Against Architecture (1989) – Denis Hollier
Has anyone read this book on Georges Bataille? How can one be against architecture? How does the title relate to the thought of Bataille? Which church is burning in the picture? It looks like the Notre Dame. Did it ever burn?
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRTCwBB4buc]
Flesh (2005) – Edouard Salier (NSFW)
In the words of Salier:
Flesh contrasts Americans and terrorists. America as corrupt, libidinous and excessive as religious fundamentalists present it. America, the superpower, filled with such fervour and energy that it can feed its own aggressions and contain within itself a violence inherent to the foundations of its very empire. –via Strike Back Films.
More Salier:
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuSkaI_hAWk]
Empire (2005)
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWmvMuxNQuM]
Toks
Most (all?) of the music by Doctor L.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxWz0VzAWPE]
Tony Allen / Doctor L – Never satisfied
Momus
“As a student of literature, something you find yourself doing a lot is reading books about books — narratives which tear through the plot outlines, critical receptions and choicest quotes of other books, giving you some kind of rapid gist or taste of hundreds of titles you’ll probably never read. What I’ve always liked about these books-about-books.”
He mentions
He also mentions the fact that the paratext is often better than the text itself
Example of the latter:
This post reminds me of the following quote of O. Wilde:
and my own recent research in thematic literary criticism and my earlier praise of secondary literature.
Via the comments to Momus’s post we come to reviews of books we’ve never read. Stanislaw Lem wrote a few sets of introductions to and reviews of fictional books here and Borges has An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain
To top it off there is ‘How to Talk of Books We Haven’t Read?‘ by Pierre Bayard.
Inspired by The dream life of metabooks
Combat de nègres dans une cave pendant la nuit
My previous post on Cohl led me to the French avant-garde of the 1880s and 1890s. Above is what is now generally held to be the first monochrome painting, rendered here in an appropriated version by Allais.
Here is the background:
Paul Bilhaud (born in Allichamps, December 31, 1854 – Avon, 1933) was a French poet and dramatist who belonged to the avant-garde group the Incoherents. He is the author of an all-black painting called Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night.
On October 1 1882 the “Exposition des Arts Incohérents” in Paris featured a black painting by the poet Paul Bilhaud titled Combat de nègres dans une cave pendant la nuit, which was appropriated in 1887 by the French humorist Alphonse Allais, in an album of monochrome pictures of various colors, with uniformly ornamental frames, each bearing a comical title. Allais called his all-red painting Tomato Harvest by Apoplectic Cardinals on the Shore of the Red Sea.
Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night predates Malevich‘s, Black Square on a White Field by 31 years.
Compiling this documentation, I stumbled on Il Giornale Nuovo’s post on Allais: Primo-Avrilesque and on Monochrome (une enquête) by L’Alamblog.
Image sourced here
Novyy Vavilon (Eng:New Babylon) (1929), is a film directed Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. A black and white silent film (120 minutes in its original version and 93 minutes in its 2004 restored version). The propaganda film in the expressionist tradition of the early 20th century deals with the Paris Commune of 1870 and is largely set in a fantastic department store. We follow the encounter and tragic destiny of two lovers separated by the barricades of the Paris Commune. Some interesting IMDb user comments here[2]. Footage from the film was used in Guy Debord‘s The Society of the Spectacle.
New Babylon is also a concept by Dutch philosopher-artist Constant Nieuwenhuys.
The Death of Socrates (1787) by Jacques-Louis David
I’ve started reading The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton and the book starts out with Socrates and his trial:
The trial and execution of Socrates was the climax of his career and the central event of the dialogues of Plato. According to Plato, both were unnecessary. Socrates admits in court that he could have avoided the trial by abandoning philosophy and going home to mind his own business. After his conviction, he could have avoided the death penalty by escaping with the help of his friends.
But he didn’t avoid the trial or flee. This makes him an icon of countercultural history.
Parc Monceau by Monet
Monceau Park (1878) – Claude Monet
In search of Borgesian elements in Story of O.
From the opening lines of Story of O:
Where did her lover take her? To the Monceau Park or the Montsouris Park? Or both?
I’ve written about O here.
Somewhat related linkcandy: sinnliches.ch and and accompanying Google gallery (nsfw).
On June 22, 1633 – a memorable date in the history of counterculture – Galileo was forced to recant his scientific theory that the earth moves around the sun. The Inquisition had threatened the astronomer and mathematician with torture on the rack if he did not retract his “heretical” ideas. Torn between wanting to fight for the truth and not wanting to offend the Church, Galileo recants:
I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, arraigned personally before this tribunal, and kneeling before you, Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, Inquisitors-General against heretical depravity throughout the entire Christian commonwealth, having before my eyes and touching with my hands, the Holy Gospels, swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by God’s help will in the future believe, all that is held, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But whereas — after an injunction had been judicially intimated to me by this Holy Office, to the effect that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth is not the center of the world, and moves, and that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine.
After the trial, Galileo is sent to his villa outside Florence, where he will be confined for the remaining 9 years of his life, supposedly frequently muttering “e pur si muove!“
What a humiliation!
Etching of the bones, muscles, and joints, illustrating the first volume of the Anatomy of the Human Body. 2d ed. London, 1804. Etching. National Library of Medicine.
Further to my post More Géricault I tried to find the source of the Géricault Severed Heads painting and I found John Bell at the classic Dream Anatomy site. I couldn’t find the pictures I was looking for, that’s why I am giving you the above (there is one more over at my Flickr stream). I did find the story behind the Severed Heads painting of Géricault:
Théodore Géricault‘s painting Severed Heads (1818) [2] painting of two severed heads on a white cloth, turns out to be, not a painting of two heads fresh from the guillotine, but a painted elaboration of an illustration to a book on anatomy (Engravings, explaining the Anatomy of the Bones, Muscles and Joints ) by British surgeon John Bell. This site on France and Scotland in the Arts gives a detailed explanation how Délacroix’s Severed Heads is a painted elaboration of the work of John Bell, not an image of guillotined heads.
Also from dreamanatomy : “John Bell criticized “the subjection of true anatomical drawing to the capricious interference of the artist, whose rule it has too often been to make all beautiful and smooth, leaving no harshness….” His own drawings and etchings are notably harsh.”
After the death of the author and the death of the avant-garde comes, according to Simon Reynolds, the death of the underground:
“The web has extinguished the idea of a true underground. It’s too easy for anybody to find out anything now, especially as scene custodians tend to be curatorial, archivist types. And with all the mp3 and whole album blogs, it’s totally easy to hear anything you want to hear, in this risk-less, desultory way that has no cost, either financially or emotionally.” Simon Reynolds via woebot via factmagazine
