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John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica

I swear I didn’t go hunting for this. Among the various library collections at the Internet Archive one can find The Getty Alchemy Collection, a substantial gathering of very old alchemical texts scanned in a variety of formats. John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica caught my eye during a random search, a third edition of his treatise from 1564 in which he describes his Monas Hieroglyphica, a glyph designed to combine symbols of the Sun, the Moon, the Elements and Fire in a single figure.

The glyph also intentionally resembles a human form, and Dee relates its individual parts to various astrological and chemical symbols. I’ve mentioned before that Dee scholar Derek Jarman deliberately based Prospero on John Dee in his 1979 film of The Tempest, giving the magus a scrying wand shaped to resemble the Monas Hieroglyphica.

I produced my own variations on the glyph in 2009 when working on the cover of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, Finch. The symbol recurs in Jeff’s fictional city of Ambergris and I seem to recall there being some discussion about including this doorway design somewhere in the book. In the end it was incorporated into the cover design in a rather subtle fashion. I think this is the first time the design alone has appeared in public.

The Internet Archive has a few other Dee-related items, including Lists of manuscripts formerly owned by Dr. John Dee; with preface and identifications (1921), a 500-page book by antiquarian and ghost story writer MR James.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mister Jarman, Mister Moore and Doctor Dee
• Alchemically Yours
• Laurie Lipton’s Splendor Solis
• The Arms of the Art
• Splendor Solis
• Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae
• The Tempest illustrated
• Cabala, Speculum Artis Et Naturae In Alchymia
• Digital alchemy
• Designs on Doctor Dee

Clive Hicks-Jenkins: A Retrospective

I know I’m not the only person capable of grumbling about London’s monopoly on art exhibitions so I’m a little mortified to find I’ve not mentioned Clive Hicks-Jenkins: A Retrospective, an exhibition which has been running at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, since May. There’s no excuse for the oversight since I read all of Clive’s blog posts and most of the recent ones have concerned the exhibition and an accompanying monograph published by Lund Humphries.

Both Fall (2001).

Among the pieces on display are some of his large Mari Lwyd drawings from 2001, two of which are shown here. I think these were the first works I saw of Clive’s and they remain favourites of mine despite their sombre subject matter. The combination of Picasso-like figures, disjunctive perspectives and monochrome nocturnal landscapes make for a very powerful series which Clive discusses in recent blog posts. Not everyone who’s this good with monochrome can handle a combination of tones effectively but Clive’s recent paintings use colour in a manner which is both confident and immediately striking. Form is Void has a small collection of some recent works but if you can get to Aberystwyth you can see them up close. Clive Hicks-Jenkins: A Retrospective runs to August 20th, 2011.

Red Flow (2001).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Equus and the Executionist
• Dark horses

Ceramic Buddha Machines

The experimentalists at Fm3 continue to impress with their commitment to unorthodox music delivery when the trend remains digital and ephemeral. Back in April they announced a new line of ceramic-bodied players for their series of Buddha Machines, that essential collection of ambient loops in a case the size of a box of matches. The new players will be available at the end of the year. Being ceramic they’re probably a little less portable than the plastic versions, and might also be more fragile. For durability and retro cachet I would have opted for Bakelite if that material is still being manufactured anywhere. (It seems it is, thanks Wikipedia.)

Back in the digital and ephemeral world, Fm3 also have a Buddha Machine app for iPhones and iPads. If that seems to defeat the object of the loops being encased in a box of their own you do at least have the option of mixing six of the machines at once. For an idea of how far the mixing and extrapolation of these sounds can be taken, Robert Henke’s two ambient mixes of Buddha Machine samples from 2007 and 2008 are still available as free downloads on his website.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gristleism
• Uncopyable
• Buddha Machine Wall
• God in the machines
• Layering Buddha by Robert Henke

Weekend links 68

Every man and every woman is a star by Sveta Dorosheva.

• Matt Taylor (illustration) with Gregg Kulick and Paul Buckley (design) provide new Penguin covers for John Le Carré. I love the look which seems inspired by Daniel Kleinman’s title sequence for Casino Royale even if it doesn’t quite suit the shabby world of George Smiley and the Circus.

[Deborah Kass] told me that when she was going to art school in the ’70s, she tripped on LSD almost every week and she said she felt it was her “moral duty as an artist to take the trip.” […] I think psychedelic experience makes you think that there are multiple realities, that there isn’t just this one normal real world to which we’re supposed to conform, but that the reality changes depending on the state of consciousness that we’re in when we’re experiencing it. So, any different kind of art kind of posits a different reality. (more)

New York Times art critic Ken Johnson discussing his new book Are You Experienced?: How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art.

• “That got me thinking that evolution really isn’t survival of the fittest, when it comes to these things, it is more like survival of the interesting, survival of the beautiful, survival of the weird, cool stuff that managed to evolve.” Laurie Anderson and David Rothenberg discuss music and animals.

• Laura Cumming on the late Lucian Freud. And Stephen Heller on Alex Steinweiss, the originator in 1939 of the artistic record sleeve who also died last week.

• Alan Moore says “Think Locally: Fuck ‘Globally'”. He and Queen Calluz explain how Dodgem Logic magazine puts their ideas into practice.

• Adam Curtis gets interviewed while Alan Bennett returns to Armley Public Library in Leeds.

• Peacock’s Garden, a celebration of pavonine splendour.

• A visit to Seher Shah’s studio in Brooklyn, New York.

• Maximum androgyny at Epicenity, a Tumblr.

• Does your god have a penis?

• Chrysalide (1978) is an album of “cosmic” guitar instrumentals by Michel Moulinié which sounds at times like a French equivalent of Manuel Göttsching. It’s never been released on CD but a copy can be found here.

Troutsdale Press bookplates

Amy M Sacker.

The work of four bookplate artists printed by the Troutsdale Press, Boston, in 1903 and 1904 is contained in these small volumes at the Internet Archive. None of the artists featured are names I’d come across before. Amy M Sacker’s work is of note for being that of a woman given equal status among her male colleagues, and a nice clear-line style reminiscent of Walter Crane. The short text at the beginning of her volume runs through the history of the female contribution to bookplate art, drawing the conclusion (in the usual chauvinistic terms of the period) that women can indeed compete with men at this game.

• Amy M Sacker | Elisha Brown Bird | F Arthur Jacobson | Adrian J Lorio

The artist’s own bookplate by Elisha Brown Bird.

F Arthur Jacobson.

Adrian J Lorio.

• At the LA Times: What’s sticky and can be found in old books?

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Bookplates from The Studio
• Yuri Yakovenko bookplates
• Tranquillo Marangoni bookplates
• Book-plates of To-day
• Louis Rhead bookplates
• Pratt Libraries Ex Libris Collection
• The Evil Orchid Bookplate Contest
• The art of Oleg Denysenko
• David Becket’s bookplates