Category Archives: art

Erotická revue

The Erotická revue[1] was an arts journal launched by Czech surrealist Jindřich Štyrský in 1930. It is also the name of the blog of American author Evie Byrne [2].

From Evie Byrne’s blog come:

Pompeii bedroom fresco

Work by Sarah Goodridge

Emmanuel de Ghendt (1738-1815), Midday Heat, an engraving after Baudouin

Speaking of Czech surrealism, I just found some Svankmajer clips at YouTube. Some of his best work: Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), which shows Arcimboldo-like heads gradually reducing each other to bland copies (“exhaustive discussion”[3]); a clay man and woman who dissolve into one another sexually, then quarrel and reduce themselves to a frenzied, boiling pulp (“passionate discourse”[4]); and two elderly clay heads who extrude various objects on their tongues (toothbrush and toothpaste; shoe and shoelaces, etc.) and use them in every possible combination, sane or otherwise (“factual conversation”[5]). Follow the links to see more of Jahsonic fave Svankmajer.

Last minute, it’s Trevor Brown day[6] over at Dennis Cooper‘s blog.

Rietveld @ 120

Gerrit Rietveld (June 24, 1888–June 26, 1964) was a Dutch furniture designer and architect.

Leunsteul van Rietveld. Circa 1918. Published in De Stijl, second year, number 11 (September 1919). Photographer unknown, so copyright expired on 1-1-1990.

Rietveld designed the Red and Blue Chair in 1917, but changed its colors to the familiar style in 1918 after he became influenced by the ‘De Stijl‘ movement

Picture of a replicum of the Red and Blue Chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld. Picture taken by Wikipedia user Ellywa, with permission of the owner of the chair.

Vallotton’s nudes + IoEA #27

Félix Vallotton (December 28 1865–December 29 1925) was a Swiss painter and graphic artist, an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut; his work was recently celebrated in the 2007-08 retrospective Félix Vallotton: An Idyll at the Edge held in Zürich and Hamburg.

Self portrait, 1885, oil on canvas, by Félix Vallotton

I’ve mentioned Swiss painter and woodcutter Félix Vallotton before here, he is one of the most interesting painters of the early 20th century. Tip of the hat to “Femme, femme, femme“, the blog, for bringing the crouching woman to my attention. The work of Vallotton is plentiful, varied and in the public domain and his edginess foreshadows the palatable work of art deco artist Tamara de Lempicka, and I have reason to imagine that Balthus was not averse to his work.

From my Flickr set:

Vallotton Femme nue regardant dans une psyche

Felix-Vallotton woman with one naked breast

The “Crouching Woman with Cat” (4th painting from the left) reminded me of the opening “kitty milk” scene in Story of the Eye, the novel by Georges Bataille, which was analyzed by Roland Barthes in his essay, “Metaphor of the Eye”, published within Bataille’s own journal Critique, shortly after Bataille’s death in 1962. Barthes’s analysis centers on the centrality of the eye but also traces a second series of liquid metaphors within the text, which flow through tears, cat’s milk, egg yolks, frequent urination scenes, blood and semen, an analogy which might not be out of place in this painting.

Here are some of your favorites from other Flickr members.

The woman in red is quite strange, the corpse very macabre.

As a final encore, let me give you the work that introduced me to Vallotton:

Abduction of Europe (1908) by Félix Vallotton

Update 22/6/08

Two more of his paintings

Abandon

The “bottom” one represents Icon of erotic art #27 ( IoEA #27),

One of the more beautiful depictions of the female posterior.

Anecdotal nightlife histories and erotic dictionaries

Histoire anecdotique des Cafés & Cabarets de Paris (1862) Alfred Delvau

Histoire anecdotique des Cafés & Cabarets de Paris is a book on Parisian cafés by Alfred Delvau with illustrations by Gustave Courbet, Félicien Rops and Léopold Flameng.

Delvau also wrote Dictionnaire érotique moderne (1864):

This edition printed by Gay et Doucé in 1876 for the members of the “Biblio-Aphrodiphile Société” with an engraved frontispiece by Chauvet after Félicien Rops. With a “Glossaire érotique” by Louis de Landers (= August Scheler). The volume was also published by Editions 10/18.

Introducing Kati Heck

In Belgian magazine Focus Knack June 2008, Els Fiers reviews German-born contemporary Belgian artist Kati Heck^{Google gallery} at the occasion of Heck’s first museum expostion. Fiers likens her to Eija-Liisa Ahtila^{“Dog Bites”}, Sam Taylor-Wood^{“A Little Death,” [YouTube]} and Léopold Rabus ^{Two girls and a mushroom}.

Wood’s work I’ve learned to appreciate via dmtls a month or two ago, Ahtila and Rabus are so-so on first impression, and Heck, I’ve been a bit of a fan for some time. If placement she deserves, I will locate her in the tradition of the German Comic Grotesque, a category which Pamela Kort recently examined in her eponymous book and of which the earliest practitioners are Lovis Corinth, Paul Klee, Max Klinger, Otto Dix, Alfred Kubin, Kurt Schwitters, Emil Nolde, and the greatest of them all (and with Klinger and Corinth, the only ones in the beloved public domain), Arnold –“Isle of the Dead” —Böcklin.

Please notice the word comic in Comic Grotesque. If Heck is a great painter or not is not for me but for the market to decide, but I can say this: she has a sense of humor, and it’s a rosy kind of insouciance, of a cynical variety perhaps, but nevertheless one which invites genuine (as opposed to ironic) laughter.

Speaking of comic, I would like to offer you this piece of eye candy:

La Fable des trois souhaits — Insatiabilité humaine by Antoine Wiertz,

Sly as a fox, or, picaros avant la lettre

One more film for Paul Rumsey’s cinematheque: Le Roman de Renard.

The Tale of the Fox, as the film is known in English, was stop-motion animation pioneer Ladislas Starevich‘s first fully-animated feature film. It is based on the tales of Flemish picaro avant-la-lettre Renard the Fox.

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

Le Roman de Renard

Lords, you have heard many tales,
That many tellers have told to you.
How Paris took Helen,
The evil and the pain he felt
Of Tristan that la Chevre
Wrote rather beautifully about;
And fabliaux and epics;
Of the Romance of Yvain and his beast
And many others told in this land
But never have you heard about the war
That was difficult and lengthy
Beween Renart and Ysengrin

Jello Biafra @50

Happy birthday Jello Biafra, former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys. In the late 1980s, the band was embroiled in an obscenity trial in the US over the 1985 Frankenchrist album, which included a “biomannerist” poster with art that depicted penises, “Penis Landscape“[1] by H. R. Giger, a work in the same vein as jahsonic fave Yoshifumi Hayashi.

Interviewed by Jools Holland:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVrTW7AUkoM]

Walking on water

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fagd2mC6RAQ]

Bridge by Michael Cross

Bridge is an installation by British contemporary artist Michael Cross currently hosted in Hasselt, Belgium. It gives the impression that one is walking on water.

Every step you makes a floater appear and disappear. It feels like hovering over an abyss. It is mechanically powered. One of the best things I’ve seen in a while.

When we examine a nest

Bird’s Nest and Ferns (1863) by Fidelia Bridges

“When we examine a nest, we place ourselves at the origin of confidence in the world.” -—Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

The flower of the swamp, a head. Human and sad.

La Fleur du marécage (1885) by Odilon Redon

In 1885, Odilon Redon depicts a Pierrot entitled La Fleur du marécage and commented with “La fleur du marécage, une tête. humaine et triste.” The engraving is is reminiscent of the fantastic plants of Edward Lear. Marécage is French for swamp, so the title translates as The flower of the swamp, a head. Human and sad.