Category Archives: European culture

The Romantic Image

I went to the city yesterday and bought:

The Romantic Image[1][2] by Frank Kermode
Venus’ lusthof[3] by Leonard de Vries, includes translation of Académie des dames ou le meursius francais and other curiosa
Fabula Rasa by Gaston Burssens

Did not buy Sarenco : le triptyque du cinéma mobile, 1983-1987[4]: Félix Guattari, Eugenio Miccini, Luigi Serravalli and The Dark Comedy: The Development of Modern Comic Tragedy‎[5] by J. L. Styan, 1968.

The Romantic Image by Frank Kermode

The Romantic Image (1957) is a book on the “image” in Romantic poetry by Frank Kermode.

In its preface Kermode says he is indebted to Romantic Agony by Italian critic Mario Praz, The Romantic Soul and the Dream by Swiss critic Albert Béguin, The Mirror and the Lamp by M. H. Abrams and The Symbolist Aesthetic in France, 1885-1895 by A. G. Lehmann.

Kermode looks at two assumptions of relevance to modern poetry and criticism: first, “the image is the `primary pigment’ of poetry,” and, second, “the poet, who uses it is by that very fact differentiated from other men, and seriously at odds with the society in which he must live.” He calls these ideas “thoroughly Romantic,” and maintains that they remain fundamental for twentieth century writers and critics.

P.S. the cover of my edition has Odilon Redon’s “Orpheus”.

Introducing the late Tina Aumont

Tina Aumont in Frédéric Pardo‘s Home Movie

Male viewers pressed for time may want to scrub to 2.37

Tina Aumont (14 February 1946 – 28 October 2006) was an American actress of French, and Dominican descent.

Her parents

She was born in Hollywood, California, the daughter of actors Jean-Pierre Aumont and Maria Montez who he had met in Hollywood. Maria Montez was known as the Queen of Technicolor, an early camp icon and idol to American experimental filmmaker Jack Smith, whose Flaming Creatures (1963) is basically a travesty on Hollywood B movies and tribute to actress Maria Montez.

Back to Tina

Tina married actor and film director Christian Marquand in 1963, at the age of 17.

She made her debut as Tina Marquand in Joseph Losey‘s 1966 movie Modesty Blaise. She worked in Italian cinema with, among others, Alberto Sordi (Scusi, lei è favorevole o contrario?, 1966), Tinto Brass (L’urlo, 1968 and Salon Kitty, 1975), Mauro Bolognini (Fatti di gente perbene, 1974), Francesco Rosi (Cadaveri eccellenti, 1975), and Federico Fellini (Fellini’s Casanova, 1976).

In 2000 she retired from film work and died in France at age 60.

PS: Tina Aumont was brought to my attention via a Dutch blog. Moon in the Gutter was there[2] before me. Here[3] is a Tina Aumont photo taken by Frédéric Pardo from the site http://paris70.free.fr/ dedicated to French counterculture of the fashionable variety (as contrasted to the political variety). I discover Philippe Bone.

Surrealist erotica

I’ve reported before (see Investigating Sex: Surrealist Discussions 1928-1932, Desire Unbound, Sade / Surreal) on the intimate relationship between Surrealism and eroticism.

Creation Books have just announced their newest title: Extreme Surrealist Erotica which reprints[1] the novel 1929 by Aragon and Péret (with photographs by Man Ray) and the novel Mad Balls by Benjamin Péret.

From Creation:

Aragon and Péret’s 1929, originally written to cover printer’s fees for a Surrealist magazine, and long out of print in any edition, is considered to be one of the great “clandestine” books of modern French erotic literature. Published anonymously, the book was printed in Belgium in an edition of 215 copies. Seized by French customs, most copies of 1929 were destroyed as obscene, particularly due to the four hardcore Man Ray photographs featuring Kiki of Montparnasse, the muse of many surrealists. These images are generally omitted from catalogues of the photographer’s works. Its authors were amongst Surrealism’s greatest proponents, and the same sense of daring, iconoclasm and black humour that permeates their official works can also be seen in these candidly erotic poems and photographs.

Benjamin Péret’s Mad Balls (Les Couilles Enragées) dates from 1928 and would, if published, have formed the third in a trinity of violent, blasphemous and pornographic surrealist works written that same year, alongside Aragon’s Irene’s Cunt and Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye. Eventually published under a pseudonym in 1954 by Eric Losfeld, Mad Balls is a definitive explosion of Péret’s virulent anti-religious and erotic delirium. With seven explicit illustrations by Yves Tanguy, it is published here alongside 1929 for the very first time, making this an indispensible collector’s compendium of classic “lost” surrealist erotica.

Introducing Dino Valls

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Dino Valls is a Spanish painter born in 1959 in Zaragoza, presently living and working in Madrid. This self-taught artist studied Italian and Flemish masters of the 16th and 17th centuries and currently makes use of egg tempera.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaZ1vzqOecI]

Having previously obtained a degree in medicine, he is now one of the Spanish representatives of the vanguard of new figurative art [1], along with Odd Nerdrum in Norway and John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage in America where there is also the Lowbrow art movement, presided over by critics such as Suzanne G..

His work is also classified as fantastic art.

Here is an interesting YouTumentary with a soundtrack by Funkstörung.[2]

Introducing Alcide Bonneau ( 1836 – 1904)

Alcide Bonneau (Orléans, 1836, Paris, 1904) was a French intellectual, philologist, literary critic and translator of erotica and curiosa. He is also the author of Padlocks and Girdles of Chastity. In 1887, he collected a number of these essays and published them as Curiosa: essais critiques de littérature ancienne ignorée ou mal connue, it is said that the later bookselling category curiosa thanks its coinage to this collection.

La Cazzaria by Antonio Vignali (a Latin novel by Antonio Vignale, written in the mid 1520s, first published in Napels in the 1530s. It was translated by Alcide Bonneau into French and as The Love Academy by Rudolph Schleifer (for Brandon House Library Editions)).

Alcide Bonneau followed in the footsteps of Antoine Galland and was a contemporary of British translator Richard Francis Burton.

Bonneau, like printer Isidore Liseux was an ex-priest, and they had known each other since seminary.

He was lexicographer at the Grand dictionnaire of Pierre Larousse (on Spanish and Italian literature), as well as the Nouveau Larousse illustré.

From 1876 to 1893, he was the principal collaborator of the editor Isidore Liseux (1835-1894), for whom he edited, translated and annotated some fifty works labelled as erotic or simply « curieux » : la On Civility in Children by Erasmus (1877); the Facetiae by Poggio Bracciolini (1878); the Raggionamenti by Aretino (1879-1880); the Dialogues de Luisa Sigea by Nicolas Chorier (1881); the Sonetti lussuriosi by Aretino (1882); the Apophoreta, or De Figuris Veneris, by German scholar Forberg, under the title Manuel d’érotologie classique (1882); La Cazzaria by Antonio Vignali (1882); Poésies complètes by Giorgio Baffo (1884); Raffaella by Piccolomini (1884); the Hecatelegium by Pacifico Massimi (1885); The Mandrake, a comedy by Machiavelli (1887); Portrait of Lozana: The Lusty Andalusian Woman by Delgado (1887); Hermaphroditus by Beccadelli (1892); etc. All translations were annotated, often running longer that the actual text.

A flawed piece on the origins of dark cabaret

A flawed piece on the origins of the dark cabaret strain in the American entertainment industry, the roots of American cabaret in German cabaret and the aesthetics of death.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX30orkOScQ&]

“Wieviel Menschen waren glücklich“ is a 1970 musical composition interpreted by Hildegard Knef and released on Decca Records as the b-side to “Tapetenwechsel“.

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I’m cross-posting this from Facebook. It’s a very sad song and I associate it with boudoir noir and dark cabaret traditions, along the current fad in music criticism: hauntology.

Hildegarde Knef, German actress, singer and writer, probably best-known outside of the Germanosphere for her interpretation of “Mackie Messer” and her performance in Die Sünderin. Along with Marlene Dietrich, she is most firmly associated with dark cabaret, a genre of music represented by The Dresden Dolls and Marilyn Manson(The Golden Age of Grotesque) but the aesthetics have older ancestors.

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Two iconic images illustrate dark cabaret: the album cover to Swordfishtrombones and the Charlotte Rampling’s cabaret scene in The Night Porter, and here in a Youtube clip. Note the suspenders both on Rampling and Waits.

In the history of cabaret, three or four local histories have been written: French cabaret (Le Chat Noir), German cabaret (Überbrettl) and American cabaret (Cabaret). British cabaret isn’t documented because in the United Kingdom cabaret has historically been called music hall and existed much longer, since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

The clearest mental image most of us have of cabaret is Liza Minelli in Cabaret with its iconic songs “Willkommen” and “Life Is a Cabaret”. The imagery of this musical was inspired by German cabaret as witnessed by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood in Goodbye to Berlin (1939) during the 1920s in Berlin.

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So the archetypical American cabaret is rooted in German cabaret. German cabaret was the darkest of them all because it happened in 1920s Berlin, the birthplace of, literature (Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929), film (Lang, Metropolis, 1927 and M, 1931, Dietrich, Der blaue Engel, 1930 and German Expressionism), painting (Grosz, Circe, Dix, Großstadt-Triptych), music (Weill, Threepenny Opera, 1928), criticism (Benjamin), philosophy/psychology (Jung), and fashion.

Most of these dark manifestations of Weimar’s culture were labelled degenerate and banned after Hitler’s rise to power.

Dietrich in The Blue Angel is the most iconic image of dark cabaret. The film was directed by Josef von Sternberg in 1930, based on Heinrich Mann‘s novel Professor Unrat. The film is considered to be the first major German sound film and it brought world fame to actress Marlene Dietrich. In addition, it introduced her signature song, Falling in Love Again (Can’t Help It). This song was originally entitled “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” and was composed by Frederick Hollander for Der Blaue Engel. The English language words were written by Sammy Lerner, but are in no way a direct translation of the original.

Prisencolinensinainciusol

Most of my music activities have moved to Facebook where I post 3 tracks per day.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAnYBCImAa4&]

“Prisencolinensinainciusol” (1972) by Adriano Celentano

However, “Prisencolinensinainciusol“[1] by Adriano Celentano is too good to not give to non-Facebook surfers. I’ve known this track for 20 years or more, but it took a good friend of mine three days of calling his friends, checking the web and more to identify the interpreter. The track shows similarities with “Stop Bajon“[2], especially because of its likeness in rhythm section.

While we’re in Italy, let me just give you one more (I just discovered it now), which may end up on my Facebook page tomorrow: Lucio Battisti – Ancora tu[3]

Bernini @410

Gian Lorenzo Bernini @410

Pushing against Pluto’s face Proserpina‘s hand creases his skin,

while his fingers sink into the flesh of his victim.

Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (December 7, 1598 – November 28, 1680) was a Italian sculptor and architect of 17th century Rome, best-known for his marble sculptures the Ecstasy of St Theresa[1] and the Beata Ludovica Albertoni[2].

Update: The Rape of Proserpina, the Ecstasy of St Theresa[1] and the Beata Ludovica Albertoni[2] are Icons of erotic art #35, 36 and 37.

Baldassare Castiglione @530

The Book of the Courtier (1528) – Baldassare Castiglione

Baldassare Castiglione (1478 – 1529) was an Italian diplomat and author, best-known for his book on etiquette, The Book of the Courtier, which came to play a role in the 20th century aesthetics of cool^* by having defined the concept of sprezzatura, “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”. To this day, the Book of the Courtier remains the definitive account of Renaissance court life.

The Works of Aretino by Samuel Putnam, illustrations by Franz von Bayros

Pietro Aretino‘s (1492 – 1556) La cortigiana is a parody of The Book of the Courtier. Like in so many of Aretino’s books, it gives center stage to a woman rather than a man (courtier is the male form of cortigiana, cortigiana entered French as courtesan and was later appropriated by the English language).

From a Jahsonic point of view La cortigiana deserves just as much attention as The Book of the Courtier.

Le notti peccaminose di Pietro l’Aretino

La cortigiana focuses on the romantic and erotic aspects of Renaissance life, a sensibility explored in the 1970s in the Italian film genre decamerotico, a subgenre of the commedia erotica all’italiana. Notable in this respect is Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights); but more so with regards to Aretino the Italian film Le notti peccaminose di Pietro l’Aretino[1], starring Adriana Asti and Elena Veronese.

While researching La cortegiana, I came across this sublime photo [2] of a female with an hourglass shaped body.

Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude (2000) – Dick Pountain, David Robins [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

*”The aesthetics of cool were most successfully documented” in Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude. –Sholem Stein

Guy Bourdin @80

Charles Jourdan ad, 1976

French fashion and advertising photographer Guy Bourdin (1928 – 1991) would have celebrated his 80th birthday today had he not died of cancer 17 years ago.

Perhaps it was pHinn who introduced me to the imagery of Bourdin, perhaps this happened in the pre-internet world, by way of the Dutch-language magazine Avenue, which my parents bought during the seventies. It was The Netherlands’ and Flander’s first glossy, and ran from 1965 until 2002. I seem to remember the Charles Jourdan shoe photo-ads Bourdin produced during that era.