Plexus was a French language magazine, started under the auspices of Planète science fiction magazine to which the late Pierre Bourgeade contributed.
Planète (The Planet) was a French fantastic realism magazine created by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels. It ran from 1961 to 1972.
See also: plexus, http://journaux-anciens.chapitre.com/PLEXUS.html
On inspiration
Prayer of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane by Giovanni Bellini
Surely Salvador Dalí must have known about Giovanni Bellini‘s Prayer of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane[4] when he painted the epitome of dripping surrealism The Persistence of Memory by [5]
See works of art in the collective unconscious, cryptomnesia, rediscovery, déjà vu, memory failure, false memory syndrome, confabulation, automatic writing, memory bias, memoir, collective unconscious.
Pierre Bourgeade book covers
   
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Contrary to popular opinion, it is entirely possible to judge a book by its cover, anyone inclined not to is a fool. —Sholem Stein
RIP Pierre Bourgeade
Yaba Yayınları published Ölümsüz Bakireler, presumably a Turkish translation of Les Immortelles. –Sholem Stein
Pierre Bourgeade (November 8, 1927 – March 12, 2009) was a French writer, novelist, dramatist, poet, screenwriter, journalist, literary critic and writer. Rita Renoir met with her first critical success in the theatrical piece Les Immortelles by Bourgeade.
More on his importance to my universe in the coming hours.
Update: He wrote for French film magazines Positif and L’Écran français.
He is known to write in the category black comedy.
He participated in Peter Weibel‘s project Phantom of Desire.
He was a member of the jury of the Prix Sade.
He wrote prefaces for such authors as Stéphen Lévy-Kuentz and most recently Medi Holtrop.
Introducing PulpInternational.com[1]. The blog is concerned with “vintage and modern pulp fiction, noir, schlock and exploitation films.” George Quaintance (1902–1957) [2] was a pioneer of male physique art during the 1950s. From this series[3].
via Ofellabuta.
Maurice Bottomley says: RIP Claude Jeter.
Click for credits
Listen to him here[1] on “Stand By Me“.
Claude A. Jeter (October 26, 1914 – January 6, 2009) was an African American gospel music singer.
Jeter was best known for his falsetto with the Swan Silvertones in which his graceful high melodies served in contrast to the rougher voices of the group’s other members. The group recorded for the several different labels, but never achieved financial success, despite its widespread influence. (I have a very special fondness for this category of artists, the ones whose influence osmotically make their own name disappear).
During the 1950s the group was popular and many of the elements of the group’s style resembled the then-prevalent rhythm and blues vocal group style. Jeter received many offers to perform R&B or rock and roll, but rejected them all, citing a commitment he had made to his mother that he would always sing for the Lord.
Elements of his performances in songs were picked up by later singers such as Al Green and Eddie Kendricks of The Temptations and another of his songs served as Paul Simon‘s inspiration to write his 1970 song “Bridge over Troubled Water“. Paul Simon subsequently gave Jeter a check for $1,000 for inspiring Simon to write “Bridge over Troubled Water”. See for this last trope: cultural appropriation in western music.
Click for credits
My dear friend Walter gave me Cinema of Obsession[1] as a present.
The introduction to the book mentions new (to me) theoretical work on love and fetishism. First there is Max Dessoir (pseudonym Ludwig Brunn) and a 1888 essay entitled “The Fetichism of Love,” from which comes this clever quote:
“Fetichism of Love” reprises the final two chapters of Alfred Binet‘s “Du Fétichisme dans l’amour” published the previous year, which is generally regarded as the first work on sexual fetishism.
The book also references Denis de Rougemont‘s L’Amour et l’Occident (1939, revised 1972), translated as Love in the Western World as well as the standard work in this category, Georges Bataille‘s Erotism.
From that last book.
The phrase that inspired this post and above all the photo above is “normal love“.
Goya, Redon, Ensor. Grotesque paintings and drawings is a current exhibition at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
Goya, Redon, Ensor. Grotesque paintings and drawings is an exhibition at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp which runs from March 14 until June 14, 2009
It displays a collection of grotesque paintings, drawings and prints by Goya, Redon and Ensor. The show highlights the similarities as well as the differences between the three masters and features works from Belgian museums and private collections, complemented with loans from, among other museums, MoMA in New York, Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Museo del Prado in Madrid, the National Gallery in London and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. The exhibition uses KMSKA’s own collection of Ensors, one of the largest in the world as well as a rare series of etchings by Goya.
One of my fave Redons:
The Heart Has Its Reasons (c.1887) by Odilon Redon, a phrase from the Pensées (1669) by Blaise Pascal
One of my fave Goyas:
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monstersis a 1799 print by Goya from the Caprichos series. It is the image the sleeping artist surrounded by the winged ghoulies and beasties unleashed by unreason.
In 1959 the Barbie doll debuts.
“There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do“
Today, Barbie has come to symbolize any stunningly beautiful, but stupid or shallow young woman (see bimbo and dumb blonde). Likewise her male counterpart Ken symbolizes an American college football jock. They both major in a Mickey Mouse course and are emblematic of American popular culture.
More specifically Barbie has been criticized for promoting a false female body image due to Barbie’s size zero (see heroin chic), perhaps most vociferously at the 2006 Madrid Fashion Week. Commercial appropriations have included The Body Shop‘s “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do” campaign; satirical variants include Todd Haynes‘s Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. For an innocuous satire check “I’m a Barbie Girl.”
See also: stereotypes of white people and stereotypes of Americans.
Plaisir (2008) – Medi Holtrop
In France, Norwegian artist Medi Holtrop and lifelong companion of Bernard Willem Holtrop received the 2009 Grandville grand prize of “l’humour noir.”
Via L’Alamblog[1]
I’ve previously written on the notion of humour noir, which translates into English as black comedy defined as a sub-genre of comedy and satire where topics and events that are usually treated seriously — death, mass murder, suicide, sickness, madness, terror, drug abuse, rape, war, etc. — are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms include dark humor, morbid humor, gallows humor and off-color humor.
The French were the first to anthologize the genre in the seminal anthology Anthology of Black Humor (1940) by André Breton. Breton’s anthology not only introduced some until then almost unknown or forgotten writers, it also coined the term “black humor” (as Breton said, until then the term had meant nothing, unless someone imagined jokes about black people ). The term became globally used since then. The choice of authors was done entirely by Breton and according to his taste which he explains in the Foreword (called The Lightning Rod, a term suggested by Lichtenberg), a work of great depth that starts with contemplating Rimbaud´s words “Emanations, explosions.” from Rimbaud´s last poem The barrack-room of night : Dream.
In the United States, black comedy as a literary genre came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers such as Terry Southern, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut and Harlan Ellison have published novels, stories and plays where profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. An anthology edited by Bruce Jay Friedman, titled Black Humor: Anthology was published in 1965.
I am currently researching the prevalence of black comedy in other parts of Europe.
