Yearly Archives: 2009

Introducing Histoiredeloeil

Introducing Histoiredeloeil

via http://histoiredeloeil.canalblog.com Histoiredeloeil

from that blog

Histoiredeloeil[1] is a Francophone culture blog which takes its name from French erotomaniac Georges Bataille‘s novel Histoire de l’oeil .

As of June 2009 it was connected to A La Piscine, Absinthe, Africa & Omega, Alainfinkielkrautrock, Alex Gross, Andrei Tarkovsky, Anthrolology, Antonin Artaud, Arthur Ignatowski, Arthur Schopenhauer, Asian Drillpop, Au Carrefour Etrange, Aubrey Beardsley, Audrey Kawasaki, Blonde Zombies, Cambodian Rock, Cinemas D’asie Et D’ailleurs, Cult Sirens, Dada, Dan Hillier, Dario Argento, David Lynch, Deadlicious, Debord Cineaste, Demeure Du Chaos, Demoralys, Dengue Fever, Diane Arbus, Dream Anatomy, E-L-I-S-E, Elli + Jacno, Ennio Morricone, Ernst Haeckel, Erwin Olaf, Espira, Felicien Rops, Florent Deloison, Food Curiosa, Francis Bacon, Fumeur, H.R.Giger, Hans Bellmer, Helnwein, Hi Fructose, Impur, Jan Saudek, Jared Joslin, J-J Perrey, Jpop Trash, Junko Mizuno, Kraftwerk, La Soucoupe, Laura Brink, Laurie Lipton, Le 3eme Oeil, Le Palace, Leiji Matsumoto, Les 400 Culs, L’etrange Festival, Mamie Van Doren Show, Margo Guryan, Mark Ryden, Martin Monestier, Martin Parr, Matt Groller, Meiko Kaji, Mondo Bizzarro, Moondog, Oculart, Old Orient Museum, Opium Museum, Our Body, Paco Camino, Patricia Piccinini, Pierre Molinier, Plaid Stallions, Pop Cards, Puppet Mastaz, Ray Caesar, Retro Atelier, Retro Zone, Ron Mueck, Ron Winter, Rotten Clinic, Scans Cinema, S.F.,…, Schwarz-Weiss, Sebastien Tellier, Sexy People, Silent Hill, Sixties Posters, Square America, Stanley Kubrick, Suehiro Maruo, Suzanne G., Telex, Terry Rodgers, Thanatos, The Hot Spot, The Marquis Von Bayros, The Prisoner, Title Screens, Ubu Web, Vania Zouravliov, Wendy Carlos, William Blake and Wrong Side Of The Art.

If you want to check the connected blogs and sites, follow [1]. Website without artandpop profile are encouraged to make one.

RIP Hugh Hopper (1945 – 2009)

RIP Hugh Hopper (1945 – 2009)

Volume Two by Soft Machine

Yesterday, Hugh Hopper, British progressive rock and jazz fusion bassist and composer (Soft Machine) died at age 64. He was a prominent member of the Canterbury scene, as a member of Soft Machine and various other related bands. The Soft Machine was a pioneering English psychedelic band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs.

Hopper’s role with Soft Machine was initially as the group’s road manager, but he already composed for their first album The Soft Machine and played bass on one of its tracks. In 1969 he was recruited to be the group’s bassist for their second album, Volume Two and, with Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt, he took part in a recording session for The Madcap Laughs of Syd Barrett. Hopper continued with the Softs, playing bass and contributing numerous compositions, until 1973. During his tenure the group evolved from a psychedelic pop group to an instrumental jazz-rock fusion band. In 1972, shortly before leaving Soft Machine, he recorded the first record under his own name, 1984 (named after George Orwell‘s novel). This was a decidedly non-commercial record featuring lengthy solo pieces using tape loops as well as shorter pieces with a group.

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

In one of the myriad connections in (un)popular music, New York based No Wave music group Material led by Bill Laswell covered Hopper’s “Memories” on their One Down album. The song was written by Hopper just prior to his joining Soft Machine, but most well known from Daevid Allen‘s Banana Moon album which featured a lead vocal from Robert Wyatt.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3CZPNT9GSs]

The vocal here is performed by Whitney Houston in one of her first ever featured lead performances.

“Memories” is World Music Classic #329.

“Gradiva” by Alain Robbe-Grillet out on DVD

http://mondomacabrodvd.blogspot.com/2009/06/gradiva-cover-art-stills-nsfw.html Gradiva (C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle) by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Still from Gradiva (C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle) by Alain Robbe-Grillet

The good people at Mondo Macabro[1] are releasing Gradiva (C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle), the last film by French master-erotomaniac Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Monell points out in a recent post [2].

C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006) is a French language film by Alain Robbe-Grillet starring: James Wilby, Arielle Dombasle and Dany Verissimo. It premiered at the 2006 Venice film festival on September 8 and in French cinemas on May 9 of 2007.

The film, Grillet’s last, is a Franco-Belgian production loosely based on Gradiva: A Pompeiian Fancy by Wilhelm Jensen. The setting has been updated to modern times, at least, no earlier than the 1970s, based on vehicles and appliances seen in the film. It begins with an English art historian named John Locke is doing research in Morocco on the paintings and drawings that French artist Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) produced when he spent time in that country (back then, a French colony) more than a century before. Locke spots a beautiful, mysterious blonde girl (Gradiva, of course) in flowing robes dashing through the back alleys of Marrakech, and becomes consumed with the need to track her down. Like most of Robbe-Grillet’s cinematic output, this film is highly surrealistic and also involves a surprisingly explicit amount of “sex slave” nudity and S&M, although it is a serious film and not just softcore fluff.

Some of the film’s prehistory.

via gutenberg.spiegel.de Gradiva: A Pompeiian Fancy

A Pompeiian Fancy is a novel by Wilhelm Jensen published by in German as Ein pompejanisches Phantasiestuck (Dresden and Leipzig: Carl Reissner) in 1903.

The story is about an archaeologist named Norbert Hanhold who holds a fascination for a woman depicted in a relief that he sees in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. Hanhold later dreams that he has been transported back in time to meet the girl, whose unusual gait captivates him as he imagines her walking on the stepping stones that cross the roads in Pompeii while the hot ashes subsume the city in 79 AD.

via www.greeninteger.com

Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva (1907) is an essay by Sigmund Freud that analyzes the novel Gradiva by Wilhelm Jensen from a psychoanalytical point of view.

After that, Gravida became a favourite of the Surrealists. Salvador Dalí used the name Gradiva as a nickname for his wife, Gala Dalí. He used the figure of Gradiva in a number of his paintings, including Gradiva encuentra las ruinas de Antropomorphos (Gradiva finds the ruins of Antropomorphos)[3]. The figure Gradiva was used in other Surrealist paintings as well. Gradiva (Metamorphosis of Gradiva)[4], 1939, by André Masson explores the sexual iconography of the character.

In 1937 the Surrealist wirter Andre Breton opened an art gallery on the Left Bank, 31 rue de Seine, christening it with the title: Gradiva. Marcel Duchamp designed it, giving its door the form of a double cast shadow.

via upload.wikimedia.org Gradiva

Icons of counterculture #3

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcvaSnmqZ40&]

On this day 20 years ago, in 1989 in China Tank Man, the Unknown Rebel halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. It was the last anyone has seen of him. He is probably dead. He is a personal hero. It’s hard to watch this footage[1] without getting very emotional. He is Icon of Counterculture#3. Number one and two are here[2] and here[3].

RIP David Carradine (1936 – 2009)

RIP David Carradine (1936 – 2009)

via www.andyland1point5.com “RIP David Carradine (1936 - 2009)”.

David Carradine (December 8, 1936 – June 3, 2009) was an American actor best known for his work in the 1970s television series Kung Fu and more recently in the movies Kill Bill.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGhu5Zl5ry8&]

A typical scene from one of my fave “small” American films: Death Race 2000

During the heyday of the B-movie, he starred in Paul Bartel‘s hilarious Death Race 2000 and Cannonball.

One of his more interesting roles was in Boxcar Bertha (Scorcese) together with then real-life partner Barbara Hershey.

Other of his appearances worth checking are Mean Streets (Scorcese) and Q (Larry Cohen) in the eighties.

Carradine once commented on Roger “never lost a dime” Corman‘s career that “It’s almost as though you can’t have a career in this business without having passed through Roger Corman’s hands for at least a moment.”

Death Race 2000 is World Cinema Classic #105.

Introducing Le Comte de Gabalis

Introducing Le Comte de Gabalis

Title page

I’ve just spent a good deal of hours researching Comte de Gabalis, a quest prompted by a new release on Creation Books’ Creation Oneiros imprint and the reference I found there to occult fiction. Wikipedia has no entry on occult fiction but Googling them did bring up Gabalis.

I am not that a big a fan of occultism except when I find it represented in fiction, such as supernatural horror or le fantastique.

A recap of what I found:

The Comte De Gabalis is a 17th century grimoire (posing as a novel of ideas) by French writer Abbé N. de Montfaucon de Villars, first published anonymously in 1670. The book is dedicated to Rosicrucianis and Cabalism and based on Paracelsus’s four elementals: Gnomes, earth elementals; Undines; water elementals, Sylphs, air elementals and Salamanders, fire elementals. It is composed of five discourses given by a Count or spiritual master to the student or aspirant. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology by the Gale Group notes that the work may be a satire of the writings of la Calprenède, a popular French writer of the 17th century.

David Teniers the Younger. The Alchemist. Oil on canvas. 44 x 58.5 cm. Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, Italy. Comte de Gabalis The Comte De Gabalis is a 17th century grimoire (posing as a novel of ideas) by French writer Abbé N. de Montfaucon de Villars. The book is dedicated to Rosicrucianis and Cabalism and based on Paracelsus’s four elementals: Gnomes, earth elementals; Undines; water elementals, Sylphs, air elementals and Salamanders, fire elementals. It is composed of five discourses given by a Count or spiritual master to the student or aspirant. It was anonymously published in 1670 under the title: “Comte De Gabalis.” The meaning suggests the Count of the Cabala as the text is cabalistic in nature. The “Holy Cabala” is mentioned explicitly throughout. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology by the Gale Group notes that the work may be a satire of the writings of la Calprenède, a popular French writer of the 17th century.

The Alchemist by David Teniers the Younger

The most interesting aspect of The Comte De Gabalis is the sexual union of gods and mortals. I like half creatures and I like the sexual part of it. It was the work of the minor British publisher of  anthropologica Robert H. Fryar who most clearly brought this link to my attention by reprinting in the late 19th century the Comte de Gabalis with its tale of the immortalization of elementals through sexual intercourse with men and supplementing the work with long citations from the recently discovered Demoniality Or Incubi and Succubi, an eighteenth-century work by Father Sinistrari on the dangers of incubi and succubi.

Message to B. Your track is called “B.”

Hi B. Note to reader: B. contacted me yesterday with the following question: “Hi. I come here daily, but this is the first time I’ve commented. I was wondering if you could help me out. I’m trying to figure out the name of this artist/band to whom this video belongs?” By an incredible coincidence, the title of the track you have been looking for is “B” My long-time fellow traveler Erkki Rautio came up with the following. “the track is “B” by Colin Newman (of The Wire fame), released as a 7” and on his album “A-Z” in 1980. [1][2][3]

“B” by Colin Newman

Hi B.

Note to reader: B. contacted me yesterday[1] with the following question:

“Hi. I come here daily, but this is the first time I’ve commented. I was wondering if you could help me out. I’m trying to figure out the name of this artist/band to whom this video belongs?”

By an incredible coincidence, the title of the track you have been looking for is “B.”

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

“B” by Colin Newman

My long-time fellow traveler Erkki Rautio came up with the following.

“the track is “B” by Colin Newman (of Wire fame), released as a 7″ and on his album “A-Z” in 1980. [2][3][4]

Bosch’s “hill woman” is Icon of Erotic Art #45

Bosch (from the Triptych of The Temptation of St. Anthony)

Bosch (from the Triptych of The Temptation of St. Anthony)

On my latest visit[1] to the KMSKB, I took some detailed photos of Bosch‘s The Temptation of St. Anthony (Bosch). The one shown above is from the left panel. I’ve chosen the rather bawdy depiction of a woman seated on all fours, with here belly and genital area being a whole in a hill. Depicting women as landscapes has been celebrated in several somatopia.

Somatopia is a term coined by Darby Lewes to denote texts composed of, or designed for the human body. Example include Merryland (1740) and Erotopolis: The Present State of Bettyland (1684).

An early novel, A New Description of Merryland. Containing a Topographical, Geographical and Natural History of that Country[2] (1740), “a fruitful and delicious country,” by Thomas Stretzer, depicted the female body as a landscape that men explore, till, and plow. For example, he writes: “Her valleys are like Eden, her hills like Lebanon, she is a paradise of pleasure and a garden of delight.” Sometimes, the metaphor of female form = landscape changes, but the objectification of the female body remains intact; only the image is changed, as when, for example, in another passage, the novel’s narrator, Roger Pheuquewell, describes the uterus (“Utrs,” as the author simply contracts vowels without graphical indication) as resembling “one of our common pint bottles, with the neck downwards.” It is remarkable, he says, for expanding infinitely, the more it is filled, and contracting when there is no crop to hold. Similarly, in Charles Cotton‘s Erotopolis: The Present State of Bettyland (1684), the female body is an island farmed by men.

Bosch’s “hill woman” shown above, and the genre of sexual somatopia is icon of erotic art #45.