A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Painting
Vanity.
A few choice pieces by a Russian illustrator and costume designer. Typically for me, the selection includes a profusion of wings and feathers. The siren-like Sirin appear in Russian legends, and are worthy of a post of their own.
Blue Bird (Sirin).
Fantasy.
Another gem of an arts documentary, Trois peintres visionnaires is a companion film to Mati Klarwein, peintre Américain: both films feature Klarwein and Ernst Fuchs, while this one also includes another artist, Austrian Arik Brauer (credited as Eric in the titles). As with yesterday’s film there’s a small extract from Popol Vuh’s Hosianna Mantra on the soundtrack plus one of the Cluster and Eno recordings. The three painters are shown performing an impromptu Tibetan (?) chant inside Mati Klarwein’s Aleph Sanctuary then talking together inside Fuchs’ resplendent museum where the Aleph Sanctuary was housed for several years. As before, the conversation is in French but you also get to see Fuchs at work, and there’s a roaming closeup of one of his jewelled paintings.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mati Klarwein, peintre Américain, a film by Fabienne Strouvé
• Ernst Fuchs, 1977
• The art of Mati Klarwein, 1932–2002
And speaking of the 1970s and Ernst Fuchs and Mati Klarwein… Fabienne Strouvé’s Mati Klarwein, peintre Américain is a 25-minute portrait of Mati Klarwein and family made in 1979. Despite being filmed in New York City most of the conversation is in French—the Klarweins being fluent speakers—but if you like Klarwein’s art this is still a wonderfully insightful film. I always wonder about the size of paintings and other technical details so it’s good to see that, yes, many of Klarwein’s later works are larger than you might expect from reproductions, and it’s also instructive to see him at work with a portion of his painting covered by masking tape. Ernst Fuchs makes a couple of appearances (speaking French—“psychédélique!”), and you get a brief Mati guide to some of the paintings that comprise the incredible Aleph Sanctuary.
(Video link updated.)
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ernst Fuchs, 1977
• The art of Mati Klarwein, 1932–2002
Some of the art from my collage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray appears on the cover of The Graphic Canon: Volume 2, published this month in a German edition by Verlag Galiani. Out next month (although possibly available now) is the same book in a Brazilian edition from Boitempo Editorial. One of the disappointments this year was having to abandon plans to contribute to Russ Kick’s forthcoming graphic canon of crime fiction. I was overstretched during the summer, and what with projects slipping their deadlines and the trip to Providence there wasn’t any time left for other things.
• For those who missed the first edition, a second and final expanded edition of the Penda’s Fen study/celebration The Edge Is Where The Centre Is.
• Whipping up a storm: how Robert Mapplethorpe shocked America; Kevin Moore on the photographer’s Perfect Moment exhibition.
In the best scenario, metaphysical art distributes the work of understanding among cultural traditions and symbolic systems, and it is along these lines that Carrington’s work has been described as a productive combination of Mexican, Egyptian, Hebrew, Celtic, Greek, and Mesopotamian elements. Her paintings, plays, and stories mix the symbols of alchemy, astrology, Tarot, herbalism, magic, witchcraft, and a personal iconography.
Leif Schenstead-Harris on the life, art and fiction of Leonora Carrington
• Mixes of the week: Hieroglyphic Being collects favourite cosmic jazz of the 1970s; NTS Radio presents an hour of Annette Peacock.
• At Kill Your Darlings: Alexandra Heller-Nicholas enthuses about Dario Argento’s delirious masterwork, Suspiria.
• Pye Corner Audio releases a new album (only limited vinyl at the moment—boooo!) and remixes Stealing Sheep.
• The Trip Planners: Emily Witt meets the founders behind Erowid, the online drug encyclopedia.
• Woven Processional (1985), music on the Long String Instrument by Ellen Fullman.
• “The Paris attacks prove Charlie Hebdo’s critics wrong,” says Dorian Lynskey.
• Photographs by Danila Tkachenko of abandoned Soviet technology.
• Come Wander With Me / Deliverance by Anna von Hausswolff.
• The collages of Guy Maddin.
• Let’s Take A Trip (1965) by Godfrey | Trip On An Orange Bicycle (1968) by The Orange Bicycle | Last Trip (1968) by We Who Are
Alchemy: The Telnomic Process of the Universe (1973).
Another week, another incomparable artist gone. This small selection of Laffoley’s unique art and sculpture manages to combine references to (among other things) alchemy, William Blake, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, HP Lovecraft, Mark of the Vampire, and Night of the Demon. And this is only a fraction of his work. Richard Metzger has a memorial post at Dangerous Minds together with more paintings and some video links. There’s more at the official website and Kent Fine Art. It’s good to read that the University of Chicago Press will be publishing The Essential Paul Laffoley in March, 2016.
The Death and Life of Monsieur Sebastian Melmoth: Au Théâtre du Grand Guignol (2001–2003).
The Solitron (1997).