{gay} – Page 138 – { feuilleton }

House of Harrington

Curtis Harrington.

House of Harrington is a short documentary from 2008 about the late filmmaker Curtis Harrington which has just been posted to YouTube by its makers, and by a curious coincidence this appearance occurs in the week of Dennis Hopper’s death. Harrington gave Hopper the lead in his debut feature Night Tide (1961) at a time when the actor was ostracised in Hollywood after a falling out with director Henry Hathaway. Hopper’s diligent performance in Harrington’s film, a low budget horror, is a long way from the histrionics one usually finds in works of this sort and is a good reason to seek it out.

Marjorie Cameron in The Wormwood Star.

Also in Night Tide in a wordless role is the enigmatic occult artist Marjorie Cameron who drifts around looking spooky and mysterious. Cameron had earlier appeared with Harrington in Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), he as Cesaré the Somnambulist from Caligari, she as Aleister Crowley’s Scarlet Woman. That encounter led to Harrington making her the subject of one of his experimental shorts, The Wormwood Star in 1956. I’ve wanted to see this film for years, if only to sate a persistent curiosity, and House of Harrington contains a few tantalising glimpses. With luck it may turn up on YouTube (or even DVD) in the future.

Lastly, Automat Pictures, the makers of House of Harrington, also have a lengthy filmed lecture in their channel, Queer for Fear, which “explores gay and lesbian subtext in the horror film, and examines the intertwining of queer history and monster movies.”

• House of Harrington: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Curtis Harrington, 1926–2007
• The art of Cameron, 1922–1995
• Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally

Weekend links 16

Sumer Is Icumen In but you wouldn’t have known it today, it being cold and wet, O my brothers. The picture above is the work of David Owen whose Ink Corporation does a splendid job of updating the iconography of the folk music world. Via Electric Eden.

• Biting the hand that feeds: designer Jonathan Barnbrook’s contribution to the Biennale of Sydney takes a dig at the whole enterprise. The art market is impervious to criticism (or shame) but the gesture is an amusing one.

• Emanuel Schongut’s book covers of the 1960s and 1970s on the artist’s own Flickr pages. Via A Journey Round My Skull.

• Owen Freeman on illustrating William Burroughs. Related: Reality Studio interviews Victor Bockris.

• RIP Jack Birkett, Derek Jarman’s Caliban and the Pope in Caravaggio. And RIP Dennis Hopper, actor, director and photographer.

“Sea Nettle” (1873), a costume design by the Mistick Krewe of Comus. From this BibliOdyssey posting of New Orleans Mardi Gras designs.

• Chris Summerfield’s surfer boys at Lulu.

• Homotography also has a Tumblr page.

• The Ghost Box Study Series Singles.

• More 3D projection on buildings.

• John Foxx interviewed at FACT.

Song of the week: Ineffect (1989) by Material.

Weekend links 15

One of the entries from the Greenpeace competition to rebrand BP.

• What Kenneth Anger was doing inside the Pentagon, October 1967.

• Ghosts Of The Future: Borrowing Architecture From The Zone Of Alienation. Jim Rossignol on Stalker: the film, the game and the reality.

• Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s visionary music. A blog and a forthcoming book by Rob Young.

• Lesbian filmmaker Kiana Firouz isn’t wanted in the UK thanks to the iniquitous asylum laws of the previous administration; the Home Office intends to return her to Iran where gay people are flogged and executed. Coilhouse has details including recommendations of how people can help. Related: Britain’s immigration system is guilty of “institutional homophobia”, according to a new report.

• Cameron Carpenter, a prodigiously talented (and sequinned) concert organist.

• No Barcode: Javier Garcia’s graphic design blog.

• Shapeways: 3D printing from your own designs.

• Spintriae: brothel coins from Ancient Rome.

• Winq magazine: “global queer culture”.

• A steam-powered synthesiser.

• Seven days with Brian Eno.

• Among The Trees, Michael Chapman on the Whistle Test in 1975.

Vintage swordplay #4

The Crusader by George Quaintance (1943).

Continuing an occasional series, I was hoping to find the original photo which George Quaintance used as a model for this painting but failed dismally. I did find the photo below, however, a piece of Roman camp by beefcake photographer Alonzo Hanagan, aka ‘Lon of New York’ on this Boy Culture post where Hanagan is interviewed about his work.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The men with swords archive
• The gay artists archive

Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion

The Clear World of the Blessed Souls (detail).

Once again the web proves beneficial in showing you something you didn’t expect to find. The Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion was the grandiose name given by Elisar von Kupffer (1872–1942) aka Elisarion to his art-filled villa at Lake Maggiore which he shared with his partner Eduard von Mayer. Kupffer was an artist, writer, historian and another of those rare pioneering gay men who used their position and their work to proselytise for social tolerance of same-sex attraction.

The Clear World of the Blessed Souls (detail).

Kupffer and Mayer’s Sanctuarium is documented at this site (Italian and German language only) with details of the artist’s paintings and the villa’s extraordinary mural, The Clear World of the Blessed Souls, which depicts a luscious homoerotic paradise. Also present are a few of the photos Kupffer used as a basis for his paintings (below). The mural title refers to Klarismus (Clarity), apparently the name of Kupffer and Mayer’s spiritual philosophy and a creed which evidently involves lots of naked boys. Where do I sign up?

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Sascha Schneider, 1870–1927
• The art of Andrey Avinoff, 1884–1949