Category Archives: surrealism

Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye: the film

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daaKRAWTjJ8]

Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye is a 2004 American film adaptation of the 1928 novel by the French writer Georges Bataille. The film, directed by Andrew Repasky McElhinney, takes place in a seemingly abandoned house where a group of people engage in wordless acts of passion. The film covers a period from evening to morning, and the sexual couplings among the members of the house becomes increasingly harrowing as daylight arrives.

Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye began as a video installation before being reconfigured into a feature-length film. It had its New York theatrical premiere in September 2004, and its support was led by Dave Kehr of the New York Times, who wrote of the production; “This is transgression in a literal sense, an act of aggression that Bataille would no doubt have appreciated. This is not a movie for passive consumption, but a film that bites back.”

Musidora @120

Musidora in Les Vampires (1915)

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

Musidora in Les Vampires (1915)

Musidora (February 23, 1889 – December 11, 1957) was the stage name of a popular French silent film actress of the early 20th century. She is best-remembered for her vamp persona in the roles of Irma Vep and Diana Monti in the early motion picture crime serials Les Vampires (1915) and Judex (1916), respectively.

Poster for Les Vampires

Adopting the moniker of Musidora (Greek for “gift of the muses“) and affecting a unique vamp persona that would later be popularized in the United States of America by actress Theda Bara, Musidora soon found a foothold in the nascent medium of moving pictures. With her heavily kohled dark eyes, somewhat sinister make-up, pale skin (see the heroin chic aesthetic) and exotic wardrobes, Musidora quickly became a highly popular and instantly recognizable presence of European cinema.

Beginning in 1915, Musidora began appearing in the hugely successful Feuillade-directed serials Les Vampires as Irma Vep (an anagram of “vampire”), a cabaret singer, opposite Edouard Mathé as crusading journalist, Philippe Guerande. Contrary to the title, the Les Vampires were not actually about vampires, but about a criminal gang cum secret society inspired by the exploits of the real-life Bonnot Gang. The somewhat surreal series was an immediate success with French cinema-goers and ran in ten installments until 1916. After the Les Vampires serial, Musidora starred as ‘Diana Monti’ in another popular Feuillade serial, Judex, filmed in 1916 but delayed for release until 1917 because of the outbreak of World War I. Though not intended to be “avant-garde,” Les Vampires and Judex have been lauded by critics as the birth of avant-garde cinema and cited by such renowned filmmakers as Fritz Lang and Luis Buñuel as being extremely influential in their desire to become directors.

I’ve previously mentioned Les Vampires[1].

Stelarc’s third ear

Stelarc’s third ear, photo by Nina Sellars from the Flickr stream of k0re

Stelarc’s third ear[1] is performance by Australian body artist Stelarc consisting of a subdermal implant of a cell-cultivated ear in his left arm, thus becoming a living example of transhumanism.

Alejandro Jodorowsky @70

Alejandro Jodorowsky (born 1929), Chilean artist and countercultural icon turns 70 today.

El Topo (1970) – Alexandro Jodorowsky [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Alejandro Jodorowsky (born 1929), Chilean artist and countercultural icon turns 70 today.

Like so many of us, we were first acquainted with Jodorowsky via a midnight screening of his psychedelic Western El Topo. In my case that must have been either at the Filmhuis Theater or at Cartoon’s. In fact, the film practically jumpstarted the genre of the midnight movie:

“In December 1970, Jonas Mekas was organizing one of his periodic festivals of avant-garde films at the Elgin, a rundown six hundred seat theater, not unlike the Charles, on Eighth Avenue just north of Greenwich Village. Although the program was laden with major avant-garde figures, the most widely attended screenings were those on the three nights devoted to the films of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The Elgin management took advantage of the hippie crowds to announce an added feature-Alexandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo to be shown at midnight because, as the first ad announced, it was “a film too heavy to be shown any other way.”” —Midnight Movies (1983)

El Topo[1]

El Topo (The Mole) is a 1970 Mexican allegorical, cult western movie and underground film, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky. Characterized by its bizarre characters and occurrences, use of maimed and dwarf performers, and heavy doses of Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy, the film is about the eponymous character – a violent, black-clad gunfighter – and his quest for enlightenment.

El Topo was World cinema classic #28

Panic Movement

Researching Jodorowsky in the internet era, brought up the Panic Movement link.

The Panic Movement (Fr:Mouvement panique) was a collective formed in Paris in 1962 by Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor after casual meetings at the Parisian Café de la Paix. Inspired by and named after the god Pan, and influenced by Luis Buñuel and Antonin Artaud‘s Theatre of Cruelty, the group concentrated on chaotic performance art and surreal imagery.

In February 1962 Arrabal, Jodorowsky and Topor settle on the word panique. In September 1962, the word panique is printed for the first time: Arrabal publishes five récits “paniques” in André Breton’s periodical La Brèche.

The Panic Movement performed theatrical events designed to be shocking, as a response to surrealism becoming petite bourgeoisie and to release destructive energies in search of peace and beauty. One four-hour performance known as Sacramental Melodrama was staged in May 24 1965 at the Paris Festival of Free Expression.

Jodorowsky dissolved the Panic Movement in 1973, after the release of Arrabal’s book Le panique.

Introducing Yuka Yamaguchi

Yuka Yamaguchi

I found this image[1] by Japanese artist Yuka Yamaguchi yesterday. Artwork which features innards of bodies are a personal favourite, I first realized this after discovering Ferdinand Springer‘s Ecorché I[2] some years ago.

I can’t tell off hand who else belongs in this category from an artistic point of view, but from a utilitarian point of view there is the anatomical art by the lickes of Vesalius, Jacques Gautier d’Agoty [3] and John Bell [4]. Perhaps my first exposure to the subversion of inside and outside was David Cronenberg‘s Videodrome in which a videotape and a pistol are inserted in the belly of James Woods.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytp69fBh0J8&]

Videodrome (belly insertion scene at 2:54)

More of her art can be found by clicking this[6] Google gallery. She also has presences on Youtube[7] and Flickr[8], as well as a blog[9].

She is a woman with excellent and adventurous tastes. From her Flickr profile:

Favorite Books & Authors: Mishima, Osamu Dazai, Mitsuo, Cyu-ya, Oliver Sacks, Murakami Haruki, Saki, Yourou Takeshi, Tsurumi Shunsuke, Kindaichi Haruhiko, Malcom Gladwell, Jan Wong,

Favorite Movies, Stars & Directors: Ozu, Kurosawa, Yamada Yoji, Wong Kar Wai, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry

Favorite Music & Artists: Aeroplane, Superpitcher, Junior Boys, Jacques lu Cont, DFA, France Gall, Daniel Wang, Kelley Polar, Loo & Placido, Alpha, Satie, Kahimi Karie, Tom Waits, Stereolab, Yuzo, Fujiyama Ichiro

Most of the comments on Yamaguchi’s work focus on the fact that she transcends the “weird for weird’s sake” aesthetic found in many of her contemporaries (think many of the lowbrow Americans presented by Wurzeltod). Her work is an uncanny mix of cruelty and innocence, benign in spite of its undercurrent of disturbance.

Her closest percursor is probably Roland Topor.

RIP Charles H. Schneer 1920-2009

RIP Charles H. Schneer, 88, American film producer

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yYeZMx1Y7U]

skeleton scene in Jason and the Argonauts

Charles H. Schneer (1920 – January 21, 2009) was a film producer most widely known for working with special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen, best-known for producing films such as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts.

The sequence in which seven animated skeletons (see above) rise from the earth and attack Jason and his comrades is widely considered to be among the greatest achievements of motion picture special effects.

Jason and the Argonauts is World Cinema Classic #81.

Edgar Allan Poe @200

Edgar Allan Poe, American writer and poet @200

A photograph of a daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe 1848,

first published 1880

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, and one of the leaders of the American Romanticism. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. During his lifetime he was more popular in France (thanks to the translations of Baudelaire) than in his native country. After his premature death at the age of 40 he became internationally renowned. The Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo derived his pseudonym of his name. He came to the attention of 20th century audiences via the low-budget film adaptations by Roger Corman starring Vincent Price.

If you only want to read one story by Poe, read “Loss of Breath.”

“Loss of Breath: A Tale Neither in nor Out of “Blackwood” (1832) is a short story by Poe, first published on June 9 or November 10 1832. It concerns a man who suspects that his wife has stolen his breath.

David Ketterer describes the story as: “A surrealistic fantasy in which the idea that death involves not loss of life but merely loss of breath is combined with a whimsical but, for biographers of Poe’s psyche, revealing equation between loss of breath and loss of sexual potency on the narrator’s wedding night”.[1]

“Behold me then safely ensconced in my private boudoir, a fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibility—alive, with the qualifications of the dead—dead, with the propensities of the living—an anomaly on the face of the earth—being very calm, yet breathless.”

…

“The purchaser took me to his apartments and commenced operations immediately. Having cut off my ears, however, he discovered signs of animation. He now rang the bell, and sent for a neighboring apothecary with whom to consult in the emergency. In case of his suspicions with regard to my existence proving ultimately correct, he, in the meantime, made an incision in my stomach, and removed several of my viscera for private dissection. “

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

Click for credits

Click for credits

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]

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde

I’ve always been weary of the genre mix of comedy and horror, but that is probably because of my dislike of the Scream franchise.

Yesterday, I find this[1] intertitle and I thought it was hilarious.

A word on intertitles

Since silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen intertitles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the cinema audience. The title writer became a key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Intertitles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) often became graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action of the film or enhanced its atmosphere.

In the silent film era, films were as much a literary as a filmic medium. I’m quite sure you could ‘watch’ the film by reading the intertitles.

Coming back to Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde, I find the humour in sentences such as “England in the 19th century was not all that it might have been — It might have been Italy but wasn’t,” and “We squirm under the tumult of Good and Evil ever — warring within us, yet were Science to separate them, Bad would flourish. Crime run riot — even Saxophone players would be tolerated,”[3] quite refreshing for 1925, when this film was released. We sometimes think that Monty Python started this kind of absurd humor, but clearly that is a mistake. To my knowledge the earliest modern instance of this kind of humor is Alfred Jarry‘s Ubu Roi, and going further back in the history of derision there is Rabelais and even before that there is the Facetiae by Poggio.