Monthly Archives: October 2007

Internet archeology #1

Soledad in Akasava

Der Teufel kam aus Akasava

Before Miranda, there was Soledad Miranda. Soledad was a Spanish actress best known for her films with Jess Franco. She died young in a car accident.

Via my recent purchase of Necronomicon: book three by Andy Black comes the Soledad photograph above, which I had hitherto only seen in its censored version, without showing the torso, from a screen capture or set photograph from Der Teufel kam aus Akasava.

Below are the better known online versions which I listed at Jahsonic.com as photocredit unidentified:

Soledad Miranda, photo unidentifed

photocredit unidentified

Case solved.

Saturday in the city

Saturday in Antwerp. First to Demian Antiquariaat, bought Dutch translations of Boris Vian‘s And We’ll Kill All the Ugly Ones (En al wie lelijk is maken we af) and Dirty Weekend for the birth of Romi, newly born daughter of G___ and E___.

Lauteste

Die Grosse Jux-Box

I then went to Lars of Vinyl looking for Greta Keller. I ended up getting Camille Saint-Saëns‘s The Carnival of the Animals, Spike Jones and Marlene Dietrich compilations and a strange novelty polka record Die Grosse Jux-Box on Europa (record label).

On Ugliness by Eco

On Ugliness

Atlas of contemporary art by Denis Gielen

The Atlas of Contemporary Art

Afterwards, I headed for the Fnac. The kind young man who had recommended Comic Grotesque two years earlier told me that On Ugliness by Eco had not yet been translated to English. He also showed me the informed The Atlas of Contemporary Art.

Freddy de Vree, the Magic Trio from Masscheroen by Hugo Claus

Plate from book on Masscheroen, illustration sourced here.

At around 16,00 pm, I went back to Demian Antiquariaat for the official opening of the Freddy de Vree expo: Antiquaire du surréalisme. Despite his feeble-voiced delivery which would have benefited from the use of a microphone, I enjoyed Christophe Vekeman‘s text on de Vree, who had apparently never met de Vree but who had been contacted by him on several occasions to react to his De Morgen columns. Vekeman’s angle was the mask-wearing of de Vree, sliding into his argument via a recent purchase of Mishima‘s Confessions of a Mask, which had also been a favorite of de Vree. The mask-wearing practices were represented at the expo by several “literaire mystificaties” (pseudonymously published works or “literary mystifications”) by de Vree such as Conny Couperus’s Sneeuwwitje en de leeuwerik van Vlaanderen (with Hugo Claus), a send-up of the crime thriller genre.

Afterwards I overheard the widow of de Vree, Marie-Claire Nuyens, talking to a man, a friend of the family. Her remarks shed more light on the character of de Vree than the speech or the exhibition. The man asked how the expo had come about. Marie-Claire replied: “It all started with a couple of e-mails by René” (owner of Demian). Marie-Claire remembered René because Freddy had said that he liked the young book shop owner. Continuing: “You know how very rarely Freddy expressed his appreciation for someone, so I figured, let’s do the exhibition.” With this de Vree’s widow confirmed that – as was to be expected from being a very close friend to the sometimes labeled arrogant W. F. Hermans – de Vree may not have been “De aardigste man van de wereld”.

Antiquaire du surréalisme features a wide selection of original editions by de Vree; photographs; recordings of his interviews with Topor, Burroughs, Alechinsky; photographs of the play Masscheroen (1968), in which de Vree stars nude. Notably absent at this opening was Sylvia Kristel, the last companion of de Vree. The expo at Demian is on until December 1, dedicated to one of the only intellectuals worthy of that title in Belgium.

Free Radicals

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaYi6FlB4cw]

Scrub to 3:30 for immediate access to Free Radicals (an instant dance music classic)

The phrase “free radical” got stuck in my head, and Googling for it brought up a 1958 film by New Zealand experimental filmmaker Len Lye, titled Free Radicals. The film features white ‘chalk’ lines constantly moving on a black background with African drums (‘a field tape of the Bagirmi tribe’) playing throughout. The film won second prize out of 400 entries in an International Experimental Film Competition judged by Man Ray, Norman McLaren, Alexander Alexeieff and others, at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. In 1979 Lye further condensed this already very concentrated film by dropping a minute of footage. Stan Brakhage described the final version as “an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece (a brief epic)’. I could not agree more.

Icons of erotic art #2

The Guitar Lesson [1] (French: La Leçon de guitare) is a 1934 painting by Balthus. It depicts a a young girl nude from the waist down and her teacher who has one breast exposed. The work was lovingly re-interpreted by Japanese photographer Naoto Kawahara in 2007 [2]. In the same vein Kawahara does a Mollinesque interpretation of Lucretia [3]. Kawahara (1971, Tokyo) recently exhibited at the Antwerp Zeno X Gallery, see zeno-x.com.

Bob Carlos Clarke and Allen Jones

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=791oBsaXEk4]

Via sensOtheque comes the above vintage style series of risqué photos by Bob Carlos Clarke from a version of the book Delta of Venus, set to “You Do Something To Me” by Marlene Dietrich recorded in 1939.

Bob Carlos Clarke was good friends with the artist Allen Jones. They shared the same interest in rubber fetishism and sexual objectification [1] and Clarke also re-interpreted the table sculpture of Jones’s 1969 Chair, Table and Hat Stand in 1987 with Many Nights and in 2004 with the piece Total Control.

“It was Jones who tried to put Carlos Clarke off using rubber-clad women in his photographs, as they appeared often in his own paintings. Clarke had been introduced to this rubber fetish while at college by a man known simply as the Commander, who published a quarterly magazine for devotees of rubber wear. (The Commander had developed a taste for rubber while serving as a frogman in the Royal Navy, during which time he had become very attached to his diving suit.) [2]

Also check the Allen Jones category at the excellent blog “lemateurdart”.

To conclude, a 2002 photograph [3] of Allen Jones’s table sculpture.

World cinema classics #23

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md-LwM0s9fY]

Daisies (1966) – Věra Chytilová

It was against my rules to include films in this series that I had not seen. However, on the basis of this superb excerpt and some very warm recommendations of fellow bloggers, here is Daisies, a 1966 Czech film by director Věra Chytilová. It’s included in Film as a Subversive Art.

If everything’s going bad … so … we’re going … bad … as … well!

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.