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Dr Mabuse posters

This picture of a séance in the 1920s circulates endlessly in the Tumblr labyrinth, usually without attribution so that many of the people seeing it won’t be aware that it’s a still (or a set photo) from Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922). Mabuse himself originates in a novel of the same name by Norbert Jacques published in 1921, the tale of a Moriarty-like super-criminal at large in Weimar-era Berlin. Lang made three films about the character, the first two of which, Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler, and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) feature Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the sinister Doctor, an actor better known today for his role as the mad scientist, Rotwang, in Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Testament was banned by Goebbels for being subversive. The third film, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), was also one of the director’s last but it managed to revive interest in the character at a time when super-criminals were coming back into vogue. Wolfgang Preiss played Mabuse in this film, and in several sequels by other directors.

I’ve known about the Mabuse films for years, thanks in part to Lotte Eisner’s superb history of German silent cinema, The Haunted Screen (1952), yet despite this I’ve still not seen any of the films. That should change soon with the news that Eureka Video are releasing a new print of Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler on Blu-ray at the end of October, a restored version that will run for 280 minutes. The running time sounds excessive but Eisner points out that the film was originally screened in two parts: The Great Gambler: An Image of the Age, and Inferno: A Game for the People of our Age. In addition to Rudolf Klein-Rogge fixing everyone with his hawk-like glare there’s also Alfred Abel playing a weaker character than his master of the city in Metropolis. Moviemail describes Mabuse as “a criminal mastermind whose nefarious machinations are based around hypnotism, charlatanism, hallucinations, Chinese incantations, cold-blooded murder, opiate narcosis and cocaine anxiety”; how can one resist?

The posters gathered here are from a web trawl so lack the usual credits. The second film evidently had a wider distribution hence the greater quantity of posters from other countries.

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Weekend links 174

Dress (2012) by Nao Ikuma.

• Two of my Cthulhu artworks can currently be seen in the Ars Necronomica exhibition at the Cohen Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI. The exhibition is part of NecronomiCon, and runs to September 13th. In related news, my steampunk illustration has been nominated in the Visual category of this year’s Airship Awards. Winners will be announced at Steamcon V in October.

• “…the story of how a small cabal of British jazz obsessives conducting a besotted affair with the style arcana of Europe and America somehow became an army of scooter-borne rock fans…” Ian Penman looks back at the culture of Mod for the LRB.

• “What is it about the writer in the First World that wants the Third World writer to be nakedly political, a blunt instrument bludgeoning his world’s ills?” Gina Apostol on Borges, Politics, and the Postcolonial.

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3–4 hour days.

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

• Ron Rosenbaum talks to Al Pacino about all the usual stuff, and reveals some detail about the actor’s obsessive interest in Oscar Wilde’s Salomé.

• More queer history: The Brixton Fairies and the South London Gay Community Centre, Brixton 1974–6.

• At Dangerous Minds: Anthony Burgess and the Top Secret Code in A Clockwork Orange

• Every day for 100 days, Jessica Svendsen redesigned a Josef Müller-Brockmann poster.

• LondonTypographica: Mapping the typographic landscape of London.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 083 by Demdike Stare.

• At Strange Flowers: Alfred Kubin the writer.

• Derek Jarman’s sketchbooks.

• Rick Poynor on Collage Now.

• Thomas Leer: Private Plane (1978) | Tight As A Drum (1981) | Heartbeat (1985)

Weekend links 173

Icarus (1974–75) by Lili Ország.

• The Cabaret Voltaire albums released on the Virgin label in the 1980s have suffered the same shoddy treatment on CD as other Virgin reissues, a situation to be rectified in November with an extensive revisiting of the CV back catalogue. The long-overdue reappraisal will also include the release of Earthshaker, a collection of previously unavailable recordings from the Virgin period.

• It’s that book again: Design Observer has the preface from Lolita — The Story of a Cover Girl: Vladimir Nabokov’s novel in art and design, a book by John Bertram and Yuri Leving. At The Millions John Bertram talks to designer John Gall about the problems Lolita poses for cover designers.

• Jerry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried (1972) has acquired legendary status over the years for the apparent tastelessness of its subject matter—a clown in Auschwitz—and the fact that its director/star has never allowed the film to be seen in public. This week some footage arrived on YouTube.

• Candy Bullets And Moon (1967), a one-off psychedelic collaboration between Don Preston and Meredith Monk.

• What’s the collective term for many bookshops? Whatever it is, there’s a lot of them in this Pinterest collection.

• At Dangerous Minds: Artist Gail Potocki’s exploration of Alice in Wonderland and the passing of time.

• Anne Billson on the late Karen Black and why horror movies deserve our respect.

• Tobias Carroll on the Surreal life and fiction of Leonora Carrington.

• More details emerge about The Wicker Man – The Final Cut.

• Issue 35 of Arthur Magazine is now available for order.

• Graphics, drawings and collages by Jan Švankmajer.

• Every film poster designed by Saul Bass.

• Cabaret Voltaire: Just Fascination (1983) | Sensoria (1984) | I Want You (1985)

Ralf and Florian

Ralf and Florian, 1973. Back cover photo by Barbara Niemöller.

Kraftwerk’s third album, Ralf and Florian, is forty years old this year. It was recorded and mixed from May to July, 1973, and released three months later. As with the first two Kraftwerk albums, it still hasn’t been given an official CD reissue. When so many albums by the big names of the 1970s have been reissued multiple times Kraftwerk are pretty much unique in suppressing part of their catalogue.

Photo by Robert Franck.

The reason usually given for this is that the fourth album, Autobahn (1974), was the first to adopt the conceptual style that became a hallmark of the group’s output. Well, yes and no. The celebrated sleeve design for Autobahn went through several variations, and the motoring theme only applies to the first side of the album. The second side doesn’t match the theme at all, and with its melodies and instrumentation (Florian was still using his flute) is much closer to the previous albums, especially the third one, than those that came after. What Kraftwerk prefer to see as a clean break is really more of a gradual evolution.

The sleeve for the first UK release. No designer credited.

I’ve always liked the Ralf and Florian album, and don’t mind so much that it’s not been given a proper reissue. Bootleg copies circulate, and even the original vinyl isn’t so scarce. A couple of things related to the album are more difficult to find, however. The first German copies came with a large poster-insert illustrated by the group’s artist/designer Emil Schult. This item more than anything shows a charming, human side to Ralf and Florian which was later overshadowed by the machine-obsessed conceptualism. Large scans of the insert were recently posted at Mostly Retro.

Then there’s Kohoutek – Kometenmelodie, a 7-inch single released in December 1973 which forms a bridge between the third and fourth albums. Kometenmelodie subsequently appeared in two versions on Autobahn but the single sleeve is very much in the R&F zone with the faces from the album cover, while the back of the sleeve sports Emil Schult’s Kling Klang Verlag logo from the album insert. Kohoutek was a comet visible in the night skies in 1973. This was Kraftwerk’s debut single, presenting two unique versions of Kometenmelodie. It’s never been reissued but both tracks can be heard here. Elsewhere on YouTube there’s a performance of the R&F track Tanzmusik on a German TV programme, a clip which features new group member, Wolfgang Flür, playing his electronic drum pads.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Reworking Kraftwerk
• Autobahn animated
• Sleeve craft
• Who designed Vertigo #6360 620?
• Old music and old technology
• Aerodynamik by Kraftwerk

Alas Vegas Tarot cards

Back in February I bought a Wacom drawing tablet and said I’d show some proper results from its use later. For the past few months I’ve been working on this project using a combination of Wacom drawing and vector graphics. The initial brief from games designer James Wallis was for six Tarot-style card designs for his Alas Vegas role-playing game which has as its theme a fantasy extrapolation from Las Vegas and its gaudy mythology. The Kickstarter funding for the game turned out to be more successful than was anticipated so James asked me to expand the six cards idea into a full set of black-and-white Major Arcana designs.

This has been a fun series to work on although a number of the cards presented problems at first, the antique nature of the Tarot symbolism being a difficult thing to map across a very commercial American city. The symbolism from the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck was used as a rough guide although we deviated in a few places from the more traditional attributes. Las Vegas has changed over the years so rather than represent a single period of the city’s history there are references to different eras, from the huge casinos of today back to the buildings of the 50s and 60s with their distinctive “Googie” architecture. Notes for the cards follow below. The artwork can be seen at larger size here.

The Fool is usually a young man about to step off a cliff edge with a dog barking a warning at his heels, hence the dog on the sign.

Several of the cards convert the Tarot characters into cabaret acts. This one was pretty inevitable, and I’m sure it’s not the first time a stage conjuror has appeared on this card.

The chair is based on the 1965 “Ball Chair” design by Eero Aarnio (as seen in The Prisoner TV series), adapted here to resemble the Priestess’s crescent moon.

The style on this one is more 70s than 60s: patterned wallpaper (the hearts derive from the symbolism of The Empress, and from playing cards, of course), white rug, Kung Fu pyjamas.

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