“Scrotum” is a dirty word.
For some US librarians.
Very Hungry God
Subodh Gupta’s giant skull constructed from Indian cooking utensils.
From an exhibition at the Eglise Saint-Bernard, Paris, October 2006.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• History of the skull as symbol
February sunset
Today at 17:21. This kind of view always reminds me of the opening
line from The Hill of Dreams (1907) by Arthur Machen:
“There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened.”
The art of Nicola Verlato
There’s no place like home (2006).
Now here’s an artist—Italian, works in NYC—who makes most painters look like they’re slacking. No need to post more tiny jpegs when you can go to his site and see his extraordinary tempest-tossed cowgirls at a larger size. And there’s more oil-on-canvas mayhem at the Stux Gallery, New York.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
The Angelic Conversation
Title by John Dee, words by William Shakespeare, narration by Judi Dench and music by Coil; Derek Jarman’s oneiric film/poem is released on DVD, along with two other works.
The BFI releases three Derek Jarman films together—Caravaggio (1986), Wittgenstein (1993) and The Angelic Conversation (1985)—all digitally restored and re-mastered for DVD and each with extensive and illuminating extra features.
The films were made with the BFI Production Board, whose aim was to foster innovation in British filmmaking, thus providing a natural home for Jarman’s artistic sensibility. These three films represent highpoints in his career and are perhaps the most enduring in their appeal and relevance to contemporary audiences.
Intense, dreamlike, and poetic, The Angelic Conversation is one of the most artistic of Derek Jarman’s films. With his painter’s eye, Jarman conjured, in a beautiful palette of light, colour and texture, an evocative and radical visualisation of Shakespeare’s love poems.
Of the 154 sonnets written by Shakespeare, most were written to an unnamed young man, commonly referred to as the Fair Youth. Here, Judi Dench’s emotive readings of 14 sonnets are coupled with ethereal sequences; figures on seashores, by streams and in colourful gardens. The disruption of these magical scenes with images of barren and threatening landscapes echoes perfectly the celebration and torment of love explored in the sonnets.
Shot on Super-8 before being transferred to 35mm film, the unique technical approach results in a striking aesthetic, with Coil’s languorous soundtrack completing the intoxicating effect.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• James Bidgood
• Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally
• Un Chant d’Amour by Jean Genet