A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Music
Adolph Sutro’s Cliff House restaurant, San Francisco, has appeared here before but these are some additional photos of the improbable structure from the Library of Congress archives, including a picture of the fire that destroyed the building in 1907. As noted in the earlier post, Blue Öyster Cult aficionados may recognise the house from the cover of the group’s 1988 album, Imaginos.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Adolph Sutro’s Gingerbread Palace
Three Seekers (2009) by Kelly Louise Judd.
• Kevin Sessums talked to Elizabeth Taylor in 1997 about Tennessee Williams, her AIDS activism and related matters. Other related matters: Catholics lead the way on same-sex marriage and Mahatma Gandhi was in love with a German body-builder named Hermann.
• Cray porn (the computer, that is) at Barnbrook Design as the CD package for Interplay by John Foxx and The Maths is unveiled.
• Michael Rother and Friends Play the Music Of Neu! A stream of an hour-long concert from August 2010.
One of the tragedies of drug prohibition is that we have never developed a culture in which young people can learn how to use powerful drugs properly from older, wiser and more experienced psychonauts. I count myself lucky to have encountered such good teachers to guide me with such drugs as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA and mescaline.
Dr Susan Blackmore on using LSD.
• Another Dispatch in a World of Multiple Veils, a new release by Arkhonia.
• Micromachina by Scott Bain “examines what makes the insect world tick”.
• Down with art!: the age of manifestos. Related: The Manifesto Manifesto.
• John Patterson: “We’re all living in the future as seen by Philip K Dick.”
• Music To Play In The Dark: A Wake For Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson.
• Albert Einstein, Radical: A Political Profile.
• Was “God’s Wife” edited out of the Bible?
• Porn made for women, by women.
• Hallogallo (1972) by Neu! | Opa-Loka (1975) by Hawkwind | Jenny Ondioline (1993) by Stereolab | Hallogallo (1997) by Porcupine Tree.
James Bidgood’s luscious and erotic micro-budget masterpiece Pink Narcissus (1971) receives a screening at the IFC Center Queer/Art/Film festival, NYC, on Monday. The film is presented by Jonathan Katz, curator of the Hide/Seek gay art show whose controversial history was recounted here in December. The NYT ran a short piece about Bidgood, now 77 and not the first artist to be disappointed by his past work; they also have a Bidgood slideshow. Hide/Seek, meanwhile, is now a touring exhibition.
• Related: the delightful Drew Daniel of Matmos (and Soft Pink Truth) posing in a jockstrap at the Club Uranus, San Francisco circa 1990; he also used to go-go dance wearing a fish.
• The Isle of Man may have one of the oldest parliaments in the world but its laws have often been out of step with its neighbour across the Irish Sea. This week the island joined the rest of the UK in granting civil partnerships to its citizens. Now the name whose punning appeal so delighted James Joyce doesn’t seem as inappropriate.
• Howard Jacobson: “The novelist Yukio Mishima posed pointing a Samurai sword to his chest and ultimately had himself beheaded in public. This is what’s called taking your art seriously.”
The Realm of the Queen of the Night (1974) by Wolfgang Hutter from Zauberflote at 50 Watts.
The revelatory operations of the chance encounter lie at the heart of le merveilleux (“the marvelous”)—the Surrealist conception of beauty. You find something marvelous in the world (an object, an image, a person, a place) that corresponds, like a piece clicking into a puzzle, to a deep inner need.
Slicing Open the Eyeball: Rick Poynor on Surrealism and the Visual Unconscious by Mark Dery.
• Boy from the Boroughs: Alan Moore interviewed by Pádraig Ó Méalóid; Michael Moorcock interviewed at Suicide Girls.
• Illustrations from Quark, the anthology of speculative fiction edited by Samuel Delany & Marilyn Hacker in 1970.
• The Residents, sans masks, filmed at their San Francisco home in the 1970s.
• Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor played on a glass harp.
• What art can do for science (and vice versa).
• You can never have too much Virgil Finlay.
• Lydia Kiesling reviews Lolita.
• No GDM (dub version) (1979) by Gina X | L. Voag’s Kitchen (2004) by Soft Pink Truth.
The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon (detail, 1881–1898) by Edward Burne-Jones.
Arthur magazine announced its demise this week: “He died as he lived—free, high and a-dreaming of love, ’neath vultures’ terrible gaze.” The magazine lapsed for a while in 2007 then returned but this time it seems things are more permanent. Running a magazine of any kind is never easy, and they don’t always last long—the UK run of the legendary Oz only managed 48 issues to Arthur‘s 32—but it’s a dismal fact that certain tastes are rarely catered for or encouraged in this world. Supermarkets stock multiple titles devoted to women’s hair or tin boxes with wheels but you’ll have to hunt elsewhere for copies of Sight & Sound or The Wire. This isn’t a sign of any kind of new barbarism, if you look to history you’ll find The Savoy magazine publishing Aubrey Beardsley’s art and literature alongside contributions from future Nobel Prize winners yet it only managed eight issues; New Worlds magazine struggled during its run in the 1960s and 1970s, and while it may never have officially died (not while Michael Moorcock lives and breathes) it’s safe to say that it would struggle anew if re-launched today. If this is the end then let’s celebrate what’s been done, and hope it may inspire something new.
Issues #1–25.
The Arthur archives will be available online in the future. In the meantime, the favourites among my own contributions were MBV Arkestra (cover illustration), The Aeon of Horus, Out, Demons, Out (cover illustration), Brian Eno, and Sir Richard Bishop.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Savoy magazine
• Dodgem Logic
• The Realist
• A wake for Arthur
• Oz magazine, 1967-73
Invisible Light by Margo Selski.
The Glass Garage Fine Art Gallery has an online collection of paintings by Margo Selski, many of which feature her cross-dressing son, Theo. Coilhouse profiled artist and model earlier in the week. Some of these paintings mix oil with beeswax which is something I’ve not come across before.
• The Periwinkle Journal‘s first issue will be available online, free, from March 22nd until mid-June, featuring work by filmmaker and artist Hans Scheirl (Dandy Dust), artwork and collages by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, a 7-page colour comic by Mavado Charon, artwork by Timothy Cummings, artwork and installations by Cody Chritcheloe/SSION, photos by Megan Mantia, Science-Heroes by Peter Max Lawrence, an illustration portfolio by Diego Gómez, selections from the queer photography pool on Flickr, reviews and other stuff. More later.
• The Quietus wanted to remind us that this year is the 25th anniversary of the NME‘s C86 compilation tape, a collection that sought to capture a moment of ferment but which inadvertently inspired too much dreary sub-Velvet Underground pop. I’d rather celebrate the 30th anniversary of the NME‘s C81 compilation, a far more diverse collection and musically superior. If you want to judge for yourself, both tapes can be downloaded here.
Machine in the Garden — Our Island Shall Know Abundance Without End by Margo Selski.
• Rick Poynor continues his exploration of Ballardian graphics with a piece about the paintings of Peter Klasen. Related: Where Will It End? JG Ballard interviewed by V. Vale & introduced by Michael Moorcock (Arthur No. 15/March 2005).
In his autobiography, Miracles of Life, JG Ballard suggested that illustrated versions of The Arabian Nights helped prepare him for surrealism.
Robert Irwin, author of The Arabian Nightmare, on the illustrators of The Arabian Nights.
• Another Coulthart cult movie surfaces, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (1970), out of circulation for many years but newly restored by the BFI. A re-release is scheduled for May so I’m hoping now that a DVD release will follow soon after.
• Thom Ayres’ photostream at Flickr, and more long-exposure photos.
• Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts, number 5, volume 8.
• Nicolas Roeg: “I don’t want to be ahead of my time.”
• MetaFilter looks at the films of René Laloux.
• The Eerie covers of Frank Frazetta.
• Requiem (for String Orchestra) by Toru Takemitsu.