{drugs} – Page 47 – { feuilleton }

Peyote Queen by Storm de Hirsch

Ubuweb turns up another gem of abstract cinema with this 1965 work by Storm de Hirsch. The only film of hers I’d seen prior to this was Third Eye Butterfly (1968), screened at the 2005 Summer of Love psychedelia exhibition. Both these shorts share the same spilt-screen effect but Peyote Queen cuts kaleidoscopic views of the woman in question with brightly-coloured animated glyphs and shapes created by drawing directly onto the film emulsion. This is an old technique which goes back at least as far as Len Lye’s pioneering films of the 1930s. Peyote Queen‘s drum soundtrack and white dots flickering on black are very reminiscent of Lye’s brilliantly minimal Free Radicals (1958) which was also made by scratching the film.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mary Ellen Bute: Films 1934–1957

Matt Prior’s Golden Bail

Another work update and the second beer label I’ve done for the Adur Brewery who like to match their bespoke ales with bespoke artwork. This one is cricket-themed, as you may have noticed, Matt Prior being a cricket player, apparently, and the Ashes tournament currently in progress. I know next to nothing about the sport (this is about as interesting as it usually gets for me) so I had to do some research beforehand. Those padded gloves cricketers wear are awkward things to draw in perspective.

As with the other label design I produced for Adur, this works better at a smaller size but I’ve added a larger version to the artwork pages. Those stumps look rather flat but I reduced the shadow so they could be read as stumps and bails from a distance. Once again, if anyone sees a bottle of this in the wild, take a photo and I’ll post it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ropetackle Golden Ale

The art of Robert R Bliss, 1925–1981

Standing boy pulling ropes (1962).

The chiaroscuro above looks like a photo print but is actually a painting. I’ve seen Bliss’s name mentioned a few times before but he remains rather difficult to track down online, most of the visible works being on auction sites. What there is consists mostly of young men in swim suits, to a degree which seems like an idée fixe given the lack of nudes or variation in the poses.

left: Standing boy with red trunks (1961); right: Boy with oar (no date).

In a career outline on the Leslie-Lohman site there’s this curious paragraph:

Bliss…after 20 years of alcoholism, discovered LSD. After that he completely stopped drinking. His work then completely shifted to colorful landscapes as well as psychedelic visionary paintings.

I’ve not been able to find any of this psychedelic work at all. If anyone knows of any, please leave a comment.

Update: Added a few more examples of his male studies.

Seated Boy (1950).

Swinging Boy (1959).

Yellow Shirt (1963).

Kneeling Male Athlete (1964).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

‘Hallucination’ fish netted in English Channel

‘Hallucination’ fish netted in English Channel | Mediterranean Sarpa salpa, said to cause LSD-like effects, turns up off Cornwall.

Demon rum leads to heroin

Or the temptations of Uncle Sam… An editorial cartoon from 1919 by Oliver Herford (1863–1935) showing how the nonsense argument of “X leads to Y” goes back a long way. These imps are more silly than frightening, Herford should have used this as the starting point for a comic strip: Rum Demon and the Narcotics.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Smoke
• Seamen in great distress eat one another
• Hep cats
• German opium smokers, 1900