MC Escher – { feuilleton }

Two short films by István Orosz

Hungarian artist István Orosz has directed fifteen short animated films to date, and co-directed three more, yet he’s known more for his drawings than his films, especially those works which follow MC Escher by combining a careful graphic technique with an exploration of optical illusion. Orosz’s artistic interests naturally extend to his animations which have never been easy to see online despite so many of them being relatively recent productions.

A Kert (The Garden, 1993) is a recent arrival at Rarefilmm where it’s possible to watch it on the web page but it should really be seen at a large size in order to appreciate the texture of the engraved visuals. In previous posts I’ve highlighted some of the many examples of films which animate engraved illustrations. Orosz does the same here but with a unique difference in the way he makes his original drawing match the appearance of the collaged artwork. The whole thing is beautifully done, as is the story itself, in which a small boy explores a mysterious garden in the home of an equally mysterious woman.

A rajzoló (The Drawer, 2016) has been on YouTube for a while but I’d missed it in the past which suggests I ought to make a more determined search for Orosz’s other films. Pencil drawing is the subject but The Sketcher might be a more suitable English translation of the title, “drawer” giving the impression that we’ll be watching a film about furniture. This one is a simpler in style than The Garden although vaguely related, with both films concerning characters whose true nature is only revealed at the very end. There’s also a nod to Orosz’s optical illusions in the tesselated pavement, and in the mazes which are a recurrent feature of his own drawings.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mazes, a film by István Orosz
• False perspective

Weekend links 841

Drawing Hands (1948) by MC Escher.

• New music: The World In Layers by mōshonsensu; The Rest Is My Ghost by Lawrence English; Rotostyles by Julien Ash & M.Nomized.

• At Public Domain Review: “The Persian Mâr-Nâmeh or, The Book for Taking Omens from Snakes” (1892).

• At Little White Lies: Sam Moore writes in praise of Hiroshi Teshigahara, “surveyor of the abyss”.

Paradoxically, art is useful only if it is allowed to remain entirely useless—that is, entirely free to go where it will. Wilde finds an ally here in Baudelaire, who followed his observation of the strangeness of the beautiful with a sharp rebuke to those who would subordinate artistic beauty to a utilitarian logic. Baudelaire asks:

“How could this necessary, irreducible, and infinitely varied strangeness…ever be controlled, amended, and corrected by Utopian rules conceived in some little scientific temple or other on this planet, without mortal danger to art itself?”

The privileging of utility over uselessness, of work over play, is the death of art—and the death of the given world in which our utilitarian spirit must be grounded if it is to have purpose and meaning.

JF Martel explores the ways in which art invented humanity

• Old music: Visions Of Sodal Ye by Mar-Vista.

• RIP Bill Oddie and Raoul Vaneigem.

• Martyn Ware’s favourite albums.

• The Last Museum

• Snake Rag (1923) by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band | Ananta Snake Dance (1980) by Suns Of Arqa | Snakes Crawl (1980) by Bush Tetras

Engulfed Cathedrals

La cathédrale engloutie by Claude Debussy. From Préludes pour Piano (1910).

• La cathédrale engloutie performed by Daniel Barenboim.

The Submerged Cathedral (1929) by MC Escher.

La cathédrale engloutie (1950) by Ithell Colquhoun.

La cathédrale engloutie III (1960) by Ceri Giraldus Richards.

La cathédrale engloutie (1968) by Luc Simon.

Snowflakes Are Dancing (aka Clair De Lune) (1974) by Tomita.

• Track 6: The Engulfed Cathedral (Preludes, Book 1, No. 10).

Escape From New York (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1981) by John Carpenter In Association With Alan Howarth.

• Track 4: Engulfed Cathedral.

Re:Sort (2003) by Sora.

• Track 4: La Cathédrale Engloutie.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• L’après-midi d’un faune
• Hokusai record covers
• Tomita album covers

Art on film: The Medusa Touch

Continuing an occasional series about artworks in feature films. The Medusa Touch (1978) is the kind of film I usually dislike: a supernatural horror story with a preposterous premise—a man who causes disasters to occur with the power of his mind—which is also an ITC production directed by Jack Gold with a TV-friendly gloss, all overlit interiors and zoom-happy camera work. Richard Burton plays the man with a name you only find in horror novels, “John Morlar”, whose telekinetic gift is also a curse, the Medusa touch of the title, although his affliction is never quite described as such. It’s Burton who makes this one worth watching, he burns with a misanthropic intensity in every scene he appears in, delivering his lines with a conviction that suggests he identified rather too much with Morlar and his hatred for the world. The film unfolds as a police procedural, opening with the attempted murder of Morlar by an unknown assailant, then following the investigation that reveals the victim’s history. The police business is the weakest part of the film; being a British/French co-production means that the man leading the investigation, Inspector Brunel, is a Frenchman working in London as part of an exchange programme. Brunel’s dull character is further diminished by having him played by Lino Ventura with a dubbed voice, but it’s the inspector’s quest for clues to Morlar’s past that bring us eventually to the art.

The first artwork, however, appears before all of this. The film opens in the street outside Morlar’s London home then cuts to the inside of his flat with this close view of a print of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Munch’s most famous painting wasn’t quite the visual cliché in 1978 that it is today. Morlar’s history is recounted in a series of flashbacks which reveal him to have been a barrister whose distaste for the legal profession leads to his becoming a novelist with characters used as mouthpieces for his misanthropy. The art in his mansion flat is scrutinised by Brunel without being subjected to any discussion, leaving us to decide whether these works are the kinds of things that Morlar actually liked or exterior emblems related to his condition.

A relief based on Caravaggio’s Medusa (c.1597).

The head of Medusa pinned on Morlar’s wall suggests the latter, although the only introspective comments from Morlar come in the scenes with him and his psychiatrist, Dr Zonfeld (Lee Remick), which are mostly discussions of his calamity-filled life. Morlar and Zonfeld’s combative relationship may explain the next artwork which catches Brunel’s eye, a print of Bond of Union (1956) by MC Escher.

The choice is an unusual one when the print was made to celebrate Escher’s marriage which was relatively happy, unlike Morlar’s disintegrated union which ends with him willing his wife to death in a car crash. Escher was very trendy in the 1970s, collections of his work were being published for the first time and his prints were everywhere. A better match for a story of this type might have been Eye (1946), an image with greater symbolic resonance that would also complement all the moments when Jack Gold’s camera zooms into Morlar’s basilisk glare.

Encounter in Space (1899) by Edvard Munch.

After looking at the Escher, Brunel leafs through Morlar’s print collection, pulling out another Munch, and a very strange choice it is. This is an odd scene: the prints are all badly lit and none of them have much overt reference to either Morlar’s character or the story as a whole.

Continue reading “Art on film: The Medusa Touch”

The groovy video look

Under Water/In Air.

This recently-released video for Under Water/In Air by Starfucker (or STRFKR, as they often have to style themselves) is an animated production by Edward Carvalho-Monaghan, an artist whose visuals may be seen to similar effect in an earlier animation for Starfucker’s Armatron. Carvalho-Monaghan’s artwork has appeared on a number of the group’s record sleeves, including the latest album, Parallel Realms, which combines a Surrealist dose of the visual style that I refer to as the groovy look with the kind of impossible architecture popularised by MC Escher. Armatron, meanwhile, features more architecture in what may be borrowings from Giorgio de Chirico.

Armatron.

I lost interest in music videos years ago, I’d much rather listen to the music than have to experience it as a soundtrack to some director’s attempt to illustrate a song with visual novelty. But animated music videos are easier to take, in part because the pairing of animation with music goes back to the earliest days of the medium. The Starfucker videos have had me wondering how much video or animation might suit the “groovy” definition if you went looking for it. And by this I mean following the limits defined by my earlier post which is predominantly concerned with heavy outlines and flat, bold colours rather than quasi-psychedelic effects. I don’t have the time just now to start searching for other examples but The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine is the Ur-text in this department, and the film’s influence may be found in both Carvalho-Monaghan animations.

Sing, Sang, Sung.

One other music video that does come to mind is for Sing, Sang, Sung by Air, directed by Mrzyk & Moriceau. The colour palette is desaturated but the rest of the graphics are definitely in the groovy zone, with the video as a whole coming across like a Surrealist take on those endlessly scrolling, mutating computer games. When the black ball reaches its destination you’re tempted to watch it all again.

(Under Water/In Air tip via Scotto Moore’s This Newsletter Cannot Save You.)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The groovy look
• Tadanori Yokoo animations