{typography} – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 848

Exhibition poster, 1970.

• RIP Peter Max, an artist who made the popular manifestations of psychedelic graphics near-synonymous with his own name which was always typeset and prominently displayed with a copyright symbol on his printed creations. Max’s formulation of the artist-as-brand was so extensive he makes those who attempted similar things look like slackers. Even Salvador Dalí didn’t have his own breakfast cereal. Hippy transcendence fused with naked commercialism. More Max: The 1971 Peter Max Astrologicalendar; Riverside Drive, a Max-designed typeface; Max on TV: The Fifth Dimension Special: An Odyssey in the Cosmic Universe of Peter Max (1970); Peter Max book covers, puzzles and more.

• “Film is a very unusual combination of things because it has an incredible financial commitment of spending, yet it has to be free and creative. To be any good, the cinema that I do has to be free and yet there are many constraints on it now and my best films were made in an era of wildness…” The late Jeremy Thomas talking to Nick James in 2014 about his long career in cinema.

• At Nautilus: The Promise and Peril of Toad Smoking, the Everest of Psychedelics. Kristen French talks to Kimon de Greef about his new book, The Ego Trip: Psychedelic Toads, a Trail of Deaths and the Guru Who Peddled Transcendence.

• At Smithsonian Mag: Thomas Waters on six ways that people of the past used magic to protect their homes, from witch bottles to mystical symbols.

• New music: September Nineteen Sixty Nine by Adam Wiltzie / Jóhann Jóhannsson; Now We Can Sing by Max Richter; Norfolk by Richard Sage.

• At CDM: Adam Wiltzie talks to Peter Kirn about his posthumous collaboration with Jóhann Jóhannsson.

• At Public Domain Review: Thomas W. Laqueur on dogs in the paintings of Paolo Veronese.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on Leonora Carrington The Hearing Trumpet (1977).

• At the BFI: Kim Newman chooses 10 great sci-fi B-movies.

• Old music: King Crimson on German TV in 1969.

• 1969 (1969) by The Stooges | 1969 (1983) by The Sisters Of Mercy | 1969 (2002) by Boards Of Canada

Weekend links 847

La voix des airs (1931) by René Magritte.

• “Gangsters is to the 1970s what The Prisoner was to the 1960s—a playful, knowing and mildly crazed production but today it bears an important warning from the past to us.” John Quin on the extraordinary vitality of Philip Martin’s Play For Today and the BBC drama serial spun-off from it.

• New music: Juxtapositions by Boddy | Scanner; Embodied Shadow Of Thy Secret Mind by Philippe Blache; Light on Water by Modern Apartments.

• At Public Domain Review: Metamorphosis: Transformations in the Early Modern Flap Book (early 19th century).

Maeterlinck would write of [The Great God Pan], “it is, I believe, the attempt had been made to combine the traditional, or diabolical Fantasy with the new scientific kind, and that such a mixture has produced the most disturbing work I have ever come across”. Maeterlinck’s description of Machen serves as a tidy introduction to the crux of Ray’s writings too. A writer equally perplexed, intrigued, and possessed by the “the terrifying, hypergeometric, fourth dimension”. Ray’s works span the thin fabric of reality, piercing through into other eternal worlds and abducted by its eternal horror. Ray’s worlds are numerous realities battling one another, overlapping, mimicking, and distorting; it is an evocation of time and space as a battle-field of alternativities, governed by strange supernatural forces, notably angels or the occult.

The London of the Imagination, an examination of the fictional metropolis as it manifests in the stories of Belgian writer, Jean Ray

• Mixes of the week: A Slomo mix for The Invisible College, and DreamScenes – September 2026 at Ambientblog.

• At Colossal: “Spanning 200+ works, a new book celebrates the world of fungi“.

• The Electric Music Machine: Five Days at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (1988).

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Ege Basalt.

• Matt Cargill’s favourite albums.

• RIP Jeremy Thomas.

• Metamorphosis (1970) by Ananda Shankar | Metamorphosis (1995) by Pet Shop Boys | Metamorphosis (2012) by Demdike Stare

Weekend links 842

An illustration by Charles Keeping for The Golden Shadow.

• At the BFI: Alex Ramon selects 10 great British TV shows of 1976. (And 50 years ago the American term “shows” was most often applied to the variety format. We would have called these “programmes”.)

• Illustrations by Charles Keeping for The Golden Shadow (1973), a retelling of Greek myths and legends by Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen.

• All The Devils are here: Ken Russell’s controversial masterpiece will return to cinemas in its restored, definitive form in October.

• The Strange World of…The Cramps. Related: The Cramps on The Tube 1986, full 20-minute performance unedited.

• New music: Olùsìn (Worshippers) by Ibukun Sunday; The Will of Tongues by Sarah Davachi.

• In a previously unavailable performance, Can play Halleluhwah on Beat-Club in 1971.

• The first Polish Culture UK Podcast is an introduction to Żuławski’s cinema.

• Mix of the week is DreamScenes – August 2026 at Ambientblog.

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

• The Geologic Atlas of the Moon.

• Xerox Hell

• Golden Hair (1970) by Syd Barrett | The Golden Vibe (Alternative Mix) (1977) by Steve Hillage | Golden Ball (1993) by Stereolab

Weekend links 837

Tree Shadows on the Park Wall, Roundhay, Leeds (1872) by John Atkinson Grimshaw.

• “In many cases, the rules of physics that apply in a real scene appear to be optional in a painting; they can be obeyed or ignored at the discretion of the artist to enhance the painting’s intended effect.” An extract from The Visual World of Shadows by Roberto Casati and Patrick Cavanagh, in which the authors examine some of the rule-breaking that takes place when artists are dealing with shadows in paintings. I mentioned this aspect of artistic licence in a recent interview, making the point that meticulously accurate light and shade is a tell-tale sign of AI art.

• Orson Welles’ unfinished film of Don Quixote is back in the news again. Welles spent twenty years shooting scenes when he had the time and the money, and I seem to have spent an equivalent time reading about attempts to release the film. Any assembled footage will lack Welles’ bravura editing but I’d still like to see it.

• Read an extract from Still In A Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers And The Reinvention Of Rock, 1984–994 by Simon Reynolds.

• Mixes of the week: King Tubby – The Heaviest Dubs – A DJ Mix by Mista Savona, and Bleep Mix #319 by Yu Su.

• “What makes music psychedelic?” James McKeown on the music of Terry Riley.

• At the BFI: Gayle Sequeira selects 10 great films about dinner parties.

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

• The Strange World of…King Tubby.

• Shadows (1967) by The Leather Boy | The Never-Deserting Shadow (1991) by Jarboe | Moon Shadows (2001) by Laraaji

Weekend links 833

Tony Hyde’s original artwork for the front cover of Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music by Hawkwind. The painting is being auctioned later this month.

• At the Daily Heller: Steven Heller reprints his 2012 Atlantic review of The Graphic Canon, a three-volume collection of visual adaptations of works of literature. The collection was edited by the late Russ Kick, and includes my own condensation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Bill Hsu presents…21st Century Nightmares: Dark Animations by Cristóbal León/Joaquín Cociña, Hugo Covarrubias, Christiane Cegavske, John Frame, Saori Shiroki, Joe Hsieh, Phil Tippett, Robert Morgan, Shengwei Zhou.

• At Colossal: In Los Angeles, 70 artists transform a vacant hospital into a sprawling art experience.

What we were doing was rooted in that specific moment, but looking back, it also seems to resonate strongly with the present—particularly in terms of how we understand media, perception, and reality itself. This is something I’ve been thinking about again recently, especially with the renewed activity around Cabaret Voltaire. It brings into focus the extent to which earlier work now reads almost as a form of prefiguration. At the time, though, much of it was intuitive. We didn’t necessarily have a fully formed theoretical framework for what we were doing—we were artists, and we were working instinctively. It’s really only in retrospect that some of those ideas begin to take on a clearer shape and meaning.

Stephen Mallinder talking to Nicolas Ballet about Cabaret Voltaire, the group’s history and working methods

• New music: The Endless Dance by Hannah Peel; Helt by Fjall; Air Signs by Anthéne.

• Adam Rowe is writing a new book about science fiction art.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Brutal Types.

• Mix of the week: Isolatedmix 135 by Aspetuck.

• Brute Reason (1983) by Bernard Szajner | Let’s Get Brutal (1986) by Nitro Deluxe | Brutal But Clean (1994) by Cabaret Voltaire