Tag: MC5

L’amour des âmes

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L’amour des âmes (1900) by Jean Delville.

Another of the many connections between the Symbolism and psychedelic poster art, the mystically-inclined Jean Delville (1867–1953) may at least have approved of the addition of a yin-yang symbol to his painting of drifting souls. I was originally going to post Delville’s Pour L’art poster design since I’ve not seen a copy on the web as good as the one below which is scanned from a book. (The principal Delville site has many of his works but in variable quality.) Delville’s pair of floating lovers happen coincidentally to suit the preoccupations of February 14th.

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MC5 at the Grande Ballroom, Detroit (1967) by Gary Grimshaw.

Pour L’art was a Belgian circle of artists formed in Brussels in 1892 to stage exhibitions promoting their work. Delville was the most notable of the group as well as being one of its prime movers. Looking on the Delville website it’s good to see there’s a major study of the artist’s life and work in progress, with publication scheduled for later this year. Too many artists from the late 19th century have been neglected for far too long but attitudes are slowly changing. Anyone interested in Jean Delville is advised to also look at this site which is dedicated to that apostle of androgyny, Joséphin Péladan. One of the strangest characters in the Symbolist menagerie (and the competition for that label is fierce), Péladan’s occult theories inspired Delville and a number of other artists in Belgium and France. It’s good to see he’s also gaining some serious study at last.

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Pour L’art (1892) by Jean Delville.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Philippe Jullian, connoisseur of the exotic
• Delville, Scriabin and Prometheus
• The faces of Parsifal
• Masonic fonts and the designer’s dark materials
• Angels 4: Fallen angels

Weekend links 117

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Illustration and design by Karlheinz Dobsky.

Above and below: samples from Die Lux-Lesebogen-Sammlung, an exhibition of booklets for young people published by Sebastian Lux from 1946–1964. All were designed and illustrated by Karlheinz Dobsky.

• At The American Scholar: “Vladimir Nabokov’s understanding of human nature anticipated the advances in psychology since his day,” says Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd, and An Unquenchable Gaiety of Mind: “On visits to Cambridge University late in life, Jorge Luis Borges offered revealing last thoughts about his reading and writing,” says George Watson.

• The British Library releases The Spoken Word: “A rare collection of recordings featuring the American writer William S Burroughs and the British-born artist Brion Gysin.” Related: Interzone – A William Burroughs Mix by Timewriter.

• Charting the Outlaws: Christopher Bram (again) talking to Frank Pizzoli about his recent study Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America.

• The BBC asks “Where are you on the global fat scale?” I’ve always been thin but was still surprised to find my BMI at the very bottom of the scale.

The “otherness” of Ballard, his mesmeric glazedness, is always attributed to the two years he spent in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai (1943–45). That experience, I think, should be seen in combination, or in synergy, with the two years he spent dissecting cadavers as a medical student in Cambridge (1949–51). Again the dichotomy: as a man he was ebulliently social (and humorous), but as an artist he is fiercely solitary (and humourless). The outcome, in any event, is a genius for the perverse and the obsessional, realised in a prose style of hypnotically varied vowel sounds (its diction enriched by a wide range of technical vocabularies). In the end, the tensile strength of The Drowned World derives not from its action but from its poetry.

Martin Amis on The Drowned World by JG Ballard.

• The Chickens and the Bulls: “The rise and incredible fall of a vicious extortion ring that preyed on prominent gay men in the 1960s.”

• It’s that Zone again: Jacob Mikanowski on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Geoff Dyer’s Zona.

• Scans of the rare film programme for London screenings of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

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Illustration and design by Karlheinz Dobsky.

• “The web is a Library of Babel that could go the way of the Library of Alexandria.”

• Fila Arcana: alchemy- and occult-themed embroidery by Mina Sewell Mancuso.

• A Very Edgy Alice In A Very Weird Wonderland: illustrations by Pat Andrea.

• Malka Spigel reveals a new track from her third solo album.

• John Martin and the Theatre of Subversion.

• Olafur Eliasson: Little Sun at Tate Modern.

• Meanwhile, back in 1972: Mahavishnu Orchestra live at the BBC (30 mins), and the complete performance of the MC5 on Beat Club (29 mins).