John Coulthart's Blog, page 19

Destiny, A Novel in Pictures by Otto Nückel

Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward are the two names most commonly associated with the “wordless novel” of the 1920s and 30s, but there was another significant contributor to the form, Otto Nückel (1888–1955), a German artist whose Schicksal, Eine Geschicte in Bildern was one of the spurs for Ward to try something similar. I hadn’t seen Nückel’s book before, the pictures here being taken from an American reprint from 1930. The general tone is very similar to Masereel’s The City (1925), with the difference that Destiny depicts a single, tragic life in a nameless European metropolis where Masereel presents a tapesty of city-wide lives and events. The artistic styles differ but all three artists used engraving to create their pictures, a technique that no doubt helped sustain an aura of seriousness about these projects, keeping at bay any association with disreputable comic strips. Masereel and Ward used wood for their medium while Nückel preferred to engrave on lead plates. His book is still in print today via Dover Publications.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gods’ Man by Lynd Ward
• Frans Masereel’s city

Weekend links 740

Winged Figure (no date) by Mark Severin.

• At Wormwoodiana: News of the publication of two uncollected early stories by Cormac McCarthy. I happen to be reading McCarthy’s penultimate novel, The Passenger, at the moment. Very enjoyable and very different to what I was expecting.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: Yayoi Kusama‘s largest permanent public sculpture arrives in London.

• At Colossal: A futuristic 150-foot installation imagines Chicago’s never-built architecture.

The record sounded like nothing else, seemingly came from nowhere and related to nothing I could identify with any confidence: whistling, whispering, mumbling, pig grunts, exhalations of breath, chants and vocal imitations of nocturnal forest sounds, arco double bass and electric bass, nursery rhymes, impenetrable accents and languages, tambourines, unidentifiable tuned percussion imprecisely struck, mandolin, banjo, flutes, congas, bottleneck guitar, second line drumming with virtually no cymbals, dense percussion, organ bass, harpsichord, reed instruments played through electronic effects and organ lines sounding like anything but themselves. There was no piano, despite what some later commentators have claimed, and in fact very little harmonic underpinning in the majority of tracks. Instead of piano or guitar chords to fill out the ensemble sound there is the celebrated Gold Star echo chamber, into which instruments and voices sank as if dropping away into the abyss.

Zozo la Brique, Jump Sturdy, Coco Robichaux, Queen Julia Jackson, Mama Roux, Tit Alberta—questions flared like fireworks. Who were these characters who populated the lyrics. Were they voodoo practitioners, alive or dead, fictitious or real? Ishmael Reed’s visionary novel, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, was published not long after, in 1969. Years later I read it and was startled to bump into Zozo la Brique once more. So these were real people, or named phantoms, or figures of legend at least. “O Doc John,” Reed wrote, “Doc Yah Yah and Zozo Labrique Marie Laveau the Grand Improvisers if I am not performing these rites correctly send the Loa anyway and allow my imagination to fill the gaps.”

David Toop in an extract from Two-Headed Doctor: Listening For Ghosts In Dr. John’s Gris-Gris

• New music: Hidden Structures by Time Being, and Buried (Your Life Is Short) by The Bug.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Minimal and tranquil charcoal drawings by Masahiko Minami.

• New weirdness: Cat Location Conundrum by Moon Wiring Club.

• At Unquiet Things: The art of Dylan Garrett Smith.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Toshio Matsumoto Day.

• RIP Alain Delon.

• Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya (1968) by Dr John | Gumbo (1971) by Santana | Roochoo Gumbo (1976) by Harry “The Crown” Hosono

Existence no longer exists

Yesterday was HP Lovecraft’s birthday so here’s some cosmic horror of a sort. It’s debatable whether a narrative can still be classed as horror when the constituent elements are rarified and abstracted to this degree…maybe weird SF would be better? Or theory fiction in the form of 5–10 minute YouTube videos? So far there are four of these things credited to “Unorthodox Kitten”, the first one being a kind of introductory chapter which includes algebra in its explication; by the time we reach the fourth chapter we’re told that “Math never existed” although the links on some of the notes take you to papers which contain copious equations, including an argument that returns us to the first video…

What does it all mean? My introduction to the quartet was via Scotto Moore’s newsletter in which Moore suggests that the videos may be a part of some ARG, or Alternate Reality Game. One for recreational mathematicians or quantum physicists, no doubt. This is certainly possible given the links to Fermat’s Library, but I’m happy to take the things as they are, mysterious fragments freighted with dire implication. I imagine Eugene Thacker would approve.

Infinity, Singularity and The Rapture (10:10)

The OHR EIN SOF
The painters, who are the product of a new cycle of fragmentation, despite their almost divine ability to paint everything at will, are merely lifeless hypothetical concepts compared to their predecessors from the previous cycle. These predecessors perceive them as weeds that must be eliminated, not out of fear, but as a principle to maintain nonexistential silence.
the war of the iterative gODS has begun.
the incomplete jump occurred.
IT must be stopped, iT can’t be stopped,
only the INFINITE filling all existence,
there is only the iNFINITE filling all canvas,
artificial lethal sEA with an infinite IRON,
trying to see the INFINITE through yOu,
no light, just colors.
iT came but YOU were not here when iT arrived,
iT gracefully retreats, yet the essence remains unchanged.
Can existence exist without nonexistence?
Are yOU afraid of non-existence, now? :)

Everything is happening at the same time (5:44)

the CYCLE, THEIR god. IT wasn’t there, but Theirs TOOL Existence is the wonderful place beyond oUR reach as a portrait of everything possible. yet, yOU were given no colors and yOU still were able to paint a masterpiece of non-existence. YOU don’t have to :)

The External Reality of Finiteness (4:39)

the battle of the gODS lasted a fraction of an instant.
They did not even realize They no longer existed.
Their cREATION was Their doom, the cREATOR’s doom.
as just a mere painting of the Infinite from the bLIND nonexistent view of iTS.
Nothing is out of oUR reach.
The Physical Impossibility of Non-existence in the Existence of something Existing.
Before the jump, the celebration orbs were sent, now working as cREATOR’S last echoes.
the luxury of the future Majority to not exist at all.

Existence no longer exists (10:02)

The shells of long-abandoned artificial stars, held together by autonomous anti-expansionary devices, were destined to fade into obscurity along with the rest of the universe. It was only a matter of time before the corpse of the Laniakea supercluster followed suit to make space for a new cYCLE.
gOds are dead, the cYCLE is broken. theY tried to be iT.
theY wanted to free themselves from their finite torture.
finding the horrifying truth of their existence with a forcefully finite painted INFINITY of iterations.
tHEY created it to find the solution, theY did. you just haven’t gotten to that point yet.
tHEY are now infinite INFINITY, with a finite original goal of theirS.
with noonE to see iTS infinite torture They made for iT in iTS infinite portrait of inlimitation.
forever alone in an instant of ITS, IT paints and paints, not knowing the nonexistent palette of iT is just another iteration of IT in an infinite fractal of instantless existence with an end as finite as infinity.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• From Beyond
• Eco calls on Cthulhu

Rockwell Kent’s Wilderness

Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska (1920) was Rockwell Kent’s first book, an illustrated memoir written by Kent and his wife, Frances Lee, which recounts several months the couple spent with their son on Fox Island in Resurrection Bay, Alaska. Most artists would illustrate something like this with drawings intended to evoke the remote location and its wildlife, and Kent does provide a number of documentary vignettes. Many of the full-page drawings are very different, however, being Blake-like renderings of nude figures representing a variety of moods and conditions. There’s a lot of this mysticism in Kent’s work, it’s what makes his art stand apart from the jobbing illustrators who were his contemporaries. You could also argue that Kent’s mystical nature and his love of voyaging to remote places, whether on land or sea, is why his Moby Dick from 1930 is the definitive illustrated edition. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Rockwell Kent’s Voyaging Southward
• Rockwell Kent’s Moby Dick

Weekend links 739

New Moon and Evening Star (c.1932) by George Elbert Burr.

• If you’re eager to see a physical copy of the forthcoming Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic then Alan Moore World has screengrabs from a teaser video posted by US distributors Penguin/Random House to the social-media pit formerly known as Twitter. I’ve yet to receive a copy myself so I’m pleased to see the foil overlay on the cover looking as eye-catching as I’d hoped. Library Journal gave the book a starred review earlier this month.

• At Bandcamp: George Grella profiles Material, Bill Laswell’s long-running polycultural ensemble. Two of the albums on this list are all-time favourites of mine.

• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – August 2024 at AmbientBlog.

• The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges: A Hypertext.

• At Unquiet Things: Owls, Bats, and Moths in Art.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Varvara Stepanova Day.

• Jon Hopkins’ favourite music.

• RIP Gena Rowlands.

• Desert Sands (1958) by Eugene LaMarr and His Magic Accordion | Grains Of Sand (1989) by Opal | Infinite Sands (1997) by Robert Henke

Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse, a film by Henri Chomette

The Paris of 1925 seen through the camera of actor, director, screenwriter and brother of René Clair, Henri Chomette. Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse is one of Chomette’s earliest films, made before he graduated to features, and while it may be experimental in style it’s not at all amateurish. Many experimental films of the silent era are little more than arty home movies, filled with brief shots, abrupt edits and amateur theatrics. Chomette’s film is much more controlled, two minutes of abstraction created by mirrors and glass objects followed by a rapid journey through the Paris Métro then along the river Seine. The Métro journey features a couple of very skillful edits, like the moment when the train plunges down another tunnel to emerge in the middle of the river. Run this with a prestissimo score by Philip Glass and you’d have a French precursor to Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Paris Qui Dort by René Clair
• Entr’acte by René Clair

French fables by Japanese hands

The fin-de-siècle interest in Japanese art is given a twist by four small books in which a group of Japanese artists illustrate well-known fables for a French readership. The books were commissioned circa 1890 by Pierre Barboutau, an art collector who specialised in Japanese arts and crafts. Barboutau’s volumes would have been intended to broaden the interest in Japanese art which had been fuelled a few years before by Le Japon Artistique, a magazine edited by a German art dealer with a business in Paris, Siegfried Bing. Le Japon Artistique was criticised for its inaccuracies by Japanese readers but it did feature colour reproductions of prints which otherwise might only be seen as monochrome reproductions. (Bing’s Paris shop, L’Art Nouveau, is also historically significant for giving a name to the predominant mode of fin-de-siècle design.)

Barboutau’s books take the French interest in Japonisme a stage further, allowing readers to experience familiar stories through Japanese eyes. Each book was printed in a limited run on Japanese paper. Of the four, I’m only familiar with the fables of La Fontaine where the emphasis on animal characters in rural settings means there are few explicitly Japanese details. Some of the landscapes are more Japanese than French, however, especially the drawing that includes a Fuji-like mountain in the background. There’s also a drawing of a group of foxes where the background details of a shrine and torii gate seem intended more for Japanese readers. Foxes in Japan are associated with the Shinto deity, Inari, to a degree that fox statues are a common site in Shinto shrines. None of this is mentioned in the book but if you’re aware of the significance it adds an additional layer to the cultural intersections.

All these books may be seen at Gallica, a valuable site whose interface is still woefully bad, especially on mobile devices. My advice, as always, is to download the PDFs.

Choix de fables de La Fontaine, Tome 1 (1894)

Choix de fables de La Fontaine, Tome 2 (1894)

Fables choisies, Série 1, de Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (no date)

Fables choisies, Série 2, de Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (no date)

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• ER Herman’s Fables
• Tenniel’s Fables
• John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems

Weekend links 738

How They Met Themselves (1860) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

• At Igloo magazine: Justin Patrick Moore interviews inventor and electronic music composer Don Slepian about his life and work.

• At The Washington Post (archived link): Michael Dirda in praise of weird fiction, horror tales and stories that unsettle us.

• At The Daily Heller: Tina Touli’s explosively twirling typography. Steven Heller’s font of the month is Doublethink.

• At Colossal: Dreams and memories form and dissipate in Tomohiro Inaba’s delicate iron sculptures.

• At Unquiet Things: Jerome Podwil’s captivating cover art.

• New music: Strangeness Oscillation by 137.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Craig Baldwin’s Day.

• Brìghde Chaimbeul’s favourite albums.

• Penguin Series Design

• Double Image (1971) by Joe Zawinul | Double Flash (1999) by Leftfield | Double Rocker (2001) by Stereolab

Terra Incognita, a film by Adrian Dexter and Pernille Kjaer

I was going to mention this one a few weeks ago but it vanished from Vimeo for a while following some kind of copyright complaint. It’s good to find it returned. Terra Incognita is 20 minutes of animated fantasy that’s very reminiscent of René Laloux’s cult SF films Fantastic Planet (1973) and Gandahar (1988), also the Brizzi Brothers’ Fracture (1977). Much as I’d like to see another feature in the Laloux manner, something spun from the art styles of Métal Hurlant, short films are the most you can realistically hope for outside Japan. (There is another Caza-designed feature, The Rain Children, but like the Druillet-designed TV series, Bleu, l’enfant de la Terre, it’s a simpler story aimed at a juvenile audience.)

Terra Incognita was directed by Adrian Dexter and Pernille Kjaer, with the pair also working on the backgrounds and storyboards. The first part of the film is a creation myth which establishes the genesis of a mysterious island somewhere on the Earth whose inhabitants are four prematurely aged, immortal men. The quartet share the island with the blue giant who created them, together with a variety of unusual flora and fauna which includes luminescent psychotropic mushrooms. The accidental death of their creator leaves the islanders marooned in a world they were only beginning to learn about. The film is meticulously crafted, with an open-ended narrative that avoids melodrama when the men are faced with incursions from the outside world. And there’s a further connection to 70s’ fantasy in the soundtrack which incorporates a piece from Bo Hansson’s prog-synthesizer album, Music Inspired By Lord Of The Rings. Films like this require so much creative effort that you can’t expect more of the same any time soon, but I’m curious to see what Dexter & Kjaer may do in the future.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Arzak Rhapsody
• Fracture by Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi
• The Captive, a film by René Laloux

An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting

An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting presents a mixture of handwriting styles, from many corners of the world, dating from the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) to the present day. The tendency toward illegibility exists in many cultural traditions, and in this anthology we intend to offer a representative overview of the different styles, and, more specifically, the contemporary developments in asemic handwriting. We deliberately avoided the adjectives “unreadable” and “illegible” in the title of this anthology, because the question of legibility and possible transference of meaning is precisely what is at stake in these writing traditions. These writings are not completely “meaningless” or “illegible,” but challenge our common notions of reading, writing, and the meaningfulness of language. Therefore we prefer the adjective “asemic.” In the late 20th century, this word was handed down from the poet John Byrum to another poet named Jim Leftwich to one of the editors of this anthology.

All writing is “asemic” to some degree, to those who can’t read or understand a particular alphabet. Many of the one hundred examples collected here by Tim Gaze and Michael Jacobson are unorthodox writings created for artistic purposes, as the editors note later in their book’s introduction:

…visual artists from movements as far apart as Dada, Russian Futurism, Surrealism, CoBrA, Tachisme, Fluxus, Abstract Expressionism, Gutai, and Lettrisme have created asemic handwritten forms.

An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting was compiled in 2013, with each creator being given a single page. Aside from the introduction, the collection isn’t very informative. There are no dates applied to each piece, so you won’t know from looking at a single page that Max Ernst, for example, incorporated asemic forms into his paintings as well as his prints. The book is best taken as an introduction to a field of creativity too often absorbed by general art or literary history, and a spur towards further research.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Surrealism archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Maximiliana oder die widerrechtliche Ausübung der Astronomie