They besieged it for three years

Alamut, vestiges of an impregnable castle

Alamut, vestiges of an impregnable castle (photo Payampak source).

“they besieged it for three years, but they could not take it, so strong was it. And indeed if they had had food within it never would have been taken. But after being besieged those three years they ran short of victual, and were taken. The Old Man was put to death with all his men [and the Castle with its Garden of Paradise was levelled with the ground].” [1]
The Travels of Marco Polo on Alamut Castle

In praise of land art

 

As I wrote in a post 10 months ago in a post over at Tumblr[1], there once was an artist who:

“had a garden. And every day, maybe several times a day, that artist walked a certain marked path in his garden, until the soles of his shoes had flattened the grass and eroded a path. I guess he then took a photo of his garden with its newly formed path. Maybe he sold the photos.”

Yesterday, I find out the name of this mysterious land artist, of which I had been ignorant for more than 20 years. It is a certain Richard Long (born 1945) and instead of my imagined curved geoglyph, he walked a straight line.

Richard Long first came to the attention of the art world with A Line Made by Walking in 1967 — three years before the iconic Spiral Jetty — and repeated the exercise in 1972 on a much larger scale and with more efficiency in Peru.

Where in Peru this was, I have been unable to find out, I wonder if it’s still there. Maybe it’s not far from When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) by Francis Alÿs.

Illustration: cover of a book on Richard Long‘s A Line Made by Walking by Dieter Roelstraete.

The history of the future

Loisirs Littéraires au XXe siècle (English: "Literary leasures in the 20th century") is the title of an illustration from the story "The End of Books" by French writer Octave Uzanne and illustrator Albert Robida, a story about a post-literate society in which readers have become 'hearers', consumers of audio books. It was published in the collection Contes pour les bibliophiles (1895). The illustration depicts a female reader of the 20th century, imagined by Robida, who is listening to "12 poètes assortis" (twelve assorted poets) in on the balcony overlooking a future city.

Loisirs Littéraires au XXe siècle (above, English: “Literary leasures in the 20th century”) is the title of an illustration from the story  “The End of Books” by French writer Octave Uzanne and illustrator Albert Robida, a story about a post-literate society in which readers have become ‘hearers,’ i. e. consumers of audio books. It was published in the collection Contes pour les bibliophiles (1895). The illustration depicts a female reader of the 20th century, imagined by Robida, who is listening to “12 poètes assortis” (twelve assorted poets) in on a balcony overlooking a future city.

RIP José Ramón Larraz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7EFyYXcylM

RIP José Ramón Larraz  (1929 – 2013).

After the death of Jesús Franco earlier this year, fellow countryman Larraz was the last survivor of “sexual revolution“-era European exploitation cinema.

Now the two last two last survivors of that sensibility are Radley Metzger (born 1929) and Roger Corman (born 1926).

My first exposure to Larraz was the VHS cover of La visita del vicio (The Coming of Sin). For the infamous Pasiphae scene from La visita del vicio shot scroll to 15′:32”.

Video: Eurotika! Larraz episode (1992).

I’ve previously mentioned Larraz here: https://blog.jahsonic.com/daedalus-devised-a-hollow-wooden-cow/

The Unswept Floor, or, of vestiges and precursors

Earlier this summer, I leafed through Medieval Modern: Art out of Time, which finds precursors of modern art in medieval art.

Apparently vestiges of modern art can be found in ancient art too.

Illustration: The Unswept Floor (detail)

Illustration: The Unswept Floor(detail)

Today, I discovered The Unswept Floor by a certain Herakleitos, a copy of The Unswept Floor 2nd-century BC original mosaic by Sosus of Pergamon described by Pliny in his Natural History (XXXVI, 184):

“[Sosos] laid at Pergamon what is called the asarotos oikos or ‘unswept room,’ because on the pavement was represented the debris of a meal, and those things which are normally swept away, as if they had been left there, made of small tessera of many colours.”

Making a mosaic floor with leftovers of food discarded from the table. How ‘modern’ is that?

I am reminded of Eaten by Marcel Duchamp, one of the snare pictures by Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri, ‘depicting’ the remains of a meal eaten by Marcel Duchamp.

Necrotourism (2)

Inside the Walter Benjamin Memorial (Portbou, Catalonia, Spain; Artist: Dani Karavan)

Inside the Walter Benjamin Memorial (Portbou, Catalonia, Spain; Artist: Dani Karavan, photo Wamito)

Six years ago, I posted a picture of Walter Benjamin’s grave[1], in Portbou, Spain.

One year ago, I stayed for a few days in El Port de la Selva, right next to Portbou, unaware that it was the location of Passages; Homage to Walter Benjamin (above).

Now I want to go back.

See necrotourism or tomb tourism.

 

In praise of artificial ruins

 

A cross section of the Broken Column House at the Désert de Retz as recorded in Les jardins anglo-chinois by Georges-Louis Le Rouge, 1785 [1]

A cross section of the Broken Column House at the Désert de Retz as recorded in Les jardins anglo-chinois by Georges-Louis Le Rouge, 1785

A cross section of the Broken Column House as recorded in Les jardins anglo-chinois by Georges-Louis Le Rouge, 1785 [1].

The Broken Column House (the “colonne brisée”, or ruined column) is an artificial ruin in the French landscape garden Désert de Retz.

Books are dumb

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zYkuiw3IV0

Books are dumb.

Dumb as in mute.

That’s what occurred to me when I was reading Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortázar with all its references to jazz recordings on the drunken nights of the ‘The Serpent Club’.

That’s were Jazzuela (2001) comes in.

The CD brings together the music of Rayuela.

On the turntable (above): Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra – “Save it Pretty Mamma.”

RIP Andre Lewis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4_jWgu2eAs

RIP American musician and producer Andre Lewis (1948 – 2012). He played keyboards for The Mothers of Invention after George Duke left.

Under the pseudonym Mandré, he recorded three space funk LPs, concealing his identity with a space helmet (which looks similar to the helmets used by Daft Punk in their “Get Lucky” single.)

He is best-known for the “space funk” composition “Solar Flight (Opus 1)” (above).