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Sigils & Signs

Every Man and Woman is a Star (detail, 2008) by Jesse Bransford.

Observatory in Brooklyn, NYC, hosts another occult-themed group show next month. Signs & Sigils is curated by Phantasmaphile‘s Pam Grossman who says:

The fibers of art and magic are woven so tightly together, it’s often said that they are one and the same. Images are imaginal pictures. When we see something, a constellation of synapses fires, associations swirl, and new thoughts are born. We are altered – and what is magic, if not this?

The participants are Andreco, Jesse Bransford, Derrick Cruz, Adela Leibowitz, Jason Leinwand, Tamalyn Miller, Deborah Mills, Annie Murphy, Ouroboros Press, Michael Robinson, David Chaim Smith, Fredrik Söderberg and Hilary White. I don’t think I’d seen anything by David Chaim Smith before, an artist whose drawings resemble the diagrams of 18th-century alchemical theorists propelled to new heights of elaboration.

Pentacle (2011) by Adela Leibowitz.

Whatever is possible or impossible in the sphere of His great world should be possible or impossible in the sphere of My small world (no date) by Jason Leinwand.

In Two, The Won (no date) by Hilary White.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alchemically Yours
• Fata Morgana: The New Female Fantasists

So now that I have your undivided attention… You’d think someone would have tried a male variation on Hokusai’s notorious Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (1814) before now but if they have I’ve not seen it. Hokusai gives us a father-and-son pair of amorous octopuses but the smaller creature is missing from this picture by Tumblr user Joapa. Nice use of texture to give the feel of an old comic book page; if the online poster manufacturers weren’t so prudish I could imagine this doing brisk business. Those wanting more of the boys-and-tentacles micro-fetish are directed to the art of NoBeast for whom { feuilleton } burns an undying and ever-perverse flame. Joapa tip via Homocomix.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Le Poulpe Colossal
• Abysmal creatures
• Fascinating tentacula
• Jewelled butterflies and cephalopods
• The art of Rune Olsen
• Octopulps
• The art of NoBeast

The art of Yoshi Sodeoka

Violet Dark Spring of the Numinous Orb (2011).

Those for whom Enter the Void wasn’t enough (I know you’re out there) are advised to direct their attention to the prints and videos of Japanese artist Yoshi Sodeoka. The website has numerous screen grabs and examples of the prints while the artist’s Vimeo channel has the videos. Via Dressing the Air.

Psychedelic Death Vomit (2008).

The Palace Of Light (Revisited) (2011).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Enter the Void
• Chris Parks
• Matrix III by John Whitney
• John Whitney’s Catalog
• Arabesque by John Whitney
• Jordan Belson on DVD
• Ten films by Oskar Fischinger
• Lapis by James Whitney
• Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood

Weekend links 101

Kraken from Ernie Cabat’s Magical World Of Monsters (1992) at Monster Brains.

“I think for a lot of people who don’t read pulp growing up, there’s a real surprise that the particular kind of Pulp Modernism of a certain kind of lush purple prose isn’t necessarily a failure or a mistake, but is part of the fabric of the story and what makes it weird. There’s a big default notion that ‘spare,’ or ‘precise’ prose is somehow better. I keep insisting to them that while such prose is completely legitimate, it’s in no way intrinsically more accurate, more relevant, or better than lush prose.” China Miéville at Weird Fiction Review expressing an opinion that few in the literary world ever articulate, never mind agree with. Far more common is (to pick a recent example) Ursula K Le Guin dismissing Cormac McCarthy for “pretentious prose”.

• “Militant feminist scientists brainwash a research subject to assassinate the Welsh Minister of Prostitution. Meanwhile World War III is being fought and the USA has been invaded.” The IMDB précis for Taking Tiger Mountain (1983), a feature film directed by Tom Huckabee from a script by William Burroughs, and featuring a 19-year-old pre-Aliens/Near Dark Bill Paxton. The director discusses the film’s production at Screen Slate and attends a rare screening at Spectacle, Brooklyn, NYC, today (March 25th). YouTube has a three-minute clip. Surprising this has remained buried for so long. When can the rest of us get to see it?

• Prestel have published the catalogue for In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States. AnOther previewed some of the contents. The exhibition runs at the LACMA, Los Angeles, until 6th May.

…gays only make up about 3% of the population so we spend our whole lives “translating” straight movies, books, ballets into gay terms and studying the heterosexuals around us—we know much more about them than they know about us, just as blacks know a lot about whites but whites know virtually nothing about blacks.

Edmund White (again) interviewed by Frank Pizzoli at Lambda Literary Review.

• New on Caroline True Records: Jon Savage’s “Fame”, Secret History of Post-Punk 1978–81. “Some of it doesn’t sound like anything that has happened since,” says Savage. Indeed. FACT has the track list which I was pleased to see includes Chrome among the usual suspects. Hear a 12-minute promo mix at Soundcloud.

The Colossi of Memnon by Jules Guerin. From Egypt and its Monuments (1908) by Robert Hichens at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

• Gay Life Stories, “a colourful compendium of same-sex love through the ages” by Robert Aldrich. Reviewed here. Related: Alice Dreger asks “Are straight people born that way?”

• Clive Hicks-Jenkins created a series of designs for a Washington DC performance of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. Follow their evolution in reverse order at his blog.

• Hocus Pocus: Margaret Eby on the brief epistolary relationship between Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle.

• Rick Poynor on more cover designs for JG Ballard’s Crash.

• London, city of dreams and rivers, caught on Polaroid.

• Photo prints by Thom Ayres for sale at Society6.

• B*tches in Bookshops

• Meet You In The Subway (1979) by Chrome | New Age (Version III) (1980) by Chrome | Danger Zone (1981) by Chrome | Firebomb (1982) by Chrome.

The Torchbearer by Václav Švankmajer

Švankmajer? Yes, Václav is the son of Czech Surrealists Jan Švankmajer and Eva Švankmajerová, and The Torchbearer (2005) is the third of three short films he’s directed. Like the celebrated films of his father this is an animated piece in which a faceless warrior navigates a ruined labyrinth where lethal traps are prepared by a group of living female statues. The style reminded me more of some of the Brothers Quay shorts than the snapping, jerking works of Švankmajer Sr.: the gliding statues are reminiscent of the tailors’ dummies in Street of Crocodiles (1986) while the mechanical traps call to mind Gilgamesh’s murderous table in This Unnameable Little Broom (1985). (And, yes…also the death machine in The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope.)

Václav Švankmajer’s website has a page devoted to the production of the film. Also on his site are several galleries of the paintings and drawings that are the focus of his attention today. Via Form is Void.

• The Torchbearer on YouTube: Part 1 | Part 2

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jan Švankmajer: The Complete Short Films