Rene Daalder was a Dutch director best known for his film Massacre at Central High (1976), marginally interesting because of its echoes of Lord of the Flies (kids are cruel). Not very good but interesting enough.
But please judge for yourself.
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RIP Elizabeth ‘Prozac Nation’ Wurtzel (1967 – 2020)
Elizabeth Wurtzel was an American writer, best known for her novel Prozac Nation (1994).
The first lines of that novel read:
“I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together-the lithium, the Prozac, the desipramine, and Desyrel that I take to sleep at night-can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.
Here is the film.
It’s not very good. But it will take you less time than reading the book and you’ll get it all the same.
Back from Montpellier
I went there with F. This was our schedule.
I took some photos with my phone at the Musée Fabre. The legend to the photos can be found by following the above link.
I was particularly pleased at finding the original from a print I’d known from the third volume of the Illustrierte Sittengeschichte, an engraving of a monk holding a naked woman. In that book, the print was known as The indecent monk.
In the museum it was Claude Frollo et la Esmeralda by the French painter Narcisse Virgilio Díaz.
RIP John ‘dots over people’s faces’ Baldessari (1931 – 2020)
John Baldessari was an American artist.
A typical Baldessari work is Painting for Kubler (1967–68) which is a painting of a text paraphrasing five theses from art historian George Kubler’s book The Shape of Time (1962).
The text reads:
“This painting owes its existence to prior paintings. By liking this solution, you should not be blocked in your continued acceptance of prior inventions. To attain this position, ideas of former painting had to be rethought in order to transcend former work. To like this painting, you will have to understand prior work. Ultimately this work will amalgamate with the existing body of knowledge.”
In his own analysis, he said he would be best remembered as “the guy who puts dots over people’s faces.”
RIP Syd Mead (1933 – 2019)
Syd Mead was an American concept artist best known for his work on Blade Runner (1982), Tron (1982) and Aliens (1986).
His death comes only three months after the death of Luigi Colani (1928 – 2019) who was in a different but comparable branch of concept art.
Both Colani and Mead were obsessed with futuristic aerodynamics.
In the public domain in 2020
Just a few more hours and it will be 2020, which means that the work of a new batch of artists will pass into the public domain in countries of the death-70 regime.
Umberto Brunelleschi illustration 
E. J. Bellocq photo 
Skeletons Fighting over a Pickled Herring by James Ensor
In Europe this means that this will become public domain:
- Axel Munthe, Swedish psychiatrist (The Story of San Michele)
- Umberto Brunelleschi, Italian artist
- Leonard Bloomfield, American linguist
- Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian writer
- Tod Robbins, American author (“Spurs“)
- E. J. Bellocq, an American photographer
- George Gurdjieff, Soviet spiritual teacher
- James Ensor, Belgian painter
- Richard Connell, American author and journalist, best known for his short story “The Most Dangerous Game“
- Lead Belly, African-American blues musician
- Hervey Allen, American author (Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe)
RIP Neil ‘Monty Python’ Innes (1944 – 2019)
Neil Innes was an English comedian (Monty Python), musician (The Rutles, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) and writer.
RIP Sue ‘Lolita’ Lyon (1946 – 2019)
Sue Lyon was an American actress best-known as the nymphet of Lolita (1962).
My film bible Cult Movie Stars has this:
“Amid much publicity stating she was too young even to see the film, an unknown blonde was cast in the title role in Lolita.”
Lyon’s final film role was in the mildly amusing Alligator (1980).
RIP Alasdair ‘Lanark’ Gray (1934 – 2019)
Alasdair Gray was a Scottish writer and artist.
His magnum opus Lanark (1981) features a skin disease called ‘dragonhide’.
Adjectives applicable to this work are grotesque, fantastique and rabelaisian.
The book has a tendency to depress.
Update: The skin disease ‘dragonhide’ reminds me of Maldoror: “I am filthy. I am riddled with lice. Hogs, when they look at me, vomit. My skin is encrusted with the scabs and scales of leprosy, and covered with yellowish pus.”
RIP Garrett List (1943 – 2019)
Garrett List was an American musician, known as a trombonist, vocalist, and composer.
Other trombonists I admire include Rico Rodriguez, Peter Zummo, Vin Gordon, Don Drummond, Fred Wesley and Willie Colón.