Category Archives: aesthetics

Mr. Bataille loves flies, so does Boiffard

Mr. Bataille loves flies. Not we: we love the miters of old evocators, the miters of pure linen to whose front point was affixed a blade of gold and upon which flies did not settle, because they had been purified to keep them away.” -André Breton

The photograph of the Papier colant et mouches is by J.-A. Boiffard, first published in 1930 as an illustration for George Bataille’s article “L’esprit moderne et le jeu des transpositions,” in Documents, 1930. No.8, p. 488.

Via Contact Images by Georges Didi-Huberman

See Bretonian and Bataillean strains of Surrealism and toilet philosophy.

See also this wonderful post by Mark Dery on the big toe.

Genetologic Research, Very Short Novels and Cinema 299

I am not particularly a fan of “internet memes“, the internet equivalent of chain letters. The “Thinking Blogger Award” is a case in mind which was analyzed most satisfactory by Surreal Documents. However, the current meme started by Broken Projector in response to the work of David B Dale is too good to ignore. Apparently, Gautam of Broken Projector discovered Very Short Novels, an experiment in constrained writing by David B Dale, and liked it so much that he decided to write a 299-word piece on cinema, called Cinema 299. David D Bale responded by writing Surprise Ending, a “very short novel” on cinema, making the circle complete.

From memes to genes is a small step, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce the work of Maarten Vanden Eynde and Koen Vanmechelen.

Genetologic Research is a blog by Belgian/Dutch artist Maarten Vanden Eynde, subtitled “The Science of First Things”. Randomly picked, interesting posts include Mice and Men, Black Hole House, and The Cosmopolitan Chicken, a work by Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen who cross-breeds chickens. His work is currently on display at the Verbeke Foundation.

P. S. Although I stated that I am not a big fan of internet memes, I was very proud and honored to receive the “Thinking Blogger Award” in the past from Tales from the Reading Room, Beyond Groovy Age and Tim Lucas.

The perfect human

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdn6wrM1Hqw]

Andy Warhol by Jørgen Leth in 66 Scenes from America (1982)

“My name is Andy Warhol and I just finished eating a hamburger.”

Hjort: Some of your documentary films experiment interestingly with the relation between word and image. I’m thinking, for example, of “66 Scenes from America”, which presents a series of almost hyper-real, postcard-like images of America, that are identified, in a series of significantly delayed, laconic and minimalist comments. The longest sequence is that of Andy Warhol fastidiously eating a hamburger. Having completed this exercise, Warhol delivers the following line: ‘My name is Andy Warhol and I just finished eating a hamburger.’ What, exactly, is the purpose of the intentionally strained and awkward relation between images and words in “66 Scenes from America”? —Jørgen Leth interviewed by Mette Hjort & Ib Bondebjerg, September 2002

The art of war

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRTCwBB4buc]

Flesh (2005) – Edouard Salier (NSFW)

In the words of Salier:

Flesh contrasts Americans and terrorists. America as corrupt, libidinous and excessive as religious fundamentalists present it. America, the superpower, filled with such fervour and energy that it can feed its own aggressions and contain within itself a violence inherent to the foundations of its very empire. –via Strike Back Films.

More Salier:

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

Empire (2005)

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

Toks

Most (all?) of the music by Doctor L.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxWz0VzAWPE]

Tony Allen / Doctor L – Never satisfied

On whimsy and monochromatics

Combat de nègres dans une cave pendant la nuit

My previous post on Cohl led me to the French avant-garde of the 1880s and 1890s. Above is what is now generally held to be the first monochrome painting, rendered here in an appropriated version by Allais.

Here is the background:

Paul Bilhaud (born in Allichamps, December 31, 1854 – Avon, 1933) was a French poet and dramatist who belonged to the avant-garde group the Incoherents. He is the author of an all-black painting called Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night.

On October 1 1882 the “Exposition des Arts Incohérents” in Paris featured a black painting by the poet Paul Bilhaud titled Combat de nègres dans une cave pendant la nuit, which was appropriated in 1887 by the French humorist Alphonse Allais, in an album of monochrome pictures of various colors, with uniformly ornamental frames, each bearing a comical title. Allais called his all-red painting Tomato Harvest by Apoplectic Cardinals on the Shore of the Red Sea.

Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night predates Malevich‘s, Black Square on a White Field by 31 years.

Compiling this documentation, I stumbled on Il Giornale Nuovo’s post on Allais: Primo-Avrilesque and on Monochrome (une enquête) by L’Alamblog.

The artificiality of the image, its gloss rather than its reality

Via “Don’t you ever come down?” come The films of late Guy Bourdin on YouTube

Guy Bourdin (2006) – Alison M. Gingeras
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Exhibit A: Guy Bourdin (2001) – Luc Sante
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

More text on Bourdin over at my page and pictures over at Flickr.

Also, this picture a very good illustration of Bourdin’s fascination with disembodied limbs, what I like to call independent body parts in fiction, of which I’ve blogged here.

Trivia: Madonna was sued in 2004 for using the copyrighted work of the late French fashion photographer Guy Bourdin in her music video for the American Life track “Hollywood”[YouTube]. It was claimed she reenacted poses from at least eleven of the late photographer’s erotically tinged photos. Madonna settled the copyright lawsuit out of court.[4]

Make it my thing

 

DimDamDom.jpg

Screen capture of French television series Dim Dam, Dom

 

Rose Hobart (1936) – Joseph Cornell

  1. In recent comment exchanges between Andrej ‘Ombres Blanches’ Maltar and myself, we stumbled upon some Youtube footage I do not want to withhold from you, dear reader.
  2. Joseph Cornell’s ‘film remix’ Rose Hobart [Youtube]
  3. Ado Kyrou directed some episodes of Dim Dam Dom though not this one [Youtube] starring Gainsbourg. But one senses definitely his influence. Other director’s of this series were Eric Kahane (Girodias’s brother) and Jean Loup Sieff. –Andrej Maltar
  4. “When watching a film I inevitably perform an act of will on it, hence I transform it, and from its given elements make it my thing, draw snippets of knowledge from it and see better into myself… I could not begin to explain the reasons why since, contrary to Duchamp’s objects, I am not at all sure that these films, generally extremely bad ones, can have an objective value; or then I would have to work on them, make some changes in the montage, cut, accentuate, or tone down the soundtrack, finally interpret them before my subjective vision could be objectified.”–Ado Kyrou
  5. The Dim Dam, Dom video extracts were posted by Youtubian SpikedCandy who also treats us this superb piece of schmaltz.
  6. “This is the dialectic — there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.” –Douglas Sirk’s nobrow quote via Andrej Maltar