{religion} – Page 33 – { feuilleton }

Bindu Shards by James Turrell

Dhatu (2010).

The intensities of colour found in some of James Turrell’s light works might warrant the description “psychedelic” at times, although “transcendental” is probably more apt when it comes to his immersive environments. Dhatu is one of the latter, a new installation at the Gagosian Gallery, London, where a room filled with changing shades of light has been named after a bodily element from Buddhism. The gallery says of the work:

Light like this is seen rarely with the eyes open, yet it is familiar to that which can be apprehended with the eyes closed in lucid dream, deep meditation, and near-death experiences.

Bindu Shards (2010).

As for Bindu Shards, also at the Gagosian, the name refers to a kind of cosmic singularity in Hinduism and for this Turrell has created a bathysphere-like chamber which visitors are required to enter one at a time in order to experience its light show. This one really does sound psychedelic if Jonathan Jones’ frothing description is anything to go by:

Then I see a cityscape of vertiginous skyscrapers, with no earth below. All these forms and volumes that pulse and metamorphosise are defined by colours that change convulsively – the most intensely saturated greens and reds you can imagine, colours that seem solid, then burst into microscopic patterns of oranges, blacks, gold and misty white; all these colours bubble and whir at breakneck speed, as if you were in a particle accelerator. (More)

And a frothing description is all that’s available unfortunately, now that visiting sessions are fully-booked, but the other Turrell works will be on view until December 10, 2010.

• Greeting the Light: An Interview with James Turrell
• Other Turrell works at Flickr

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Colorscreen
• New Olafur Eliasson
• New work from James Turrell

Infernal entrances

L’Enfer, Boulevard de Clichy (1911).

A recent posting at The Haunted Lamp showed the interior of L’Enfer, a Montmartre cabaret which described itself as “unique au monde”, pictured here in a memorable photo by Eugène Atget. The interior and portions of the exterior were certainly unique enough, and look like they were created by the same people who designed the carnival show for Harry Lachman’s film Dante’s Inferno (1935), but the yawning mouth as an entrance isn’t without precedent. Some prior examples follow.

Palazzo Zuccari.

L’Enfer is long gone, unfortunately, but the entrance to the Palazzo Zuccari in the Via Gregoriana, Rome, is still extant despite being hundreds of years older. I was hoping that Google’s Street View would have some good pictures but they managed to capture the building in the midst of renovation. A friend of mine was working at an office in this street when I was in Rome in 1993 and the yawning mouths and windows are a very curious sight in a narrow road near the Spanish Steps. Flickr has better views, here, here and here.

Ogre, Parco dei Mostri.

The Rome palazzo is named after the Mannerist artist who lived there, Federico Zuccari (c. 1542/1543–1609), and Zuccari’s inspiration for his doorway came from another Mannerist creation, the Parco dei Mostri at Bomarzo. The mouth in this case isn’t an entrance to the underworld but a devouring ogre, and one of the park’s many grotesque attractions. I wonder if this was also an inspiration for the giant floating head in John Boorman’s ludicrous science fiction film, Zardoz (1974).

Moulin Rouge!

And speaking of films, Baz Luhrmann used the L’Enfer entrance as a gateway to Montmartre itself in the zooming shot which opens Moulin Rouge!. I like that idea, as though it’s an iniquitous equivalent of the old Temple Bar gateway to the City of London. For more pictures of L’Enfer, and details of its history, see here and here. If anyone knows of any other notable doorways like these, please leave a comment.

Update: Nathalie found another Bomarzo influence while Jescie on Twitter drew my attention to a set from this German film.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Villa d’Este
• Harry Lachman’s Inferno
• Atget’s Paris

The art of Ephraim Moses Lilien, 1874–1925

Marvellous black-and-white work from a Galician artist whose drawings were predominately concerned with Jewish and Zionist themes. These are from a small monograph about the artist, The New Art of an Ancient People; The Work of Ephraim Mose Lilien (1906) which can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Elsewhere there’s a page here about the artist with further examples and links, a gallery site with a catalogue of his drawings of Palestine, and some of his illustrations can also be found in back issues of Jugend magazine.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jugend, 1900

Weekend links 27

Annie Duels The Sun (2010) by Angie Wang.

I’m interviewed again, this time by James at Cardboard Cutout Sundown. Covering familiar subjects for {feuilleton} readers: art history, design, Lovecraft, the genre/mainstream seesaw, etc. Related: Jeff VanderMeer previewed my design for the forthcoming Steampunk Reloaded.

• Battle over legacy of father of Art Nouveau. Prague authorities are demanding the paintings which comprise Alphonse Mucha’s Slav Epic be moved to the capital.

• The films that time forgot. David Thomson on ten neglected works including a cult favourite of mine, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (1970).

• The Viatorium Press: “Fine letterpress printing, digital typography, and hand painted illumination.” Among their recent productions is a poem by Clark Ashton Smith.

À la conquête du pôle (1912); Georges Méliès vs. Jules Verne.

• Taxandria, a feature-length collaboration between Raoul Servais, François Schuiten and, er, Alain Robbe-Grillet, is on YouTube. My earlier post about the film is here.

• Salvagepunk, or (maybe) Post-post-modernism: “How a music micro-trend heralds an emerging, internet-enabled, aesthetic movement.” See also the latest issue of The Wire.

• Drainspotting with Remo Camerota: documenting Japan’s creative manhole covers.

• Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of squid: a book devoted to Kraken Black Spiced Rum.

• After Stanley Kubrick. Christiane Kubrick on life without Stanley K.

• Pills and penises and kissing boys: Tara Sinn’s Kaleidoscopes.

• Found Objects: a hauntological dumping ground.

• Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an.

• RIP Frank Kermode.

• Feuerland (1968) by Theo Schumann Combo; Feuerland (1977) by Michael Rother; Feuerland (2007) by Justus Köhnke.

Constantinople, 1900

Yeni-Djama (ie, Yeni Cami) by moonlight, Constantinople.

Fascinating views of the Turkish city circa 1890–1900 from the Photochrom collection of the Library of Congress. These are from the LoC Flickr selection; the library website has a lot more.

Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches.

The fountain of Sultan Ahmed, Constantinople.

Entrée de la Mosque Ste. Sophie, Constantinople.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Albert Kahn’s Autochromes
• The Dawn of the Autochrome