Category Archives: irrationalism

Haunted telephone booths

This film is the 47th entry in the category World Cinema Classics.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9cbKYGvfmo&feature]

La cabina (1972) by Antonio Mercero

A remarkable score which reminds of Bernard Herrmann ‘s screeching violins in Psycho (of course, it may as well be Herrmann’s original Psycho score set to a “La Cabina” slide show1). Very accomplished trailer. This film generally cited as an example of Surrealism and cinema.

Tip of the hat to the apparently defunct site Wayney of Chaotic Cinema, skeleton preserved at my wiki.

Update: 1. Yup, that’s what it was Youtube

Albert Hofmann (1906 – 2008)

“I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain in relief; they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing. Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation, which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared. what had caused this condition?” —Albert Hofmann (Laboratory Notes, 1943)

Albert Hofmann (January 11 1906 – April 29 2008) was a Swiss scientist best known for synthesizing lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann authored more than 100 scientific articles and wrote a number of books, including LSD: My Problem Child.

Some LSD visuals:

Film poster for The Trip (1967)

The Acid Eaters (1968) – Byron Mabe
Tagline: The film of anti-social significance.


images from here.

Psych-Out (1968) – Richard Rush [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Contemporary philosophy

Collapse 4

Collapse IV (2008)

Order it here.

This looks interesting. Nice cover too. A bit arcimboldesque. I wonder who did it. This is the cover of a contemporary philosophy magazine of which this issue is dedicated to the theory of horror. Any philosophy of horror and the representation thereof (which is also the theory of the aestheticization of violence) needs to start with Aristotle, as I’ve stated before. Aristotle said on the subject:

“Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies.” —Aristotle from the Poetics.

As you may have guessed by now, I have limited first-hand knowledge on some subjects; I do not have the patience to read Aristotle. Nevertheless, in my infinite ignorance, I dare to state that I like Aristotle and dislike Plato. Plato strikes me as a bore (much like Kant does), Aristotle was a sensationalist like myself. From “my” page on aestheticization of violence, Plato comes across as the sort of moral crusader I’ve never felt any sympathy for (except that they have sometimes pointed me in the direction of worthwhile art, see the censor/censored dilemma):

Plato proposed to ban poets from his ideal republic because he feared that their aesthetic ability to construct attractive narratives about immoral behavior would corrupt young minds. Plato’s writings refer to poetry as a kind of rhetoric, whose “…influence is pervasive and often harmful.” Plato believed that poetry that was “unregulated by philosophy is a danger to soul and community.” He warned that tragic poetry can produce “a disordered psychic regime or constitution” by inducing “a dream-like, uncritical state in which we lose ourselves in …sorrow, grief, anger, [and] resentment.

Back to contemporary philosophy. From Wikpedia:

“Philosophy has re-entered popular culture through the work of authors such as Alain de Botton. This trend is reinforced by the recent increase in films with philosophical content. Some films, such as Fight Club, eXistenZ, The Matrix trilogy, Little Miss Sunshine, and Waking Life have philosophical themes underpinning their overarching plots. Other films attempt to be overtly philosophical, such as I ♥ Huckabees.”

I’ve done Fight Club, eXistenZ, The Matrix and Little Miss Sunshine and of those three I like eXistenZ best. I will want to see Waking Life and I ♥ Huckabees. Where do I start. Huckabees? It stars Huppert. And from what I’ve Youtubed of Waking, it reminded me of Scanner Darkly, with which I was not too impressed (but has lingered on afterwards). Any thoughts, dear readers?

Update 17/4: More on Collapse. Collapse has links with New Weird and Speculative realism. The cover is probably by the Chapmans (“new etchings from Jake Chapman“). Of all its contributions I am most curious about Graham Harman on the unnatural bond between Husserl and Lovecraft and Iain Hamilton Grant on Lorenz Oken‘s naturphilosophische slime-horror.

Erutarettil, or, Treasures from the Antwerp library

I went to the Permeke library in the center of Antwerp yesterday evening and loaned these:

Two of these books I had already loaned, the work by Rachleff, which is excellent, and the sublime Sade / Surreal, which I’ve mentioned before here. Sade/Surreal is a pricey book (a French bookseller currently wants more than 300 EUR for it, but a German vendor is currently letting it go for less than 40 Euros, which is a bargain, if you have deep pockets, consider buying it for me as a present). For the last hour of so, I’ve been updating my wiki with the names found on the opening and closing pages of the book (pictured below), which reads like a who’s who of Sadean thought, a summa sadeica, as it were.

Sade Surreal inside page

Opening and closing page of Sade/Surreal

There were only a couple of names I could not identify, any help is welcome: Retz (either Gilles de Rais, or the cardinal with the same name, Young (perhaps Mr. Young of Night Thoughts?), de Saint Martin, Bertrand (probably Aloysius Bertrand ?) and Constant (Constantin Meunier?). The rest is indentified.

Also in the same book is the engraving below, which I find lovely, like a cake-building or a building of collapsing blubbery wet clay.

Tomb of Pompeii by Jean-Baptiste Tierce, 1766

Tomb of Pompeii by Jean-Baptiste Tierce, 1766

Unreason vs. reason

Cults_of_Unreason_1974

Adorable seventies graphic design on the book depicted above.

Of course, the classic illustration of unreason is:

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monstersis a 1799 print by Goya from the Caprichos series. It is the image the sleeping artist surrounded by the winged ghoulies and beasties unleashed by unreason.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters is a 1799 print by Goya from the Caprichos series. It is the image the sleeping artist surrounded by the winged ghoulies and beasties unleashed by unreason.

Unreason on the whole is a subject of innumerable greater interest than reason. As such, I’ll take the counter-enlightenment over the enlightenment any day. Conceded, there were interesting aspects of the enlightenment, ignored by history, such as the enlightenment of Thérèse Philosophe. See Robert Darnton’s The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France.

Eyecandy #7: Arboretal arabesques

Winter (1573) by Arcimboldo Suddenly each saw the other putting forth leaves. Their skin started to turn into tree bark. They embraced each other and cried,

Suddenly Baucis and Philemon each saw the other putting forth leaves. Their skin started to turn into tree bark. They embraced each other and cried, “Farewell!” Baucis was turned into a linden tree and Philemon into an oak, two different but beautiful trees intertwined with one another.

Indeed Rafaela, thanks.

Part of the same trope is:

Apollo and Daphne

Apollo and Daphne, Apollo and Daphne by Antonio Pollaiuolo, one tale of transformation in the Metamorphoses—he lusts after her and she escapes him by turning into a bay laurel.

Previously on Eye Candy.

World cinema classics #40

Today’s World Cinema Classic is Glen or Glenda Youtube, sorry embedding disabled, a film on transsexuality directed by Ed Wood, Jr. and released in 1953. I only saw this a couple of years ago. Since the arrival of the VCR, the film has been marketed as one of the worst ever. I would have to disagree with that statement, it’s very enjoyable. There is a dream scene in this film (a bit similar to the one shown in the clip) which ranks way up there with “genuine” surrealist films such as Un Chien Andalou. By all means, see it.

The defining sentence is “Pull the stringk!”

Caveat emptor: There is the slightest of chances that I liked the soundtrack (I cannot identify it, does anyone have the details?) so much that it prejudiced me in a favorable way.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

Art history revisionism

Grotesque Head (c. 1480-1510) by Leonardo da Vinci, clearly the inspiration for The Ugly Duchess
Grotesque Head (c. 1480–1510) by Leonardo da Vinci,
clearly the inspiration for The Ugly Duchess
The Ugly Duchess by Quentin Matsys

The Ugly Duchess (1525-30) by Quentin Matsys

In my previous post I argued for a revisionist approach to art history, favoring discarded art historical movements related to the grotesque and the fantastic. I called for a start of art history with the work of Bosch rather than Da Vinci. I realized when writing it that I sort of short-changed da Vinci since the latter has also made many lesser-known works including several grotesques [1] and caricatures[2]. See the book Leonardo Da Vinci: The Divine and the Grotesque by Martin Clayton.

The reason I short-changed da Vinci is that he is much better known for “mainstream” works such as the Mona Lisa and Vitruvian Man. While researching da Vinci’s relation to the grotesque I came up with Grotesque Head, a powerful caricature which is clearly the inspiration for Quentin Matsys‘s The Ugly Duchess. Enjoy.

Spinoza and bondage (“He swore he’d never touch her again”)

Of Human Bondage He Swore

“He swore he’d never touch her again and then she whispered his name and he was lost” -film tagline

Of Human Bondage 1964

“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. ” —Ethics of Human Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions, Spinoza

I believe my first exposure to radical Dutch enlightenment philosopher Spinoza was via Gilles Deleuze or via the “perishable monuments” of Thomas Hirschhorn which I discovered in Germany at documenta in 2002.

Via Guy de Maupassant and William Somerset Maugham‘s Of Human Bondage I discovered this bit on human bondage.

In the 1660s, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza writes, in his Ethics of Human Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions (a part of his Ethics), that the term “bondage” relates to the human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions.