Stéphane Audran was a French actress, known for her performances in award-winning movies such as The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and Babette’s Feast (1987) and in critically acclaimed films like The Big Red One (1980) and Violette Nozière (1978).
A well-known photo of the actress shows her sitting at a dressing table doing her toenails. It is from the film from the film La Femme Infidèle (1968).
Above is the clip of that film with Audran tending to her nails.
I finally hold a copy of Lequeu : An Architectural Enigma (1986) in my hand, a book on the oeuvre of French visionary architect Jean-Jacques Lequeu.
It is a strange mix of obfuscation and elucidation by its author Philippe Duboÿ.
It drew — among many other things — my attention to the satirical vignette against Bertrand Chaupy (above), an engraving better known as the “turd engraving by Piranesi.”
Regarding the obfuscation in this book, Robert Harbison says in The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable (1993):
“Recently the idea has infiltrated academic consciousness that the eighteenth-century crank Lequeu, one of the world’s fringiest paper architects, is really Marcel Duchamp inserting himself Trojan-horse-like into the musty tomes of the Bibliotheque Nationale, whiling away countless hours creating a large hollow space in which a few hundred pseudo-eighteenth-century beings can roost.”
See on elucidation and obfuscation the dictum by Cioran: between the demand to be clear, and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect.
While researching “Della verga” (yes I finally found the text of the first unexpurgated translation), Leonardo da Vinci’s notes on the unruly member, I found this lovely cover of The Sex Lives of the Animals (Das Liebesleben in der Tierwelt, 1962) by Herbert Wendt.
I spent the day in London yesterday. I arrived at St Pancras railway station, headed for the University of London in Russell Square where there was a day on political myth and Hans Blumenberg. I skipped class and went to the National Gallery and saw:
Lady Standing at a Virginal by Johannes Vermeer, detail
The Vision of the Blessed Gabriele by Carlo Crivelli (left, the yoni detail), right other detail.
Witches at their Incantations by Salvator Rosa, full and cooking hag detail
Two Followers of Cadmus devoured by a Dragon by Cornelis van Haarlem, detail
Forgotten which this one is, I was quite impressed by it, I think it’s Dutch, detail
The Agony in the Garden by Andrea Mantegna, detail
The Fight between the Lapiths and the Centaurs by Piero di Cosimo, detail
The Death of Procris by Piero di Cosimo, detail
Meeting Place of the Hunt by Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli, detail
Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway by J. M. W. Turner, detail
Forgot, probably a Jupiter and Antiope, I loved the way the nipple was pinched, detail
Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Cunera van der Cock by Frans van Mieris the Elder, very small and delicate painting, this one.
The Ugly Duchess by Quentin Matsys, cleavage detail
The Agony in the Garden by Bellini, detail of village in the distance
A Scene from El Hechizado por Fuerza (‘The Forcibly Bewitched’) by Francisco Goya, apparently a portrait of Charles II of Spain, detail
Still Life with a Nautilus Cup by Gerrit Willemsz. Heda, detail
While I was investigating the first comprehensive study in English on Marquis de Sade, The Revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis de Sade (1934) by Geoffrey Gorer, I stumbled upon this quote:
“The natives of the Trobriand Islands […] consider eating as private as any other bodily function.”
I’d heard this before but never before had I considered the rather obvious link to the food taboo scene in Luis Buñuel‘s The Phantom of Liberty.
I started to investigate.
Wikipedia has it wrong, it attributes the following citation to a certain Jenefer Shute, who obviously copied it from here:
“Given the social importance of food, it might seem strange to discover that the Trobrianders eat alone, retiring to their own hearths with their portions, turning their backs on one another and eating rapidly for fear of being observed.” —Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating (1980), p. 8-9, Peter Farb, George J. Armelagos
Now, there is only one anthropologist associated with the Trobriand Islands and that is Bronisław Malinowski.
First I found this in a 1958 issue of The Humanist:
“B. Malinowski in his opus magnum reports that in the Trobriands males and females may have premarital sexual intercourse but never must they be seen eating together.”
I then combed through the three books on the Trobriand Islands and eventually found this in The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia:
“Food is displayed in all forms and on all occasions […] yet meals are never taken in public, and eating is altogether regarded as a rather dangerous and delicate act […] the custom of eating in common is limited […] people retire to their own fireplaces with their portion, each group turning its back on the rest […] they eat rapidly, no one else witnessing the performance […].”
Voila.
I only now became aware that Austryn Wainhouse (1927 – 2014) passed away. He was best-known for translating the work of Marquis de Sade and the novel Story of O.
It is of course the work of Marquis de Sade that interests us here. It so happens that one of the translations of Wainhouse, Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings is freely available online. And the most interesting item in that collection is “Yet Another Effort“, perhaps the first piece of writing anyone who wishes to acquaint himself with de Sade should read.
Here is that link[1].
André S. Labarthe was a French actor, film producer and director.
He starred alongside Anna Karina in the 1962 film Vivre sa vie and was a celebrated television documentary maker.
He directed the documentary Georges Bataille – À perte de vue (1997) and David Cronenberg: I Have to Make the Word Be Flesh (1999).
Georges Bataille – À perte de vue (1997)
David Cronenberg: I Have to Make the Word Be Flesh (1999)
As you may have heard, I have resumed my work as pornosopher and I am currently writing my master’s thesis which investigates whether porn can be art. In my research I get lost very often (which kind of seems to be the purpose).
However, it is time for me to stop getting lost, because I have another paper to finish on political myth, a paper which I have tentatively titled “Mythe, meute, Europa,” which translates as “Myth, mob, Europe.”
Before I start that work, one of my most satisfying finds of the latest obsessive quest: Annie Besant’s sublime pamphlet: “Is the Bible Indictable?” (illustration).
Besant asks (in 1877, mind you!):
“Does the Bible come within the ruling of the Lord Chief Justice as to obscene literature? Most decidedly it does, and if prosecuted as an obscene book, it must necessarily be condemned, if the law is justly administered.”
Linda Nochlin was an American art historian.
A prominent feminist art historian, she became well known for her pioneering articles “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (1971) and “Eroticism and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-Century Art” (1972). The title of the first article speaks for itself. The second article argues that “erotic art” implicitly means “erotic-for-men”.
Photo: Left: Achetez des Pommes ,(Buy Apples), anonymous nineteenth-century photograph, courtesy of Linda Nochlin. Right: Linda Nochlin, Achetez Bananes (Buy My Bananas). This juxtaposition proved that the implication “erotic” is “erotic-for-men.”
While I’m researching my master thesis on the possibility of pornographic art I stumble across new information all the time.
One of the best finds was the cluster theory of art by Berys Gaut.
But the best was this: as I was writing a possible rationale for why pornography had become salonfähig in the 1960s and 1970s and I wanted to write about nobrow and Sontag and Fiedler I did some extra research on Cross the Border — Close the Gap and found the whole transcript of the 1969 Playboy article[1] including the page scans and including the illustration by Karl Wirsum (above).