Category Archives: uncanny

Introducing Anton van Dalen

Anton van Dalen is a Dutch illustrator residing in the United States. He was during a period of 30 years the “secret” assistent to Saul Steinberg. His style is unique but reminds of Bracelli‘s work in the 17th century and its somewhat distanced pov feels a bit like Glen Baxter‘s absurd illustrations.

Here is a set of motor vehicle impressions via Bibliodyssey: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Bibliodyssey brought this set to my attention, if you are not already subscribing to his feed, you should. Since the demise of Il Giornale Nuovo, Bibliodyssey is the best hang-out for your daily dose of vintage visual culture.

For those of you unfamiliar with Bracelli’s work here is an example of his proto-surrealism:

From the Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) by Giovanni Battista Braccelli

From the Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) by Giovanni Battista Braccelli

Here is perhaps a better example, showcasing Bracelli cubism comparable to the one of van Dalen.

Icons of erotic art #8

Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal Model (Enlarged x 1000) (1995) [1] is a sculpture by Jake and Dinos Chapman. It depicts lifesize fibreglass mannequins of children with genital organs of both sexes attached to their faces. It was shown at the Sensation exhibition in 1997, along with Great Deeds Against the Dead.

Sexual organs attached to faces is something I have been pondering on for as long as I can remember. What would have been the solution of the human race if this had been the case? How would we have covered the “pubic” area? How would lovemaking have looked like? This work by the Chapmans is remarkable, as is much of their other work. No doubt they are one of the most interesting contemporary artists.

In case you have been wondering why I only link to the pictures in this series, instead of showing the artworks in-line, the answer is that I keep a strict copyright policy after having had a run-in with my local copyright enforcement agency, SABAM, about two years ago. Since then, I only publish artworks by artists who have been dead for more than seventy years. Such is the law in Belgium. Belgian copyright law is even so strict that it prohibits to show photographs of buildings.

I find the use of mannequins in contemporary art very appealing, other works which have used this form are Chair, Table and Hat Stand by Allen Jones and Great Deeds Against the Dead, also by the Chapmans.

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

 

Introducing Les Krims

Les Krims (born August 16, 1942) is a United States conceptual photographer. He is noted for his carefully arranged fabricated photographs (called “fictions”), various candid series, a surreal satirical edge, dark humor, and long-standing criticism of what he describes as leftist twaddle. Works such as Heavy Feminist with Wedding Cake [1] (1970) has been criticized by anti-pornography feminists and feminist photographers as being fetishistic, objectifying, body despising and a misogynist who uses his photography to humiliate predominantly women. Even though Krims does include men (often himself, nude) in his photos, these critics contend that his primary viciousness is reserved for women.

Tip of the hat to [1].

Introducing Gabriel von Max

Monkeys as Judges of Art, 1889

Monkeys as Judges of Art, 1889

 

Äffchen mit Zitrone Gabriel von Max Saure Erfahrung

Monkey with Lemon

Die ekstatische Jungfrau Katharina Emmerich, 1885

Katharina Emmerich, 1885

 

Der Anatom, 1869

The Anatomist, 1869

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

“I am a writer of tales of the uncanny”

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jQtkGJMtH0]

Fake H. P. Lovecraft 1933 WPA Newsreel Interview via William Gibson

Today, William Gibson reported on the above footage. In a second post, Gibson admits having been fooled. As he writes in a second post:  “I guess I so wanted to believe that that was Lovecraft that I managed to ignore the actor’s complete lack of HPLoid bone-structure. (Lovecraft was one distinctively-jawed New Englander.)

Faking elder footage on YouTube, though, has great potential as a form.”

Book of the month #3

Over at ArtandPopularCulture book of the month is:

AnthologyOfBlackHumor.jpg
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.

Everything you know is wrong: uncanny Spoerri

An Anecdoted Topography of Chance

An Anecdoted Topography of Chance by Something Else Press

Perhaps Spoerri‘s fascination with displacing the horizontal with the vertical began when he created the first “tableau-piège” in 1960, “The Resting Place of the Delbeck Family”, by gluing a number of dinner-table objects on a board [1] and then hanging it on a wall. Or it could have begun with “Dylaby” in 1962 [2], in which he turned the orientation of a whole room clockwise. Objects as well as actors were put in a horizontal position whereas the visitors stayed vertically according to gravity. Being the only ones that had this orientation they felt wrong however.

The tropes of the Polish film poster

Danton poster made  in 1991 by Wiesław Wałkuski, for a 1983 film by Andrzej Wajda

It seems that my current interest in the work of Polish-French artist Roland Topor brings me again to the work of the Polish film poster makers. Their work is fantastic, figuratively and literally. Why is it that graphic design is at such a qualitative height in Poland. And why is it that their work is so unbelievably strange?

The tropes of the Polish film poster school are the fantastique, grotesque, weird, uncanny: pierced and punctured bodies, cut-out figures, dismembered limbs, independent body parts, eerie physicality and visceral transparency.

As to the why, the site owner of Polish film posters has an explanation:

A lot of patronizing drivel had been written about the ‘Polish School’ of poster design being a ‘product’ of a ‘resistance to Communism’ or some such (and by extension, of an overwhelming desire to breathe free under the learned guidance of a Bushmonkey-on-a-cheney). That view, espoused by Western writers who don’t know any better, and Polish ones (who should know better) has been omnipresent lately. No matter that the idea of art as an expression of political circumstance is par excellence a classic communist one.

In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true : free from commercial stranglehold, these artists produced brilliant works over an extended period of time. A lot of talented people found themselves in the right place at the right time. Like any artistic movement (or ‘school’), it had its own dynamics, peaks and valleys. Indeed, some of the most accomplished works were political (pro-socialist). And now the fact that Polish film poster is dead (and had been so since 1989 when the film distribution was privatized) is further evidence of that.–http://www.cinemaposter.com/index.html

As an encore I give you one more poster with the theme of independent body parts:

poster by Lech Majewski 1977 for Le Mouton enrage (1974)
sourced here.

About 500 more movie posters of the same site here.

I’ve reported on the paratextual qualities of the film poster here.