{ feuilleton }

The Weird

This is a piece of promotional art I’ve done for The Weird: Fugitive Fictions/Hybrid Genres, a two-day event taking place in London next month at the Horse Hospital and the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Organiser Tim Jarvis asked me to contribute an unspecified something; I suggested a poster but that idea proved to be too ambitious, somewhat fortuitously since I had an elaborate design in mind that the current workload would have compromised. This design is the distilled version. The five inset images are a result of having written this post at the beginning of the month. The bespectacled owl is an alchemical illustration from a book I’d found in a charity shop a couple of days earlier.

The event looks like a good one. In addition to the opportunity to see M. John Harrison and others reading on day one, there’s a host of talks on day two that push many of my cult buttons, including discussion of the works of Nigel Kneale and William Hope Hodgson. There’s also Dr Benjamin Noys on “Full Spectrum Offence: The Neo-Weird of Savoy” which I guess may touch on some of the work I’ve done for Savoy Books with David Britton. I’ve got a couple of deadlines looming at the moment so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to attend but I’ll certainly be there in spirit.

Wicker mania

US reissue poster (1979).

The restored version of The Wicker Man (1973) has been showing in UK cinemas recently, and the Blu-ray edition of the film is released this week. My copy arrived from Moviemail, and while I’m not in a great hurry to watch it again—this is one film that’s so familiar I could lip-synch along with it—it’s been a pleasure to compare the restored scenes to the long-version DVD which appeared in 2002. The earlier version had its missing scenes taken from a 1-inch videotape which was considerably poorer quality than the rest of the film. The restored scenes still look grainy and slightly washed out but now they at least look like pieces of film, not interpolations from video. The screengrabs below show the difference between scenes from the 2002 DVD compared to their equivalents on the Blu-ray. The rest of the film looks pristine, of course.

The new version isn’t as long as the longest version, however, a preliminary sequence in and around the mainland police station having been excised. In a lengthy feature in the October edition of Sight & Sound director Robin Hardy explains that he disliked what he calls “the Z-Cars section” (referring to an old UK TV series), and it’s true that it doesn’t help the story at all. Whether they like it or not, viewers of the film have to accept constable Howie as their proxy within the story, and he’s an insufferable prig throughout. That’s bearable in the context of his presence on Summerisle but the mainland sequence throws his character into relief against his less priggish colleagues.

Another slight omission is the title card which used to precede the film thanking Lord Summerisle and the islanders for allowing the filmmakers to observe their rituals. In its place we have a zoom into the face of Nuada the Sun God, a painted rendering of a carved figure seen in the film. I’ve always liked this face which has become an emblem of the film even though it’s not present in all versions. (For more detail about the tangled history of the various prints, see this site.)

Cover photo by Oliver Hunter.

A rather bad drawing of the Nuada face appears at the beginning of each chapter of the novelisation which Hamlyn published in 1979 (and on the cover of the US edition from the year before). This was the year when the film’s reputation began to take off, and also the year it was reissued in the US. Although Hardy and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer are both credited for the novel I suspect the writing is mostly Shaffer’s work. It’s pretty good, and goes into considerable detail, fleshing out the story and Howie’s character, and also showing how much research the pair put into the pagan side of things. You also get the lyrics of some of the songs. Until the complete soundtrack appeared in 2002 the novel was the only place you could find the salacious missing verse from Willow’s Song which describes a maid milking a bull.

And speaking of the soundtrack, the three-disc Blu-ray edition includes the complete soundtrack on one of its discs, a considerable bonus if you don’t have it already. I should note that my good friend Gav insists I mention that the film’s final brass fanfare—labelled as Sunset on the soundtrack album—is a Bulgarian folk tune entitled ~~Rodopska Devoika~~ Zamrakanala Mona Jana, something neither of us has ever seen credited.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Children of the Stones

Beardsley reviewed

More Aubrey Beardsley ephemera. These pages are from the bound edition of The Studio for 1894, reviews of two of Beardsley’s earliest publications: the first editions of Le Morte d’Arthur (which was published in multiple volumes), and the illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé which sealed Beardsley’s reputation as a major force in the art of the 1890s. The reviews lavish praise on both works, unsurprisingly since Beardsley had received the magazine’s support from the very first issue. It’s interesting to note even at this early stage mention of the rumblings of discontent which would grow increasingly loud in the following years. Also that The Peacock Skirt is here given the name The Peacock Girl.

NEW PUBLICATIONS. Le Morte d’Arthur. By Sir Thomas Mallory. Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. (London: J. M. Dent & Co.)—Salome. By Oscar Wilde. English version. Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. (London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane.)—It is no use, for the sake of maintaining the dignity of Sir Thomas Mallory, to deny that for this portly quarto, with its gold emblazoned cover, the interest centres in the designs which decorate rather than illustrate its text. Even Professor Rhys’ able introduction on the famous romances fails to detain one long from going on to the wealth of “black and white” in the volume. Since Mr. Joseph Pennell introduced Mr. Aubrey Beardsley in the first number of The Studio, barely ten months have passed, yet already (as the designs we receive in the Prize would alone suffice to prove) he has his disciples, imitators, and even (in a clever menu of a Glasgow dinner) his parodist. France and America have praised or attacked him, and to a following of younger men he is the latest and strongest force in decorative art. Here analytical criticism would be obviously out of place, but the volume before us may be cordially praised as a whole, and the four illustrations here reproduced (by the publishers’ kind permission) advanced as proof of the fancy and invention of the artist, and of his powerful handling of masses of black.

While Mr. Pennell, in his criticism—with reference more especially to certain separate drawings each complete in itself—laid the greatest stress upon “the use of the single line with which he weaves his drawings into a harmonious whole, joining extremes and reconciling oppositions,” here it is rather the balances of masses and the simplifying of forms to their most naive presentation that are so fascinating. Ornament for its own sake is plentiful and composition of figures, some individual to an almost dangerous degree, others perhaps slightly reminiscent of earlier work; but all these are most impressive from their bold use of white upon black. It is curious to see how often the design seems dug out of the wood, rather than drawn upon paper and reproduced by a mechanical process. A more perilous style to imitate could hardly be found, for its faults are easier copied than the astounding fertility and freshness of invention which more than redeem them. Only very rash or very foolish draughtsmen would attempt to do so; yet the suggestive influences of this book will probably affect modern design for some time to come.

As a feast of fantastic and eerie conceptions, some of rare beauty and not a few wrought with grotesque diablerie, it will delight (or exasperate as the case may be) all who take an interest in the applied arts. As the work of an artist who has not long been out of his teens, it is peculiarly noteworthy; for if one joined Mr. Beardsley’s few detractors and set aside all they failed to appreciate, the residue would offer enough motives for the stock-in-trade of a dozen less prodigal pattern-makers for years to come. To the publishers, whose enterprise made such a luxurious edition possible, to the artist, who has put so much of himself into it, the public should be grateful. For, like or dislike it, it will be long before a book so interesting and unconventional issues from the press, and one is left eagerly awaiting the remaining portion of the work.

In the new edition of Salome we find the irrepressible personality of the artist dominating everything—whether the compositions do or do not illustrate the text—what may be their exact purpose or the meaning of their symbolism, is happily not necessary to consider here. Nor is it expedient to bring conventional criticism to bear upon them for nothing in ancient or modern art is so akin that you could place it side by side for comparison. Audacious and extravagant, with a grim purpose and power of achieving the unexpected—we had almost written the impossible—one takes it for itself, as a piquant maddening potion, not so much a tonic as a stimulant to fancy. Those who dislike Mr. Beardsley’s work will be happy in the possession of the documentary evidence to support their opinion, while those who find it the very essence of the decadent fin de siècle will rank Salome as the typical volume of a period too recent to estimate its actual value, and too near to judge of its ultimate influence on decorative art. All collectors of rare and esoteric literature will rank this book as one of the most remarkable productions of the modern press. We have to thank the publishers for allowing us to reproduce The Peacock Girl, a full-page design that is typical of the work, The binding, a coarse pale blue canvas, with decorations in gold, Mr. Beardsley’s chosen device, being on the back cover, is entirely admirable.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Aubrey Beardsley archive

A Scholar in his Study

A Scholar in his Study (detail, 1650–1654) by Rembrandt van Rijn.

Rembrandt produced many etchings throughout his long career, and if he hadn’t also distinguished himself as a painter his etchings alone would have ensured that his reputation survived. For an example of his mastery of deep shadow see St. Jerome in a Dark Chamber (1642) where the solid masses of shade are created by a virtuoso display of cross-hatching.

One etching is reproduced far more often than any of the others, the piece known as A Scholar in his Study, which can also be found labelled The Magician, or simply Faust even though it was never intended as an illustration of anyone so specific. The etching is often used as an illustration for Goethe’s play, of course, understandably when it’s one of the few instances in Western art of a first-rate artist depicting a visible occult event. Prior to the 19th century the depiction of magic in paintings or graphic works was generally limited to either mythological or religious tableaux, or to scenes of generic witchery. Rembrandt’s piece is unusual in showing what appears to be a manifestation of some sort, with a disc of Divine Names either partly concealing or forming the head of a spectral figure. The figure is barely visible in smaller reproductions but this large copy reveals the pair of hands below the disc which are drawing the scholar’s attention to what might be a mirror reflecting the glowing disc. Rembrandt produced a number of paintings and etchings on the theme of the scholar or philosopher in his study but none are as curious—or as popular—as this example. If it wasn’t for over-familiarity it’s likely it would seem even stranger today.