{psychedelia} – Page 16 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 605

UFO Mk2 (1967), a poster for the UFO club by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat (Michael English & Nigel Waymouth).

• Link of the week without a doubt is Yuka Fujii’s raw video footage of the sessions for David Sylvian’s solo debut, Brilliant Trees, which includes appearances by Jon Hassell, Holger Czukay and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Czukay’s contribution to this and other albums in the 1980s included the use of a second-hand IBM Dictaphone, a machine which was often credited on album sleeves but seldom discussed in interviews beyond Czukay’s claims that it was a superior sound-sampling tool. You can see the mysterious “instrument” in this film and discover (at last!) more about the machine here. Big thanks to Colin for the tip!

• “Part of what makes watching it so compelling now is Berger’s fascinated immersion in the culture of images itself.” Olivia Laing on 50 years of Ways of Seeing by John Berger.

• At The Wire: David Toop on what happens when the performance of music is extended over long durations, from all night concerts to sacred rituals that last for weeks.

• At Bandcamp: Tony Rettman profiles Audion magazine and its editors, indefatigable Krautrock experts Alan & Steve Freeman.

• New music: W by Boris, a remix of Laurie Anderson’s Big Science by Arca, and a cover of King Crimson’s Red by Hedvig Mollestad.

• The latest exploration of psychedelic graphics by DJ Food is a collection of posters for London’s UFO Club.

• Wolf Moon: Nina MacLaughlin has some questions for our ancient satellite.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Frank’s Box: The Real Telephone to the Dead.

• Mix of the week: XLR8R Podcast 731 by Anthea.

• At Strange Flowers: 22 books for 2022.

• UFO (1970) by Guru Guru | UFO Over Paris (1978) by Steve Hillage | El UFO Cayó (2005) by Ry Cooder

Weekend links 603

Weird Tales (Canada), May 1942. Cover art by Edmond Good.

• “…in 1968, seven years after the MOMA retrospective, Orson Welles appreciatively got in touch and suggested that Bogdanovich do a book-length set of interviews with him like the one that Bogdanovich had just done with Ford. The resulting book, This Is Orson Welles (which took a winding path to publication, in 1992, seven years after Welles’s death), is a classic of the literature of movies.” Richard Brody on the late Peter Bogdanovich. The book of Welles interviews is one of my favourite film books, as good in its way as Hitchcock/Truffaut, and like Truffaut’s book you wish it was twice as long.

• At Public Domain Review: Paloma Ruiz and Hunter Dukes on Johann Caspar Lavater’s frog-to-human physiognomies. If you reverse the sequence, as I did for one of the illustrations in Lovecraft’s Monsters, you approach The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

• The week in virtual exploration (via MetaFilter): Mini Tokyo 3D and Explore the Soane Museum, London.

• Submissions are open for the 16th issue of Dada journal Maintenant which will have the theme “Nyet Zero”.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Artists and artisans collaborate on exhibition of 144 maekake aprons.

• DJ Food unearths flyers and posters for the Million Volt Light & Sound Rave, 1967.

• Mix of the week: Isolatedmix 116 by Chris SSG.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Stephen Dwoskin Day.

• The Little Blue Frog (1970) by Miles Davis | Jail-House Frog (1972) by Amon Düül II | Tree Frog (1995) by Facil

Three short films by Marcell Jankovics

Sisyphus (1974).

Hungarian animator Marcell Jankovics died in May last year but he lived just long enough to see his most celebrated feature, Son of the White Mare (1981), restored and released for the first time in the USA. The film—which I haven’t yet managed to see—is one of those that gets described as “most psychedelic ever”, a grand and rather unwise claim when other animated features such as Belladonna of Sadness (1973) and Paprika (2006) are very “psychedelic” in their own different ways (and both films I’d recommend, incidentally). Psychedelic or not, Son of the White Mare is beautifully styled and vividly coloured, to a degree that puts it at the polar extreme to these three shorts from Jankovics, all of which are exercises in hand-drawn, black-and-white minimalism.

The Struggle (1977).

Hungarian animation from the Cold War era tends to be overshadowed by the films produced by the studios in Poland and the former Czechoslovakia, but animated films from all the Eastern Bloc nations were a fertile medium for symbolic expressions of frustration with the politics of the time. It’s a commonplace observation that repressive regimes inspire a flourishing of metaphor and symbolism in the arts. I don’t know whether Jankovics was being deliberately allegorical with these three shorts but when two of them concern familiar figures from Greek mythology you start to look for subtext. The films are all very brief but they’re also technically impressive. I especially like the way Sisyphus manages to convey a sense of colossal weight with nothing more than a few calligraphic flourishes.

Prometheus (1992).

Weekend links 599

Taarna by Chris Achilleos for Heavy Metal, September 1981. A typical piece by Achilleos, whose death was announced this week, and very typical for a Heavy Metal cover. Achilleos was a prolific illustrator.

• New music: The Truth, the Glow, the Fall (Live At Montreux) by Anna von Hausswolff, from her forthcoming album, Live At Montreux Jazz Festival. The last gig I went to was in October 2019, to see Sunn O))) supported by Anna von Hausswolff. Easily one of the best things I’ve ever experienced. Meanwhile, Anna von Hausswolff has had to cancel a Paris church concert following protests by a rabble of outraged Catholics. Bravo les crétins!

• “…it is easy to forget that Montesquiou—regardless of his own work—was not merely emblematic of Decadence, he was essentially patient zero in its viral spread.” Strange Flowers explores the exquisite life of the bat-obsessed, hydrangea-cultivating Robert de Montesquiou.

• “Kotatsu have been around longer than we imagine. And art history has the proof.” Spoon & Tamago on an old Japanese method for warming a room during winter. Also further evidence that cats always find the warmest place in any house.

• Dennis Cooper‘s favourite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2021. Thanks again for the link here!

• The Wire magazine has opened its collection of articles by the late Greg Tate so they may be read by non-subscribers.

• “Neil Bartlett is a gay writer’s gay writer,” says Jeremy Atherton Lin reviewing Bartlett’s latest, Address Book.

• James Balmont on the psychedelic cinema of Nobuhiko Obayashi.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Erotique.

• Northern lights photographer of the year.

• The Strange World of…Takuroku.

• RIP Robbie Shakespeare.

• Robbie Shakespeare’s bass x 3: King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1974) by Augustus Pablo | Nightclubbing (1981) by Grace Jones | Bass And Trouble (1985) by Sly & Robbie

Prints update

The Major Arcana (2006): a C-type print on Fuji gloss paper. A1 or A2 sizes.

I’m continuing to add artwork to Etsy which will be available as prints in a variety of sizes and papers. I would have done more of this by now but I’m still very busy working through the commissions of the past few months so progress has been slow. The system does actually work as intended, however, with orders being routed automatically to the printer then printed and shipped within 24 hours. The initial setup may take longer than places like CafePress but the benefits are multiple, not only a faster turnaround (and cheaper worldwide postage) but now I can create prints of any size I want, and with a variety of papers and finishes. Most of the items there at the moment are the things I consider “greatest hits” so the latest additions include new poster versions of my psychedelic Alice in Wonderland artwork, together with the International Symbols Tarot poster and yet more Lovecraftiana. Requests are, of course, still welcome.

Psychedelic Wonderland (2009): a C-type print on Fuji gloss paper. A1 or A2 sizes.

Psychedelic Looking-Glass (2010): a C-type print on Fuji gloss paper. A1 or A2 sizes.

Cthulhu (1998): a giclée print on Canson Aquarelle rag paper. A3 size.

Dagon (1999): a giclée print on Canson Aquarelle rag paper. A3 size.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Prints at Etsy