{film} – Page 45 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 679

All this and the best tunes. Via.

• As noted last month, Space Ritual by Hawkwind turned 50 this year so here comes the inevitable reissue which in its most lavish edition will run to 11 discs. This isn’t as immediately attractive for me as the recent Calvert-era collection—I already own four different copies of Space Ritual, including the original vinyl—but I may feel differently a few months from now.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine explores The Prophecies of N’Gai, something which sounds like a story from Weird Tales but isn’t.

• “Is function in the eye or mind of the beholder?” Steven Heller on Jacques Carelman’s Catalogue of Impossible Objects.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Yoko Tada began painting in her 80s. At 100 she’s publishing her first book.

• “The Magnificent Ambersons: rebirth for ruined Orson Welles masterpiece that rivalled Citizen Kane.”

At Wyrd Daze: Disco Rd 3: 23 pages 23 minutes. Free PDF, music mix, Discordianism, etc.

• A (brief) conversation with Milena Canonero, Wes Anderson’s costume designer.

• At Public Domain Review: Specimens of Fancy Turning (1869).

• New music: Móatún 7: Tetsu Inoue by Various Artists.

• Arik Roper’s favourite album artwork.

• RIP Peter Brötzmann.

• Table Turning (1973) by The Upsetters | Forever Turning (1995) by Scorn | Turning Towards Us (2008) by Redshift

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

1: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c.1560

A painting (or a copy of the same) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

2: Musée des Beaux Arts, 1938

A poem by WH Auden.

3: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1962

A poem by William Carlos Williams.

4: The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1963

A novel by Walter Tevis.

5: The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1977

A feature film written by Paul Mayersberg and directed by Nicolas Roeg.

6: La Chute d’Icare, 1988

A composition by Brian Ferneyhough.

7: Upon Viewing Bruegel’s “Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus”, 2007

A song by Titus Andronicus.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Fall of the Magician
• Bruegel’s sins
• Proverbial details
• Babel details
• Three stages of Icarus

Weekend links 678

Interior of a Cathedral (1921) by Wenzel Hablik.

• The inevitable Cormac McCarthy features: “Cormac McCarthy took us beneath the surface,” says Kevin Berger at Nautilus magazine, publishers of McCarthy’s essay about the origins of language. At The Paris Review, three writers reminisce about reading McCarthy’s fiction.

• At Bajo el Signo de Libra: Bhupen Khakhar (1934–2003). “Su obra examina las implicaciones políticas y socioculturales de la homosexualidad en la India.”

• Dennis Cooper’s favourite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2023 so far. Thanks again for the link here!

• New music: Telepathic Heights by Hawksmoor, and Golden Apples of the Sun by Suzanne Ciani & Jonathan Fitoussi.

• Mixes of the week: DreamScenes – June 2023, and isolatedmix 121: Oslated & Huinali Showcase mixed by S-Pill.

• At Unquiet Things: Crystal Castles and Harmonious Heavens: Wenzel Hablik’s Glittering Utopias.

• At Public Domain Review: Wonder and Pleasure in the Oude Doolhof of Amsterdam.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Exploring Tokyo’s Hidden Shrines.

• At Aquarium Drunkard: Bush Tetras interviewed.

• Ben Chasny’s favourite albums.

• RIP Glenda Jackson.

• Utopiat No. 1 (1973) by Utopia | Utopia (2000) by Goldfrapp | Utopia (2013) by Brown Reininger Bodson

Weekend links 677

Design by Neville Brody, 1980.

• My work soundtrack for the past couple of weeks has been non-stop Cabaret Voltaire so this is pertinent. Neville Brody designed many of the group’s record sleeves in the 1980s as well as this poster and another one that I’ve only seen as a small picture in the first Brody book. He was also responsible for the CV logo which I never managed to find in badge form.

• “Anger’s preferred mode of artistry in his last decades was self-mythologising, and while he would return to filmmaking late in life, it was less as hierophant than totem—the worn keepsake of a once powerful magick.” Ryan Meehan remembers Kenneth Anger.

• New music: Waves by Ben Chasny and Rick Tomlinson, Topos by UCC Harlo, and Zango by WITCH.

Kafka’s perpetual redescription of his plight suggests that throughout his writing life he was less interested in finding a solution or even arriving at a single, definitive formulation of the problem than he was in exploring the implications and complications of his situation from new, unexpected angles and crafting an ever-expanding lexicon of figures for its inescapability.

Ross Benjamin, the translator of Franz Kafka’s diaries, on the neurotic concerns that Kafka turned into art

• “Why are men seemingly always naked in ancient Greek art?” Sarah Murray investigates.

• Artists for Bibi: an auction in aid of Arthur Machen’s great-great-granddaughter.

• At Public Domain Review: Unidentified Floating Object: Edo Images of Utsuro-bune.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Acorn.

• Old music: Moon Journey by Mort Garson.

• RIP Tony McPhee.

• Kafka (1964) by The Rowdies | Kafka (1982) by Masami Tsuchiya | Kafka (Main Title) (1992) by Cliff Martinez

Beksiński on film

Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński filmed at different stages of his career. There was more of this than I expected when Beksiński’s work ran so counter to contemporary trends. We have Andy Teszner to thank for making so much footage available and also providing English subtitles. Taken together, the films show the evolution of Beksiński’s workplace as much as his art, a space which becomes lighter, tidier and increasingly filled by audio-visual technology. Don’t expect any enlightening comments where the paintings are concerned. Beksiński was always adamant that they didn’t mean anything beyond what they were. I find this a refreshing attitude, especially when so many artists today attach a pompous explanatory statement to their work.

• Zdzisław Beksiński in 1975. “He always works with music.”

• Beksinski, 1978. “Would you like to say something to the audience?” “No. Absolutely not.”

• Zdzisław Beksiński – A Stroll through Warsaw (1989). A film by Hubert Waliszewski and Elzbieta Dryll-Glinska in which Beksiński and Piotr Dmochowski wander around the city for a while then look at some of Beksiński’s paintings.

• Beksiński at work, 1990.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Beksiński at Mnémos