{surrealism} – Page 69 – { feuilleton }

Europe and the Spirit World

The Temptation of St Anthony (c. 1470) by Martin Schongauer.

From one lot of devils to another, and also another art exhibition with an occult theme. Are curators running out of ideas or becoming more adventurous? The answer probably lies somewhere in between. Europe and the Spirit World, or the Fascination with the Occult, 1750-1950 is currently showing at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg, France, and the art on display ranges from early pieces like Schongauer’s famous engraving to more recent works by artists such as Victor Brauner, one of whose Chimeras is featured. The website is sparse but there is a 450-page catalogue for those interested. The exhibition runs until February 12th, 2012.

Weekend links 86

Salammbô by Alastair (Hans Henning Voigt) from Harry Crosby‘s Red Skeletons (1927). Dover published a new collection of Alastair’s drawings in September.

“A Taste of Honey showed working-class women from a working-class woman’s point of view, had a gay man as a central and sympathetic figure, and a black character who was neither idealised nor a racial stereotype.” RIP Shelagh Delaney. Related: Shelagh Delaney’s Salford (1960), directed by Ken Russell, and all 47 minutes (!) of The White Bus (1967), Lindsay Anderson’s strange, pre-If…. short, written by Shelagh Delaney, filmed in and around Manchester.

Since birth I’ve craved all things psychedelic, the energy and beauty of it. The pleasure… […] But in the US the exploration of consciousness and its powers—or really any curiosity about anything at all—is actively discouraged, because the system is so corrupt that it depends on people being virtually unconscious all the time. Burroughs cracked that code long ago. Spirituality here equals money; no one seems to be able to think, never mind explore their own consciousness.

Laurie Weeks: Making Magic Out of the Real

• Ian Albinson shows us The Title Design of Saul Bass while Ace Jet 170 has a copy of the new Bass monograph.

• Kris Kool (1970) at 50 Watts, Philip Caza’s lurid, erotic, psychedelic comic strip.

Götz Krafft by EM Lilien from a collection at Flickr.

• Serious Listeners: The Strange and Frightening World of Coil.

• The Octopus Chronicles, a new blog at Scientific American.

• We now live in a world where there are Ghost Box badges.

• Kilian Eng interviewed at Sci-Fi-O-Rama.

• Dalí Planet

• Bedabbled!

• A Taste of Honey (1962) by Acker Bilk | A Taste of Honey (1965) by Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass | A Taste of Honey (Moog version) (1969) by Martin Denny.

Secret Societies and Spirit Boards

Komposition für einen Rhombus (2007) by Fabian Marti.

Fabian Marti’s print is one of the few works that stood out for me in the press materials for the Secret Societies exhibition which has just opened at the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux:

[Secret Societies] deals with the general theme of secret societies through the prism of contemporary art in the current context of media super-exposure – from WikiLeaks to Credit Rating Agencies (CRA), just to quote two current examples. Artists have always been fascinated by the unknown and the occult. But unlike journalists who are mainly focused on investigating present-day news, artists work around the mechanisms of the secret and are better equipped to question the very limits of the ideology of transparency in our era of super-exposure.

Unfortunately many of the works look like the customary state of affairs, with a bunch of contemporary artists doing their usual schtick and not really questioning (familiar gallery buzzword) anything much at all. On the plus side they have a screening of Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother, and also a contribution from Cerith Wyn Evans whose Acephalé reworks in neon the André Masson design for Georges Bataille’s Surrealist secret society. Gary Lachman has created an audio guide for the exhibition which is curated by Cristina Ricupero and Alexis Vaillant, and which runs until February 26th, 2012.

For a more determinedly occult showing this month, there’s Spirit Board curated by JL Schnabel at the Articulated Gallery, San Francisco. And elsewhere I’d recommend the work of Scott Treleaven and Jesse Bransford.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Scott Treleaven

Dalí’s discography

Lonesome Echo (1955) by Jackie Gleason.

Not a definitive list, I was merely browsing Discogs.com out of curiosity. For an artist eager to infiltrate every medium you’d expect there to be more involvement from Dalí with the music world. The Jackie Gleason is included here as the earliest entry for which the artist apparently provided a cover painting and a sleeve note. There’s a nice shot of the back cover on this page with its photo of Salvador and Jackie shaking hands.

L’Apothéose Du Dollar Racontée Par Salvador Dalí (1971).

Next up is a panegyric to one of the artist’s obsessions—money—recorded on a flexidisc for Crédit Commercial de France. Difficult to imagine any bank today promoting themselves with someone dropping phrases like “divine diahrrée“. A scarce item which can however be found on Ubuweb.

Je Suis Fou De Dalí (1975).

Here the artist extemporises (in French) to a trio of dutiful journalists. Ubuweb again has the entire album, together with a handful of other recordings. This page has some details of the discussion.

Etre Dieu has been mentioned here before owing to its connection with that cult composer of mine Igor Wakhévitch. Described as an “Opera-Poem: Audiovisual and Catarrah in six parts” it propels Dalí’s megalomania to cosmic proportions with the artist portraying a godlike version of himself. In attendance are an angel and two further Dalís, the male and female halves of an androgynous avatar with the female component being voiced by the great French actress Delphine Seyrig. The libretto is credited to Manuel Vázquez Montalban. The performance was recorded in 1974 but not released on disc until 1989. Not the best of Wakhévitch’s works at all, you’re better off with Logos or Docteur Faust.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí
• Mongolian impressions
• Hello Dali!
• Dalí and the City
• Dalí’s Elephant
• Dalí in Wonderland
• Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune
• Dirty Dalí
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie revisited
• Dalí and Film
• Salvador Dalí’s apocalyptic happening
• Dalí Atomicus
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie

The art of Jindřich Štyrský, 1899–1942

From a late Surrealist to an early one. Jindřich Štyrský is a Czech artist best remembered today for his collages but he was also a painter, a photographer and a publisher of erotic material. He illustrated and published a Czech edition of Lautréamont’s Maldoror, and helped found the Surrealismus review in Prague.

The Bathe (1934).

Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve liked Štyrský’s collages for years, many of which subject sentimental Victorian illustration to processes of violent transmutation. Ever since seeing The Bathe I’ve found it impossible to look at one of Renoir’s fleshy nudes without wondering what happened to the exposed viscera. Weimar covered Štyrský’s career in some detail last year so that’s a good place to go for further information. There’s an extract from Štyrský’s dream diary here, and a substantial collection of the collage work and other material at this Flickr set.

Cover for a Czech edition of Fantômas (1929).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Initiations in the Abyss: A Surrealist Apocalypse
• Vultures Await
• Wilfried Sätty: Artist of the occult
• Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried Sätty
• Metamorphosis Victorianus
• Max (The Birdman) Ernst
• Gandharva by Beaver & Krause
• The art of Stephen Aldrich