In Consultation (1924) – Joseph Schippers
Monkey Portraits (2006) – Jill Greenberg
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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?
Monkeys as Judges of Art, 1889
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
“In 1951, the first electronic music studio was conceived from scratch at the WDR Radio of Cologne (Germany) to enable the composition of electronic music sounds. Briefly, the concept of studios evolved up to the 1955 design of the Phonology studio in Milan by Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna. With nine oscillators, various filters and other sophisticated equipment , the presence of a technician/musician (Marino Zuccheri), the studio was the best equipped in the world at that time.” via usoproject
You may also know Bruno Maderna from his work on Death Laid an Egg.
Good night, sleep tight.
La morte ha fatto l’uovo (1968) – Giulio Questi
Morning (1813) Karl Friedrich Schinkel
The Last Laugh (1924) – Murnau
The link between these two pictures is The Haunted Screen, 1952 a film history book by Lotte H. Eisner, which I acquired over the weekend, and which holds that “it is reasonable to argue that the German cinema is a development of German Romanticism, and that modern technique [cinematography] merely lends visible form to Romantic fancies.”
A revelation to me were Eisner’s reflections on cinematic effects in pre-cinema literature in such romantic novels as Lucinde, Flegeljahre and Heinrich Von Ofterdingen.
Over at ArtandPopularCulture book of the month is:
Anthology of Black Humor (1940) – André Breton
While I am antipathetic to André Breton as a person – his misogyny, his homophobia, his arrogance, his misguided tyranny – I have learned to appreciate his work of tracing the literary and artistic antecedents of surrealism. In this book he successfully delineates a corpus of writers that have shaped the sensibilities central to cult fiction.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtxBXILSY4M]
Enki Bilal mix (background music ID anyone?)
Enki Bilal belongs to the French/European graphic novel tradition (brought to the U. S. via Heavy Metal magazine in the late 1970s) which also holds Jean Giraud, Jacques Tardi, Guido Crepax, Georges Pichard, Milo Manara and Tanino Liberatore‘s ultra-violent RanXerox.
Bilal turns 56 today.
EXPRMNTL 4, poster by Pierre Alechinsky
EXPRMNTL, also known as the Knokke Experimental Film Festival and Festival du Film Expérimental de Knokke-le-Zoute was the largest Belgian festival dedicated to experimental cinema. The festival succeeded the Brussels Experimental Film Festival (1947 and 1958) and was held under the EXPRMNTL moniker in 1963 (EXPRMNTL 3), 1967 (EXPRMNTL 4) and 1974 (EXPRMNTL 5). It was conceived and curated by Jacques Ledoux and the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique in Knokke-le-Zoute. It was organized five times between 1949 and 1974.
There is no equivalent of its kind today, except perhaps for the programmers at Cinema Nova, and the people at MuHKA cinema and other film museums in Belgium. Another worthwhile film festival is the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film.
“On The Necessity of Violation” by Jean-Jacques Lebel in TDR T41 (1968)
Description: Incl. photos of happenings – ‘Sunlove’ happening with the Soft Machine, 1967 (Mike Ratledge with naked girl), ‘Miss Festival Contest’ happening with a naked Yoko Ono in background, Lebel’s ‘Happening on the theme of Playtex bras’, etc. Also: Arrabal; Stefan Brecht; Ann Halprin; interviews with Jerzy Grotowski (17pp.) and Charles Ludlam
Still from Succubus (1968) directed Jess Franco
Still from La Danza Macabra (1964) directed Antonio Margheriti
Rita Renoir, stripteaseuse and intellectual
Rita Renoir was/is a French nude model, actress and ‘art’ stripteaseuse, known in Paris as the “tragedian of strippers.” She was mainly active in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s along with an ‘elite’ of European stripteaseuses with exotic names as Lady Chinchilla, Rita Hymalaya, Rafa Temporel, Dodo d’Hamburg, Poupée la Rose, Bonita Super, Véronique, Truda, Lova Moor, Bettina Uranium, Sofia Palladium, and Rosa Fumetto.
Her first ‘serious’ work was with the happenings and mise-en-scènes of Jean-Jacques Lebel (Picasso‘s Le désir attrapé par la queue), and her first critical success was in the film Les Immortelles by Bourgeade. She also starred in Pierre Koralnik‘s film Cannabis.
She also worked with Michel Simon and starred in The Red Desert as Emilia.
She played herself in Sois belle et tais-toi.
Freddy de Vree wrote an article about her, so did Julio Cortazar (Homenaje a una joven bruja).
Any extra info is more than welcome.