A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Photography
Another addition to the burgeoning archive of you-know-what, the Flandrin pose on this occasion being by Egon from JKK Fine Arts. He also sent details of some new photobooks, the image below being an example from The Blue Book. There’s also Narcissus and Homage to Egon Schiele. Thanks Egon!
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive
Studio portrait of models wearing traditional clothing from the provinces of Hedjaz (Hejaz), Yemen and Tripoli, Ottoman Empire (1873).
Photo prints by Turkish photographer Pascal Sébah (1823–1886) at the Library of Congress. I always like to see photos of ruins in the wild, so to speak, as they generally were in the 19th century before the imperatives of archaeology and mass tourism had cleaned, restored and reduced everything to the status of a museum exhibit or (in the case of the temple below) a shopping opportunity. There’s more of Pascal Sébah’s work at Wikimedia Commons.
Kôm Ombo (Sud Est) (The ruins of the Temple of Sobek and Haroeris at Ombos, Egypt, between 1860 and 1886).
Colosses de Memnon à Thèbes (between 1860 and 1890).
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alhambra cyanotypes
• Constantinople, 1900
• Edinburgh, 1929
• Old Bunker Hill
• Inondations 1910
• Berenice Abbott
• Eugene de Salignac
• Luther Gerlach’s Los Angeles
• The temples of Angkor
• The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future
• Edward Steichen
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
• Atget’s Paris
• Downtown LA by Ansel Adams
St Sebastian with wounded chest (c. 1906).
The work of American photographer Fred Holland Day (1864–1933) has featured here in the past but it’s only recently that I came across the archive of prints at the Library of Congress. Not all the works there are digitised yet, and some are still unavailable for viewing, but the LoC prints one can view are always quality scans. Day would have been a significant photographer whatever his subject but his work has additional interest today for its overt homoerotic dimension; he manages to play the usual evasive games with Biblical themes or Classical mythology whilst maintaining a pictorial quality through soft focus and heavily-grained paper. The mood of some of these shots makes them seem far in advance of other work of the period.
St Sebastian in loincloth, tied to tree with rope, arrows in stomach and side, hands behind back (1906).
DG-2499 (1975) by the fantastic (in every sense of the word) Zdzisław Beksiński (1929–2005). See the Dmochowski Gallery for a comprehensive collection of the artist’s work. Thanks to BibliOdyssey for the tip.
• More ICA events: From Animism to Zos: Strange Attractor Salon will be “a series of weekly events, consisting of a talk and a film, exploring some lesser-known intersections of culture, history, mind and nature” running from 10 March–12 May, 2011.
• And on May 10, the London Word Festival presents a Dodgem Logic evening with entertainment provided by contributors to that magazine:
Alan Moore’s reinvigoration of the underground fanzine, Dodgem Logic, comes alive in the non-conformist surroundings of Hackney’s Round Chapel. A night of art, comedy, comment and put-something-back localism. (…) With Robin Ince heading up a colossal stand-up bill, artists Steve Aylett, Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie and Kevin O’Neill panel-up to talk about their comic work, while music comes from hyperactive racketeers The Retro Spankees. With an exhibition of artwork from the magazine, and conducted by editor-in-chief Alan Moore.
• Taschen publishes a collection of Dennis Hopper’s photographs this week. The Independent has a small selection here. Also new from Tachen, Alex Steinweiss, The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover.
• Bass Notes: The Film Posters of Saul Bass at the Kemistry Gallery, London.
DG-2507 by Zdzisław Beksiński.
While riding through the bustling streets of London from 1603 to 1621, one was liable to hear the shout “Long live Queen James!” King James I of England and VI of Scotland was so open about his homosexual love affairs that an epigram had been circulated which roused much mirth and nodding of the heads: Rex fuit Elizabeth: nunc est regina Jacobus—”Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen.”
There’s more about the private life of the man who gave his name to the King James Bible here.
• Addams and Evil, a Tumblr devoted to the great Charles Addams.
• Hannes Bok again at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.
• Caravaggio’s crimes exposed in Rome’s police files.
• Deserted City, photographs by Kim Høltermand.
• The blue sand dunes of the planet Mars.
• A map of the ghost signs of Chicago.
• The movie title stills collection.
• The pitfalls of e-book buying.
• Life On Mars? (1971) by David Bowie | Uncle Sam’s On Mars (1979) by Hawkwind | Eyes On Mars (1980) by Chrome | Cache Coeur Naif (1997) by Mouse on Mars.
Hand In Glove (1973) by The Smiths, 7″ single.
This celebrated pair of buttocks turned up in the inbox this week, courtesy of a news mail from the Manchester District Music Archive announcing their Queer Noise website, an online exhibition exploring LGBT music and club culture in Greater Manchester. It was just over a year ago that I designed a poster for the Queer Noise music event which preceded the online collection; writer and journalist Jon Savage was the host that evening and he’s provided an intro for the site. And speaking of queer noises, I’ve been told recently that John Gill’s 1995 book of that name, Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Music is shortly to be republished in an updated edition. No further details as yet.
Meanwhile, back at the buttocks, it seems that Morrissey swiped his cover photo for the first Smiths single from The Nude Male (1978) by Margaret Walters. I have that very book so here is that very photo, an impressive study by beefcake photographer Jim French.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Queer Noise in Manchester
• Queer Noise and the Wolf Girl
• The fascinating phallus
• Queer Noises