the transcendental world though altered states of consciousness were in the songs,” he says, which sounds suspiciously like another way of saying he was stoned before he wrote them, but perhaps it’s best not to quibble with the description of the method in the face of such impressive results…

Donovan revisits one of his finest works, Sunshine Superman.

• Yet more Guardian features: A Clockwork Orange: The droog rides again | Ira Cohen: psychedelic photography master | A life in writing: China Miéville | The stars of modern SF pick the best science fiction.

• There are many stars of the gaseous variety in Nick Risinger’s 5000-megapixel photograph of the Milky Way.

“It is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend. Somehow I have never loved a woman…. From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me…. I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly. I was jealous of everyone to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you.”

Salon reviews the new unexpurgated edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

• Paul Gorman discovered the gay art origins of the notorious Cowboys T-shirt.

• The full complement of Saul Bass’s designs for Vertigo‘s print advertising.

• Photos of the recent Dodgem Logic event by Rosie Reed Gold.

• Peter Ashworth is still taking great photos.

• Jodorowsky’s Dune Finally Revealed?

• Sunshine Superman (1966) by Donovan | Or So It Seems (1983) by Duet Emmo.

Weekend links 58

Oya by Alberto del Pozo (1945–1992). Also known as Yansa, Oya is Changó’s third wife. She is the goddess of the winds and of lightning and is mistress of the cemetery gates. Passionate and brave she fights by her husband’s side if needed. Her favorite offerings are papaya, eggplant and geraniums. From Santeria at BibliOdyssey.

Austin Osman Spare is a good example of the dictum that quality will out in the end, no matter how long it remains buried. Overlooked by the art establishment after he retreated into his private mythologies, a substantial portion of his output was equally ignored by occultists who wanted to preserve him as a weird and scary working-class magus. One group dismissed his deeply-felt spiritual interests in a manner they wouldn’t dare employ if he’d been a follower of Santeria, say (or even a devout Christian), while the other group seemed to regard his superb portraits as too mundane to be worthy of attention. Now that Phil Baker’s Spare biography has been published by Strange Attractor we might have reached the end of such short-sighted appraisals and can finally see a more rounded picture of the man and his work:

[Kenneth] Grant preserved and magnified Spare’s own tendency to confabulation, giving him the starring role in stories further influenced by Grant’s own reading of visionary and pulp writers such as Arthur Machen, HP Lovecraft, and Fu Manchu creator Sax Rohmer. Grant’s Spare seems to inhabit a parallel London; a city with an alchemist in Islington, a mysterious Chinese dream-control cult in Stockwell, and a small shop with a labyrinthine basement complex, its grottoes decorated by Spare, where a magical lodge holds meetings. This shop – then a furrier, now an Islamic bookshop, near Baker Street – really existed, and part of the fascination of Grant’s version of Spare’s London is its misty overlap with reality.

Austin Osman Spare: Cockney visionary by Phil Baker.

• Austin Osman Spare: The man art history left behind | A Flickr set: Austin Osman Spare at the Cuming Museum | HV Morton meets Austin Spare (1927).

• More quality rising from obscurity: Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End. Skolimowski’s drama is one of unpleasant characters behaving badly towards each other. Anglo-American cinema featured a great deal of this in the 1970s when filmmakers disregarded the sympathies of their audience in a manner that would be difficult today. John Patterson looks at another example which is also given a re-release this month, the “feral, minatory and menacing masterwork” that is Taxi Driver.

Echú Eleguá by Alberto del Pozo. Among the most ancient of the orishas Echú Eleguá is the messenger of the gods, who forges roads, protects the house, and is heaven’s gate-keeper. In any ceremony he is invoked first. He owns all cowrie shells and is the god of luck. A prankster, Echú Eleguá frequently has a monkey and a black rooster by his side. Like a mischievous boy he enjoys gossip and must be pampered with offerings of toys, fruit, and candy.

• Minutes, a compilation on the LTM label from 1987: William Burroughs, Jean Cocteau, Tuxedomoon, Jacques Derrida, The Monochrome Set, and er…Richard Jobson. Thomi Wroblewski designed covers for a number of Burroughs titles in the 1980s, and he also provided the cover art for this release.

• Mikel Marton Photography: a Tumblr of erotic photography and self-portraits.

• From Death Factory To Norfolk Fens: Chris & Cosey interviewed.

• NASA announces results of epic space-time experiment.

• Oritsunagumono by Takayuki Hori: origami x-rays.

• Plexus magazine at 50 Watts.

• Mother Sky (1970) by Can | Late For The Sky (1974) by Jackson Browne.

The Art of the Book

Endpaper design by Reginald L Knowles for JM Dent’s Everyman’s Library series.

A few of the many illustration samples to be found in The Art of the Book, an overview of book design published in 1914. The editor was Charles Holme, also the editor of leading art magazine The Studio from whose contents and resources books such as this were easily compiled. The Internet Archive has a collection of Holme’s books, and this particular volume includes work from Hungary and Sweden, two countries which are often overlooked in creative surveys. I’ve selected illustrations here but the book contains many examples of binding design and page layouts.

Initial letters and ornaments by Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens.

Continue reading “The Art of the Book”

Jean Genet… ‘The Courtesy of Objects’

Jean Genet… ‘The Courtesy of Objects’ is an exhibition by Anglo-French artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz currently running at The Gallery at Norwich University College of the Arts. Chaimowicz presented a show entitled Jean Cocteau in Norwich last year; this new exhibition will include “works on paper, theatrical props, furniture, slide projections, documentation and an imaginary casting session for Genet’s 1947 play The Maids and videos charting Chaimowicz’s pilgrimages to the author’s childhood home in Burgundy, France, and to his grave on the Moroccan coast.” (More.) About Genet, Chaimowicz has this to say:

Jean Genet, in his fashion, loved Jacky Maglia. Jacky was the stepson of Genet’s lover Lucien Senemand. Genet was generally attracted to heterosexual men, often delinquents or petty criminals… and Jacky stole cars… Genet actively encouraged Jacky to take up motor racing and later managed his fledging career. In Norfolk he bought Maglia a Lotus Elan… They grew very close, travelling widely together and illicitly entering the US to cover the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention for Esquire. Fame and critical success were suddenly and violently echoed by financial gain… Genet was at one point Gallimard’s highest-earning author… This having the converse effect in that the more rich and famous he became, the less he was able to write. For so long the outsider and now the literary celebrity, it was as though he felt alienated from his own unique and cherished sense of alienation.

The exhibition is free and runs until May 21st when it will move to Nottingham and then New York. See here for opening times and other details.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Querelle again
• Saint Genet
• Emil Cadoo
• Exterface
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal
• Un Chant D’Amour by Jean Genet

The Steampunk Bible

Cover and interior designs by Galen Smith.

Arriving in your book emporia this week is The Steampunk Bible by Jeff VanderMeer & SJ Chambers, a comprehensive guide to the sub-genre which is now a thriving sub-culture. I contributed some bits of graphic design as well as a bespoke dirigible illustration (see below). The book also features a few other steampunk-related pieces of mine among its wealth of photos and illustrations. This is a typically lavish production from Abrams, beautifully designed by Galen Smith with a cover based on the celebrated Hetzel editions of Jules Verne’s novels. Inside there are essay contributions from Bruce Sterling, Catherynne M Valente, Jess Nevins and others. If you’re a steampunk enthusiast (or know one) this is an essential purchase. Some links and page samples follow below.

• The official Steampunk Bible site
• The Steampunk Bible: Mecha-Elephants, Raygun Rocketships, and Great Stories, a feature by Jeff V.
• Amazon US | Amazon UK | Book Depository | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound