John Coulthart's Blog, page 324

Cardwell Higgins versus Harry Clarke

A Delightful Page in the Record of My Existence.

This picture popped up at Chateau Thombeau a few days ago and it's also been circulating in Tumblr's recursive labyrinth. The very obvious debt to Harry Clarke's black-and-white style caught my attention, especially to the artist's Poe illustrations with the reclining woman being a blatant swipe from one of the Pit and the Pendulum drawings.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1919) by Harry Clarke.

Searching around revealed that the artist responsible, Cardwell Higgins, produced a small series of similar pieces in the late 1920s. He then settled into a career as an illustrator for American magazines and advertising, working in a far more commercial style which isn't really the kind of thing I get very excited over. Six drawings from the black-and-white series were published as a lthograph set in 1979. Some of the originals came up for sale recently which accounts for the surfacing of these copies.

Persian Orientalist Showgirl.

The Grapefruit Moon Gallery has this piece listed as being a 1927 design for Paramount Pictures. They also have a page about the artist's later career here and other work, including details of the Siamese Dancers (below) here.

Persian Orientalist Showgirl (detail).

Siamese Dancers.

The Elements Involved.

The Circle of Life.

The Circle of Life / The Perfect Man and Perfect Woman, seeking one another in unison / For the creation of the Perfect Child; / With the Protecting Hand of the Father and the Supporting Hand of the Mother, / The embodiment of Father, Mother and Child is the total life. / The Sun, the supplier of the life-giving elements necessary for survival. / The Hourglass of Time. / The Evil influence that comes into their lives; / The slowly burning candle of Life, And the inevitable—Death! / By Cardwell S. Higgins

An ad for the lithograph set.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }

• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }

• Modern book illustrators, 1914

• Illustrating Poe #3: Harry Clarke

• Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke

• Harry Clarke's stained glass

• Harry Clarke's The Year's at the Spring

• The art of Harry Clarke, 1889–1931

Saint Genet

Miracle of the Rose (1965). Photo by Jerry Bauer, design by Kuhlman Associates.

[William Burroughs is] without a doubt…the greatest American writer since WWII. There are very, very few writers in his class; I think Genet is about the only one whom I'd put in the same category. All the British and American writers so heavily touted—the Styrons and the Mailers and their English equivalents—it's just not necessary to read anybody except William Burroughs and Genet.

JG Ballard, RE/Search interview, 1984.

Jean Genet (the "Saint" was a gift from Jean-Paul Sartre) was born on December 19th, 1910 so consider this a late centenary post. Some of Ballard's debt to William Burroughs can be found in writings such as The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) and his early text experiments. Genet's influence, if we have to look for such a thing, I usually see in the use of metaphor to transform an uncompromising reality. Like the moment at the beginning of Crash (1973) when the crushed bodies of package tourists are compared to "a haemorrhage of the sun". Genet's writings effected similar transformations from squalid prison environments, turning the sexual assignations and passions of the inmates into ceremonial acts which assume the lineaments of a new religion. He used to claim in later life to have forgotten all his works but we haven't forgotten him. A small selection of Genet links follows.

Esquire, November 1968.

RealityStudio:

Burroughs' most famous and most widely read piece for Esquire remains his coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, "The Coming of the Purple Better One," which was included in Exterminator! Burroughs was hired to cover the convention along with Terry Southern, who was a pioneer in New Journalism with his "Twirling at Ole Miss" (which appeared in Esquire in February 1963), John Sack, who wrote on the experiences of Company M in Vietnam for Esquire (with the legendary cover "Oh my God — We hit a little girl"), and Jean Genet, an authority on oppression who turned increasingly politically active after the events in Europe in May 1968. (Continues here.)

Ubuweb:

• Un Chant d'Amour (1950): Genet's short homoerotic drama which he later disowned. The film's masturbating prisoners and naked male flesh made it notorious and, for later generations of filmmakers, a pioneering and influential work.

• Le condamné à mort (1952): A reading of Genet's poem (in French) with electroacoustic accompaniment.

• Ecce Homo (1989): A short film by Jerry Tartaglia which cuts scenes from Un Chant d'Amour with gay porn.

Bibliothèque Gay:

Vingt lithographies pour un livre que j'ai lu, Jean Genet, Roland Caillaux, 1945. A sequence of twenty pornographic drawings.

YouTube:

• The Maids (1975): Glenda Jackson and Susannah York in a film by Christopher Miles based on Genet's play. There's also Fassbinder's Querelle (1982) but YouTube's limitations don't do it any favours.

• Jean Genet (1985): an extract from the BBC interview where the writer makes a fool of interviewer Nigel Williams. This captured Genet a few months before his death and he remains the stubborn outsider to the last, questioning the conventions of the television interview which he compares to a police interrogation. A transcript of the whole fascinating event can be found here.

Previously on { feuilleton }

• Emil Cadoo

• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief's Journal

• Un Chant D'Amour by Jean Genet

Midnight sun

Midnight sun in Advent Bay, Spitzbergen, Norway (c. 1890).

In recognition of the Winter Solstice, a couple more photochrom prints from the Library of Congress collection. And some music…

• Midnight Sun by Lionel Hampton | Midnight Sun (song version) by Nancy Wilson.

Midnight sun, Bell Sound, Norway (c. 1890).

Le Baiser de Narcisse

We have the French gay culture site Bibliothèque Gay to thank for posting illustrations by Ernest Brisset from Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen's rare volume of homoerotic fiction, Le baiser de Narcisse (The Kiss of Narcissus). The book was originally published in 1907 but it was a new edition in 1912 which came embellished with Brisset's Classical drawings and decorations. If these lack a degree of eros it should be noted that the text would have been condemned as outright pornography in the Britain of 1912, a paean to youthful male beauty which lingers over details of a boy's "polished hips" and his "round and firm sex like a fruit". As is usual with homoerotics of this period, the Classical setting and allusion to Greek myth provides the vaguest excuse for the subtext even though prudes of the time weren't remotely fooled by this, as Oscar Wilde discovered.

Among other works by Fersen there's a decadent roman à clef, Lord Lyllian: Black Masses (1905), which I've been intent on reading since it was translated into English a couple of years ago. Here Fersen provides us with yet another fictional extrapolation of Oscar Wilde who the author gifts with some of his own scandalous history. Fersen had been driven from France following a public outrage involving the "Black Masses" of the novel's title, and the alleged debauching of Parisian schoolboys.

Nino Cesarini by Paul Höcker (1904).

Fersen settled in Capri with his partner Nino Cesarini where they spent some years reinforcing the reputation of that island (not for nothing is Noël Coward's camp and catty character in Boom! named "the Witch of Capri"), and proselytising for the Uranian cause with a literary journal, Akademos, modelled on Adolf Brand's Der Eigene. Fersen's later life is reminiscent of that of Elisar von Kupffer, a wealthy contemporary who created a secluded homoerotic paradise of his own, the Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion. Unlike Kupffer, however, Fersen ended his days prematurely in a haze of opium and cocaine. As for Ernest Brisset, if anyone finds other work of his online, please leave a comment.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }

• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }

• Reflections of Narcissus

• Narcissus

Weekend links

Being an inveterate Kubrickphile I was naturally pleased to hear that some of the exised scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey have survived in a watchable form, even though I'm often ambivalent about the restoration of such material. While it was good to see at last the missing French compound sequence of Apocalypse Now, for example, that sequence added nothing to the film as a whole and its inclusion was spoiled by music which Coppola used for sentimental reasons. In Kubrick's case, there's a longer version of The Shining which the director allowed to be screened on UK TV in the 1980s but, again, most of the unseen material was incidental and added nothing to the film.

• Related: Roger Ebert's review of 2001 from 1968; Olivier Mourgue, designer of the Djinn chairs seen in the film's space Hilton scenes; Magnificent obsession, a Vanity Fair piece from 2002 about the search for the missing scenes from The Magnificent Ambersons. Meanwhile, the trailer for Terrence Malick's new film, The Tree of Life, features some surprising cosmic moments among its scenes of family life.

The separate history [of gay and lesbian artists] has been kind of edited out of art history but in fact art history is very much interwoven with gay or queer history. In a way the two can't be separated. America doesn't like anything uncomfortable. I find in my dealings with museums that if I ask a question and the answer is 'no,' they don't answer. If the answer is 'yes,' I get these amazingly enthusiastic responses. I find it sort of strange sometimes, not being American myself. In a way what they're doing is editing out the uncomfortable. David Wojnarowicz's work can make you uncomfortable — and they've edited out that possibility in the show.

Canadian artist AA Bronson (see below).

• More on the Smithsonian versus David Wojnarowicz affair: Frank Rich examined the train of events in a comment piece, Gay Bashing at the Smithsonian, for the NYT; the Andy Warhol Foundation threatened to withdraw their funding for future Smithsonian events unless the work is reinstated, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation will be doing the same; another artist featured in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition, AA Bronson, requested that the gallery withdraw his work from the show in protest; the NPG refused, citing a contractual arrangement; among the increasing number of galleries showing support for Wojnarowicz, Tate Modern, London, will host an event in January which will feature a screening of the contentious video; lastly, there's a protest event in New York City today (Sunday, December 19th) at 1.00pm, details here.

• More censorship in America: Jeffrey Deitch Censors Blu's Political Street Art Mural. In the book world, writer Selena Kitt finds her erotic incest stories removed from Amazon's Kindle store. Other authors, Jess C Scott and Esmerelda Green, have had their erotic titles removed from the store. Selena Kitt says:

When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of mine they'd purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives. When one reader called to get a refund for the book she no longer had access to, she was chastised by the Amazon customer service representative about the "severity" of the book she'd chosen to purchase.

Can you imagine buying a paper book and the bookstore then paying you a visit to forcibly reclaim it? To date no adequate explanation from Amazon has been forthcoming but they'll be happy to sell you a Kindle edition of the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom.

Galaxy M51 aka The Whirlpool. One of the Top Astronomy Pictures of the Year from a selection by Bad Astronomy. Photo by the Hubble Heritage Team & Robert Gendler.

• More cosmic events: there'll be a total lunar eclipse this coming Monday, visible in much of the Northern Hemisphere.

• "Heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses!" The Raspberry Reich (2004), a film by Bruce LaBruce.

• New editions of Borges poetry. Fine so long as you accept that the translations can never truly satisfy.

• Just the thing for the winter weather, illustrations for Pushkin's Queen of Spades from 1966.

• Another Ghost Box download: Radio Belbury Programme 1: "Holidays & Hintermass".

• Monsters, Inc: Arcimboldo and the Wunderkammer of Rudolf II.

• Silent Porn Star found some burlesque lamps.

• Giant airship powered by algae.

• Space Oddity (1969) by David Bowie.

Don Van Vliet, 1941–2010

Photography & design by Ed Thrasher.

So long, Spotlight Kid. This was only announced a few hours ago so you'll be hearing a lot more about Captain Beefheart this weekend.

What is there to say? I have all the albums and a lot of other stuff besides: rarities, outtakes, bootlegs and so on. Beefheart was sui generis and it's always seemed fitting that despite the myriad group names flying around in the 1960s he was the one who had the Magic Band. At their height all the implications of thaumaturgy and conjuration that label implies were fully justified. Trout Mask Replica, the non-Euclidean masterwork he cajoled the group into creating in 1969, still sounds like nothing else. The following are essential documents:

• Safe As Milk (1967)

• Strictly Personal (1968)

• Trout Mask Replica (1969)

• Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970)

• Mirror Man (1971)

• The Spotlight Kid (1972)

• Clear Spot (1972)

• Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978)

• Doc At The Radar Station (1980)

• Ice Cream For Crow (1982)

• Grow Fins: Rarities (1999)

YouTube has plenty of Beefheart things worth seeing, of course. Best introduction is the BBC's 1997 documentary, The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart, narrated by John Peel. They opened that with the great film clip of the Magic Band playing Sure 'Nuff 'n' Yes I Do on the beach at Cannes in 1968. My favourite of all is probably the 1972 TV spot of them playing I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby on Beat Club. Don Van Vliet may have died but Captain Beefheart lives on.

• Guardian obituary

• The Captain Beefheart Radio Station

Modern book illustrators, 1914

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Harry Clarke.

Some samples from a collection of mostly black-and-white drawing at the Internet Archive, Modern Book Illustrators and Their Work (1914), edited by C. Geoffrey Holme & Ernest G. Halton. This was an illustration review produced by The Studio magazine and in this edition happens to feature two pieces of work from Harry Clarke's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1913). Also at the Internet Archive is an earlier Studio publication, Modern Pen Drawings: European and American from 1901 from which I've selected Patten Wilson's hyper-detailed rendering of Rustum and the Simoorg, a fantastic piece of work in every sense.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Harry Clarke.

From The Poems of Coleridge by Gerald Metcalfe.

La Belle Dame sans Merci by Dorothy M. Payne.

Rustum and the Simoorg by Patten Wilson.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }

• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }

• Illustrating Poe #3: Harry Clarke

• Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke

• Harry Clarke's stained glass

• Harry Clarke's The Year's at the Spring

• The art of Patten Wilson, 1868–1928

• The art of Harry Clarke, 1889–1931

Bloody fashion

British jewellers Yunus Ascott and Eliza Higginbottom describe their work as "sculpture to be worn". That's an angel in the picture above while the lethal heels are a mermaid and a pirate. Probably far too expensive for Giftmas but you can dream. Via Phantasmaphile.

Powell's Bluebeard

The subject of yesterday's post, The Tales of Hoffmann, was the closest Michael Powell came to realising his concept of the "composed film", a work which would combine performance, music, lighting and set design to create something which was unique to cinema. The central ballet sequence in The Red Shoes is another example of this, and Powell & Pressburger had plans to follow Hoffmann with similar works, including something based on The Odyssey which would have had contributions from Igor Stravinsky and Dylan Thomas. None of this worked out, unfortunately, Hoffmann was less successful than was hoped and the Archers partnership was eventually reduced to making dull films about the Second World War until P&P went their separate ways. Following the scandal of Peeping Tom in 1960, which finished Powell's career as a filmmaker in Britain, he managed to return to the composed film concept in 1963 when production designer Hein Heckroth asked him to direct a production of the Bartók opera Bluebeard's Castle for German television. Heckroth was responsible for the distinctive character of the later Archers films, including The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffmann, but was working here with greatly reduced resources. Being a great Bartók enthusiast as well as a Powell aficionado it's long been a source of frustration for me that this hour-long film is one of the least visible from Powell's career. To date, the stills shown here are about the only visuals one can find.

Bluebeard: Norman Foster.

Bluebeard's Castle was Bartók's only opera, a tremendous work and a lot easier to digest than some being a one-act piece for two singers: bass (Bluebeard) and soprano (Judith, his wife-to-be). The fairy tale of the murderous husband is turned into a psychodrama with Judith's successive opening of the castle's seven doors revealing more than she wants to know about her suitor's personality. The libretto by Béla Balázs drops the last-minute rescue of the heroine by her brothers for a darker conclusion. The simple storyline and pronounced symbolism—the doors are often given different colours, while the rooms to which they lead each have a symbolic decor and import—lends itself to a variety of interpretations. Needless to say I'd love to see how Heckroth and Powell presented the drama. To whet the appetite further, one of the P&P sites has this account of a recent screening.

Judith: Ana Raquel Sartre.

There are many other filmed versions of this opera, of course, and YouTube has the usual motley selection chopped into opus-ruining ten-minute segments. The BBC screened a fantastically gloomy version in 1988 by , director of many fine TV documentaries including the major Orson Welles edition of Arena in 1982 and a chilling adaptation of Sheridan le Fanu's Schalcken the Painter. His Bluebeard has been released on DVD in the US, and YouTube has an extract here.

Previously on { feuilleton }

• The Tale of Giulietta

• Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes

• Béla Bartók caricatured