Category Archives: art

Woman makes love to cloud, divine jealousy

Io by Correggio

Jupiter and Io (c. 1530) – Correggio

It would appear that the dynamics of the two married protagonists of Greek and Roman mythology Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno) is one of a jealous wife chasing a promiscuous husband.

In order to conceal his escapades, Zeus constantly makes use of his shapeshifting abilities. Thus, he transforms himself into a cloud (he hid himself within a cloud with Io), a golden shower with Danae, a swan with Leda, a bull with Europa, depending on whether he needed to be charming and beautiful or powerful and frightening in his conquest.

See also: divine jealousy

 

Ways of Hearing

Yesterday evening, I attended David Toop’s presentation of his forthcoming book Ways of Hearing. Toop’s music theory is very much about hearing. I will write more about the presentation in a future post. But for now: a documentary film on Christian Marclay, which illustrates Toop’s stance on music well.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yqM3dAqTzs]

Christian Marclay mini documentary

If you known where this documentary originated, please let me know.

The comic grotesque in the West and the East

Arnold_Böcklin_Nessus_und_Deianeira

Nessus rapes Deianeira (1898) by Arnold Böcklin.

Arnold Böcklin (16 October 1827 – 16 January 1901) was a Swiss painter known for his grotesquely comic work. His best known painting is the macabre The Isle of the Dead. Most recently his work has been celebrated at the German traveling exhibition Comic Grotesque. He was born 180 years ago tomorrow.

I’ve always considered the ambivalence of the grotesque an essentially Western sensibility but I guess I’m wrong if you consider the work of Yue Minjun‏ (Googe gallery) Yue Minjun is an artist based in Beijing working in painting and sculpture. His style is ambiguous in that it is very Chinese, yet at the same time very Western, and very political, satirical and humorous to the point of the grotesque. Last Friday, his painting “Execution” became the most expensive work sold by a Chinese contemporary artist.

As further ‘proof’ that the grotesque and fantastique (two very related sensibilities, in the sense that they both rely on ambiguity at their core), there is the anthology of stories Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, which Franz Kafka described as “exquisite” and the painting below:

One of the dragons from The Nine Dragons handscroll (九龍圖卷; 陳容), painted by the Song Dynasty Chinese artist Chen Rong in the year 1244

One of the dragons from The Nine Dragons handscroll , painted by the Song Dynasty Chinese artist Chen Rong in the year 1244.

Tip of the hat to Doms.

More monkeys in art

In Consultation (1924) – Joseph Schippers

Monkey Portraits (2006) – Jill Greenberg
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Gorilla and Woman (1887) – Emmanuel Frémiet

Some paintings of Gabriel von Max, Joseph Schippers, Chardin. The photography of Jill Greenberg. The sculpture of Fremiet. King Kong at the low art end of the spectrum. Is there a work dedicated to the representation of apes and monkeys in art outside of The Monkey in Art (1994) by Ptolemy Tompkins?

Introducing Gabriel von Max

Monkeys as Judges of Art, 1889

Monkeys as Judges of Art, 1889

 

Äffchen mit Zitrone Gabriel von Max Saure Erfahrung

Monkey with Lemon

Die ekstatische Jungfrau Katharina Emmerich, 1885

Katharina Emmerich, 1885

 

Der Anatom, 1869

The Anatomist, 1869

Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max (August 23, 1840, Prague – November 24, 1915, München) was a Prague-born Austrian painter. His themes were parapsychology and mysticism. He surrounded himself and with monkeys and painted them often, sometimes portraying them as human.

See also: Monkeys in art

Seduced at the Barbican

Fresco, 1st century AD, at the Villa dei Vetii, Pompeii
Not on show at the Barbican

Yesterday, “Seduced, Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now” opened at the Barbican Centre. Curated by Martin Kemp it features usual suspects Araki, Bacon, Bellmer, Boucher, Carracci, Fragonard, Goldin, Klimt, Koons, Mapplethorpe, Picasso, Rembrandt, Rodin, Schiele, Turner and Warhol.

You may want to pay it a visit for works by Marlene Dumas (X-posure, 1999) and Thomas Ruff (nudes ama14, 2000).

Dumas was new to me: here is her Google gallery.

Ruff I was familiar, but think I need to buy his book Nudes, a collaborative effort with Houellebecq. His Google gallery. And a Google gallery of the Nudes set.

Tip of the hat to John Coulthart

I’m an eye. A mechanical eye.

Speaking of Ways of Seeing (see previous post).

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu1ejGmPk2w]

Beginning of the first of four Ways of Seeing at the BBC

This is a first for me, I’ve read the book, but had never seen the documentary film. Fascinating.

It starts with Berger cutting a piece out of a quattrocento painting in a museum, moves to showing a printing press printing the cut-out, switches then to fragments of Man with a Movie Camera accompanied by the text of the 1923 manifesto Kinoks Revolution, by Vertov (see below). Please also the checkbook lettering which were en vogue at the time.

Notes how Berger constistenly says “camewa” and “woom”.

An excerpt of Vertov’s manifesto:

“I’m an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I’m in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse’s mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unkown to you.”

One just has to love Youtube for making all of this available. Filesharing has made music available (but not in real-time alas), Google books did the same for books, Youtube does it for the moving image. There is still a wealth of TV and radio documentaries waiting to be unearthed. I am particularly thinking of European state funded radio and television since the 1960s.

Batailleana #1 and 2

Ma Mère by Bataille, cover by publisher domaine francais

Ma Mère by Bataille, cover by publisher 10 | 18

#1) 10/18 is a publisher in France (with a sub collection named domaine français). Their series of Georges Bataille novels are illustrated by Hans Bellmer. One of the nicer book illustrations around. I like the overall feel of the design. Can someone tell me more about the graphic designer over at the 10/18 publishing imprint?

Here is the 10/18 cover of Madame Edwarda.

#2) In 1997 André S. Labarthe produced a documentary on Georges Bataille. The focus was Bataille’s extreme, perverse, surreal story ‘Madame Edwarda‘ where the prostitute reveals that she *is* God (‘je suis DIEU’) – perfectly merging the sacred and profane, a key notion for Bataille … in the final section of the clip, the infamous Chinese torture victim is shown … in his last work, the heavily-illustrated ‘Tears of Eros,’ Bataille said this about these photos:

“What I suddenly saw, and what imprisoned me in anguish-but which at the same time delivered me from it-was the identity of these perfect contraries, divine ecstasy and its opposite, extreme horror.”

posted by hiperf289 (check his other Youtube clips)