{painting} – Page 25 – { 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

The art of Davis Meltzer, 1929–2017

Illustrators were often easy to miss in the pre-internet days, when paperbacks published overseas could be hard to find or even see. Such is the case with Davis Meltzer whose work I hadn’t really noticed before until this cover turned up at 70s Sci-Fi Art. Meltzer had a long career as a scientific illustrator for National Geographic but his work as a cover artist for SF novels only lasted a decade, from 1970 to 1981. Not everything is as dramatically eye-catching as his Simak cover but there’s a unique sensibility at work, with only occasional similarities to other artists of his generation like Kelly Freas.

The Temptation of St. Gerome.

The piece above is from an auction site which doesn’t reveal any information apart from the title. If this was a religious illustration it’s one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. Auction listings state that Meltzer’s paintings were mostly done in gouache, a common medium for illustrators and graphic designers owing to its flat bright colours. The following selection favours the more visually arresting examples over generic spaceship art.

Continue reading “The art of Davis Meltzer, 1929–2017”

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