Ken Russell – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 829

In the Constellation of Pisces by Adolf Hoffmeister.

• “Comb through many of the numerous ‘greatest post-punk albums of all time’ lists that you’ll find dotted around the internet and one fairly continual omission is Thirst, which is something of a travesty. It’s difficult to think of many albums that embody the more pioneering and progressive elements of the post-punk spirit than Thirst.” Daniel Dylan Wray on the early, anarchic performances of Clock DVA.

• Warner Brothers have decided at long last to allow the world to see a complete print of Ken Russell’s The Devils, a film they’ve effectively been censoring since 1971.

• A psychedelic Texas company powered hippie culture—then vanished. Gwen Howerton explores the history of the Houston Blacklight & Poster Company.

• “What is the world made of?” A long read by Felix Flicker looking at the nature of reality via the properties of fundamental and emergent entities.

• “My body ached from the volume”: Makoto Kubota remembers his time with the enigmatic and fearsome Japanese rock band Les Rallizes Dénudés.

• New music (and a psychedelic video by Robert Beatty): Introit / Prophecy At 1420 MHz by Boards Of Canada.

• Stellar Iris, a new short film by Thomas Blanchard.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Puffery.

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s Zoetrope Day.

• This Website Cannot Save You

• Der Prophet (1982) by Rolf Trostel | Prophecy Theme (1984) by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno | Prophecy Of The White Camel / Namoutarre (2011) by Master Musicians Of Bukkake

Weekend links 801

The Magic Circle (1886) by John William Waterhouse.

• The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic has just been published in France by Editions Delcourt. A preview here shows how carefully they’ve managed to translate and reletter my page designs.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Algernon Blackwood’s stories of John Silence, occult detective.

• Relevant to some of my recent reading: The Necronomicon Wars, an examination of the many attempts to give life to HP Lovecraft’s fictional grimoire.

Altered States is tremendously exciting to watch—and not only during its psychedelic interludes when goat Jesus is being crucified and writhing red figures are toppling, Hieronymus Bosch–like, into hell and abstract splotches give the impression of cells endlessly dividing or murky membranes dissolving and beautiful women stare into Magritte skies and waves of lava crash as though the molten core of humanity itself were erupting. Even in its quieter moments, it is a beautiful film, with Hurt’s every appearance shot by cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth to emphasize his character’s alien otherworldliness.

Jessica Kiang explores the creation of Ken Russell’s flawed but fascinating psychedelic feature, Altered States

• A new catalogue of lots at another After Dark: Gay Art and Culture online auction. Homoerotic art, photos, historic porn. etc.

• Tarot decks through the ages: a video showing some of the cards from Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection.

• More psychedelia: Neuroscientist Grigori Guitchounts asks “What is your brain doing on psychedelics?”

• At the Daily Heller: Ryan Hughes has published a weighty collection of his typeface designs.

• Old music: Caged (25th Anniversary Edition) by Ian Boddy & Chris Carter.

• At the BFI: Rory Doherty selects 10 great Technicolor melodramas.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: The Old School Horrors of Terence Fisher.

• Photographs from the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

• Ambientblog celebrates 20 years of existence.

• RIP Dave Ball.

• Necronomicon (1970) by Les Baxter | Liriïk Necronomicus Kahnt (1975) by Magma | Necronomicon–The Magus (2004) by John Zorn

Weekend links 789

Niemand (1990) by Micha Ullman.

• The Diary of a Nobody (1964) by Ken Russell, John McGrath, Weedon Grossmith & George Grossmith. A recent posting at Play For Forever, an archive of hard-to-find/unreissued British TV drama.

• New music: Paul St. Hilaire With The Producers by Paul St. Hilaire; Atoms In The Void by Ivan the Tolerable & Hawksmoor; The Cosmic Tones Research Trio by The Cosmic Tones Research Trio.

• At Public Domain Review: Julie Park explores the history of the camera obscura.

• At The Wire: Read an extract from Philosophy of Jazz by Daniel Martin Feige.

• At Unquiet Things: Jana Heidersdorf’s fairy tale subversions.

• At Colossal: Five decades of land art by Andy Goldsworthy.

• The Strange World of…Marissa Nadler.

• RIP Robert Wilson.

• Nobody (1968) by Larry Williams & Johnny Watson with Kaleidoscope | “There Is Nobody” (1976) by Brian Eno | Nobody (1978) by Ry Cooder

The art of Dick Ellescas

The Boy Friend (1971).

I chanced upon the album cover art of Dick Ellescas a few weeks ago when I was searching for something on Discogs. Classical music labels are extraordinarily lazy when it comes to packaging their recordings, as a result of which the commissioning of original art always stands out. Dick Ellescas turned up again more recently when I was working my way through the Ken Russell filmography. Russell’s Sandy Wilson adaptation, The Boy Friend, was released in the US with an Ellescas poster that combines an Art Deco style with the modishness of early 70s graphics. This also stood out from the crowd and sent me in search of more of the same. The examples here are only a small selection from the Ellescas oeuvre; Discogs credits him with over 30 album covers. The Strauss cover below is uncredited so there may be more out there. Some of Ellescas’s illustrations for Cosmopolitan magazine may be seen here.

The Magic Christian (1969).

Borodin/Liadov: Symphony No.1/From The Book Of Revelation From Days Of Old/A Musical Snuff-box (1971); Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, USSR Symphony Orchestra.

Strauss: Die Frau Ohne Schatten (1971); Kurt Eichhorn, Orchestra of Bavarian Radio, James King.

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Art on film: Crimes of Passion

Continuing an occasional series about artworks in feature films. I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks working my way through the Ken Russell filmography, rewatching familiar documentaries and feature films while acquainting myself with the portions of the Russell oeuvre that I’d missed in the past. Crimes of Passion (1984) was a film that I did see when it turned up on video in the late 1980s but I didn’t remember much about it apart from its overheated erotic atmosphere and a red/blue lighting scheme. It’s not one of Russell’s best—the script lurches uncomfortably between mundane domestic drama and lurid, sex-crazed delirium; Rick Wakeman’s synthesizer score is persistently annoying—but it does feature spirited performances by the lead actors, Kathleen Turner and Anthony Perkins.

Turner is Joanna Crane, a swimwear designer who deals with the vacuity of her life by moonlighting as an in-demand prostitute named China Blue. (The polite term “sex worker” didn’t exist in the 1980s.) Russell delivers the art references early on, with unexpected cuts to erotic figures from Aubrey Beardsley’s Lysistrata (above), various Japanese shunga prints, and a flash of The Rape by René Magritte. Since the real woman behind the China Blue persona isn’t revealed until later in the film we don’t know at first that Joanna Crane’s apartment contains reproductions of some of the same pictures. She eventually admits to thinking of them during stressful moments.

Despite this admission, there’s nothing in the script of Crimes of Passion that warrants the references, Crane’s apartment could easily have been furnished in a blandly expensive manner suited to a successful designer. The only other character who seems remotely interested in art is Anthony Perkins’ Reverend Shayne, a splenetic, sex-obsessed preacher who has a hotel room next door to China Blue. In one of several references to Psycho, Shayne watches his neighbour’s erotic encounters through a spyhole. The walls of his own room are covered in a collage of religious and pornographic imagery but little is made of this.

The Lovers by René Magritte.

Joanna Crane and Bobby Grady (John Laughlin) in Joanna’s apartment. Among the pictures on the walls are Romeo and Juliet by Marc Chagall, The Embrace by Gustav Klimt, and The Kiss by Gustav Klimt.

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