{drugs} – Page 43 – { feuilleton }

The art of Mario Laboccetta

Tales of Hoffmann (1932).

Another great illustrator about whom information is scant; I need better reference books, the web is often no use at all. Monsieur Thombeau posted the cover to Laboccetta’s edition of Les Fleurs du Mal (below) which had me looking around for other work by the artist. VTS has pages from a 1932 edition of Tales of Hoffmann while more of the Baudelaire pictures can be found on various bookdealers’ sites. As to the artist, we’re told he was an Italian living in Paris, and this French site has a small list of his illustrated editions. It’s frustrating to see that Les Paradis Artificiels is among these; what did he make of Baudelaire’s opium visions?

Tales of Hoffmann (1932).

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Symbolist cinema

Symbolist? Arguably. Decadent? Certainly. Watching Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992) again this weekend I thought it worth making note of some of these resonances. The real age of Symbolist cinema was the Silent Era from around 1910 onwards, something I discussed in more detail here. That being so, several films made since can be taken as Symbolist (more usually Decadent) productions even if this was never their original intention. Kenneth Anger‘s Magic Lantern Cycle comes immediately to mind, so too Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.

Bram Stoker’s novel was published in 1897 at the ebbing of the fin de siècle but vampires and vampirism were already recurrent Symbolist themes. Aesthetic magus Walter Pater wrote of the Mona Lisa in 1893, “She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave…” Dracula almost demands a Symbolist interpretation, and for now Coppola’s production is the closest we get. I’ve found this makes the film more satisfying in a way: you can ignore the shoddy performances by secondary characters and concentrate on the decor and details (and the tremendous score by Wojciech Kilar). Some of the following screen grabs argue my point.

Oh look, peacock feathers. I loved the artificiality of this film, the excessive palette, the obvious models and miniatures, the layering of images. The dissolve from a peacock feather to Jonathan Harker’s infernal train journey is a great moment.

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Weekend links 44

Poster by Will Bradley for Victor Bicycles (c. 1895).

• G. Wayne Clough, chief exective of the Smithsonian Institution, finally admits that he made a hasty decision in removing David Wojnarowicz’s video from the Hide/Seek exhibition of gay art. Related: “Finland’s cultural gifts to the world include Sibelius, the Moomins and an artist that the country has been less eager to celebrate.” The belated homecoming of Tom of Finland.

• The Fiend with Twenty Faces: Jonathan Clements examines the legacy of Edogawa Rampo (Hirai Taro), the Japanese master of mystery and imagination.

• RIP Susannah York. The Guardian posted a selection of clips including one from Robert Altman’s Images (1972).

• More mixtapes: Trish Keenan’s Mind Bending Motorway Mix and a selection for Quietus by Chris & Cosey.

• “Ruin photos speak to our desperate desire to have our world re-enchanted.”

Promo poster by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat for My White Bicycle by Tomorrow (1967).

• The Raging Peloton: Iain Sinclair on two wheels good, four wheels bad.

• The unknown Jorge Luis Borges: five new anthologies reviewed.

• The French house untouched for 100 years (and also here).

• Electrotypes on Drugs: old chemists’ labels.

• South China Sea Pishkun by Dinh Q. Lê.

• Bike (1967) by Pink Floyd | My White Bicycle (1967) by Tomorrow | Trip On An Orange Bicycle (1968) by Orange Bicycle.

Passage 14

It’s that time of year again when my good friend Ed Jansen unveils the latest edition of Passage, his Dutch-language webzine:

The 14th issue of Passage contains articles about language, the dreamachine of Brion Gysin, the collaboration of Gysin with William Burroughs and Ian Sommerville (The Third Mind), a recently discovered photograph of Arthur Rimbaud’s presence in Aden, lots of photos of exhibitions and performances of artists in and around The Hague, about the experiences of Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the First World War and the latest novel of Michel Houellebecq. The purpose behind everything we write and make is to give the reader a sense of direction towards the unknown, towards the North-West Passage that leads to a new world.

The cover picture is a photo of the audience at a Dreamachine-inspired presentation by Matthijs Munnik about which we’re told:

In my performance I also make use of the flicker effect, but I have more control over it. In my performance, the audience wears white plastic masks, this way they look into a ganzfeld, a totally white field during the performance. In my set up, I use beamers, projecting light on the audience’s masks, completely immersing them in the light and colors of the projection.

I play an 8 minute live composition, based on the varying effects of different frequencies of flicker, colour, binaural beats and sound. During the performance every spectator will see something different, varying patterns and colours, created within their own brains.

And speaking of the Dreamachine, Nick Hydra left a comment in an earlier post with the news that visitors to the Wellcome Collection’s High Society exhibition in London have the opportunity to trip out with one of Brion Gysin’s flicker machines until the end of February.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Brion Gysin let the mice in
• Passage 13
• Passage 12
• Passage 11
• Passage 10

Weekend links 43

From the video for I See, So I See So by Broadcast.

• RIP Trish Keenan of Broadcast. Tributes here and here. The Broadcast/Focus Group collaboration …investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was The Wire‘s album of the year for 2009. Joseph Stannard interviewed Trish Keenan and James Cargill in October of that year.

• Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring, a new pay-what-you-please Arthur mixtape. Also at Arthur, Sunday Lectures by Freeman House here, here, here and here.

• Cormac McCarthy’s description of American pioneers in Suttree (1979) kept coming to mind during the past week:

Where hunters and woodcutters once slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, old teutonic forebears with eyes incandesced by the visionary light of a massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parables therein and mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark’s total restitution could appease.

• Born This Way: “A photo/essay project for gay viewers (male and female) to submit pictures from their childhood (roughly ages 4 to 14), with snapshots that capture them, innocently, showing the beginnings of their innate LGBT selves. It’s nature, not nurture!”

• Mischievous street art characters. Chris Marker wouldn’t want us to forget Monsieur Chat. Speaking of Chris Marker, there’s Plato’s Cave as Kino: Owl’s Legacy Excerpt & Becoming Imperceptible.

With the point of a knife Dr. LeBaron took from the little round box a small quantity of a dark, greenish-colored gum, which, as it was passed from one to another for inspection, gave off an agreeable, aromatic odor. Then, as he was engaged in filling two capsules from the box, he explained:

“As le docteur read from ze book of Monsieur Richet, ze favoreet méthode in ze Orient ees to take ze Haschisch by ze smoke in ze Persian pipe—ze hookah, ze nargileh. But zey also take eet in ze great varieté. Ze principal kind zat come to ze market of Europe, ees zat I show you—ze Haschisch, an’ ve take eet like ze dose of quinine,” said he, as he handed a well-filled capsule to both Smith and Arnold.

Throwing back his head, Smith bolted his dose without ceremony, and Arnold immediately followed his example.

Haschisch: A Novel (1886) by Thorold King. Related: Haschisch Hallucinations (1905) by HE Gowers.

• Dan Hill’s personal report from the drowned world of Brisbane. Related: Hayley Campbell recalls swimming in the city’s hazardous floodwaters when she was a wild child. Also: Canoeing in McDonald’s.

• Cabinet Card Backmarks, florid advertisements from Victorian cabinet photos. Callum James made a post on the subject in 2008 and has a Flickr set showing his discoveries.

• The Brothers Quay made a public information film about AIDS in 1996. (Now deleted from YouTube…boo!)

• The secret stories of book inscriptions. Related: The Book Inscriptions Project.

• Ani, Turkey: City of 1001 Churches, all of them abandoned and ruined.

• Vulgar Army: Octopus in Propaganda and Political Cartoons.

• Designer John Gall makes collages in his spare time.

• Phantasmaphile at Tumblr.

• Witch Cults and I See, So I See So, both by Broadcast & The Focus Group.