A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Photography
If someone hasn’t already named these things mantlers you know it’s only a matter of time. The photo on the left is Johan by Michelle Martinoli from a series she calls Body Sculptures. On the right is Jeremy by Jamie Luca, part of a set at Homotography.
Cover design by Philip Gough.
Ghosts, Spooks and Spectres (1972 reprint). Editor Charles Molin collected nineteen ghost stories by writers including Oscar Wilde (The Canterville Ghost), Charles Dickens (The Signal-Man), J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Madame Crowl’s Ghost) and HG Wells (The Inexperienced Ghost). This was one of my favourite books when I was ten-years old. There’s nuffin like a Puffin. Puffin Books’ parent company, Penguin, is 75 this year.
• The good people at the Outer Alliance have posted an interview with me here in which I talk about the subversive sexualities of sf in the 1970s and also admit to writing fiction.
• There’s just time to mention It Came From Pebble Mill, an event which includes another screening of David Rudkin’s Penda’s Fen.
• “In our society, there has tended to be a very strong compartmentalization of different experiences, different cultural forms, different genres. We can talk in a very broad sense and say art is separate from science, for example, or body is separate from mind, or we can talk in a specific sense and say one certain form of dance music is separate from one form of, say, heavy metal. I don’t really buy those compartmentalizations. I understand why they exist, how they’ve come into being and why they’re convenient, but it’s not the way I think, it’s not the way I experience the world, it’s not the way I believe things should be.” From an interview by Colin Marshall with David Toop at 3QD. Toop’s latest book is Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener.
• The Kingdom of the Pearl by Léonard Rosenthal, illustrated by Edmund Dulac.
• Ghost Stations by Dollboy, a CD package. And then there’s the Ghostly Bento.
• 7 Inch Cinema are Birmingham-based cultural historians.
• Mark Pilkington’s Mirage Men now has its own site.
• Borges on Pleasure Island: JLB and his love of RLS.
• RIP Arne Nordheim, Norwegian composer.
• Charlie Visnic’s Modular Ghost Synth.
• On the trail of Tutankhamen’s penis.
• Ghosts by Japan | Spooky Rhodes by Laika | Purple Dusk by Spectre.
Elatus from Pandaemonium I (Centaurs) (2010) by David Trullo.
One of a series of centaur portraits by Spanish artist David Trullo. Placing characters from Classical mythology in contemporary settings makes a change. The title Pandaemonium I implies further series so I’m curious to see how Trullo follows these.
Battling Centaurs (1873) by Arnold Böcklin.
Centaurs had a flush of popularity in Germanic art of the 19th century; Franz Stuck painted them a number of times and Jugend magazine is littered with many often grotesque representations. I’ve never seen an explanation for this resurgence of interest. Is it because a man/horse hybrid is a potent symbol of masculine power? Arnold Böcklin’s painting is one of the better examples and suits its title more than Michelangelo’s famous sculpture in which the hybrids are lost in a tangle of writhing bodies.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mermaids
• The Masks of Medusa
_11S.jpg)
Hedy Lamarr strikes a pose in a peacock dress for Samson and Deliah (1949), one of Hollywood’s many tiresome Biblical epics. If the photo isn’t just a promo shot and Hedy appears wearing this it’s no doubt a highlight but it’s so long since I saw the film the only thing I remember is Victor Mature bringing down the temple at the end. Ms Lamarr’s outfit wasn’t the first of its kind, of course, the examples below from dancer Ruth St Denis and film star Betty Blythe have appeared here before, but Hedy’s dress is a lot more extravagant; Aubrey Beardsley would have loved it. I might have said it was the most extravagant but that honour should go to a Chinese wedding dress made of 2,009 peacock feathers which was unveiled last year. Impressive if completely impractical.
Thanks to Thom for the Hedy tip!
Ruth St Denis—The Peacock.
Betty Blythe.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Betty Blythe
• Ruth St Denis
• The Feminine Sphinx
• Alla Nazimova’s Salomé
Transfiguration (1952) by Sulamith Wülfing.
• Observatory posted photos of its Lovecraft art exhibition; see if you can spot my pics. Related: Write Club has more photos. Also, A Word From Our Sponsor.
• Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick. Related: Beat Memories—The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg.
• Adam Curtis on BP and the Axis of Evil; how the the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company became British Petroleum and helped give Iran over to the Ayatollahs.
• The Quietus interviews Peter Christopherson (TG, Coil, etc) and Dr John.
• The Strange World of Adolf Hoffmeister at A Journey Round My Skull.
• An Artists’ Dialogue On CocoRosie’s Grey Oceans at Stereogum.
• Werner Herzog and David Lynch combine their talents.
• Jon Savage on The Residents versus The Beatles.
• BUTT magazine interviews James Bidgood.
• The Daily Drop Cap.
• The Gay Rub.