The photographs of Jana Hojstricová depict a woman dressed up in tight and transparent clothes made from foil. via MOON RIVER, a newly discovered blog, which I should’ve found a long time ago. Fabulous. More on the photographic front is the city photography of Eugene de Salignac, a beautiful photograph of a girl undressing at the beach, the fetish photography of China Hamilton. Then there is a very special 18th-century coffee service, a new blog I’d like to present: gimcrack hospital (PG) (Gimcrack represents what I like best about blogs, succeeding in making a fictional place, in this case, a mental institution where Nurse Myra works). I have a Youtube clip from an old skool house music classic. L’Alamblog presents BIZARRE (nouvelle série, n° 31, 3e trimestre 1963). Censorshipwise there is a perfect illustration to forbidden libraries, a piece on German censorship in the 20th century. The always associative Quick Study on (un)satisfaction and Dennis Cooper gives you the funk.
Brueghel’s yawner
Le bâilleur, Yawning Man or De Gaper
Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts Bruxelles
Following my post on Lequeu’s which featured the yawner, here is another yawner by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
Tip of the hat to Dominique.
Five wikis
Wiki is the format of the future and will eventually displace HTML as primary mark-up language. Interesting things are happening in the Wiki space. I’ve mentioned Citizendium. Here are five more wikis that have recently caught my attention.
- ZineWiki – the history and culture of zines, independent media and the small press.
- Much needed, a very interesting wiki on zines and small press publications, with however notable omissions such as London Oz and Sleazoid Express.
- Zappa Wiki
- All things Zappa
- Big Tits – Boobpedia
- Spanking Art
- BiblioCuriosa
One can clearly see from the last three examples that the diffusion of new technologies and new media always travels the viral path of sex. In the words of Gerard Van Der Leun, writing in 1993 for Wire magazine:
“Sex, as we know, is a heat-seeking missile that forever seeks out the newest medium for its transmission.”
P. S. The waiting – of course – is still for a good bliki platform.
Camille Paglia and black music
Camille Paglia was at the height of her popularity in the early and mid 1990s, right after the publication of her magnum opus Sexual Personae. While she is currently dismissed as a provocateur (or should I say une provocatrice?), her thought and writing are still valuable to me and she still is one of my main inspirations in the nobrow canon. Consider for example a speech she gave exactly 26 years ago at the M.I.T. where she said the following about black music:
“[…] you cannot be graduating from an American liberal arts college without knowing about black music. This is a great art form we have given to the world. Jazz, blues, Billie Holiday, Coltrane, Charlie Parker–there is no true liberal arts education in this country without that. We must do something to the curriculum to build that in. Right now dance, which is this enormous form, the most ancient of all art forms, is off there in the Phys. Ed. department–you go and take an aerobics class! You are not a liberal arts graduate until you know about dance–you know about it. You know about Martha Graham, you know about ballet, you know about the incredible contributions that African-Americans have made to dance.”
George Michielsen’s Baobab Tree
George Michielsen’s “Qu’y vit” project consisting of four baobab trees
George Michielsen, also known as Joris Michielsen, is a Dutch-born artist working in Antwerp. His “Qu’y vit” will be unveiled this Thursday. Its final destination is the Kievitplein in Antwerp. George will receive The Devil Tree from me.
What will become of us?
Garbo in The Joyless Street
A scene from The Joyless Street (or The Street of Sorrows), a 1925 silent film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and starring Greta Garbo before she came to Hollywood. Scored to Shostakovich‘s Violin Concerto no. 1 in A minor. Shostakovich scored many ‘silent’ films but I’m not sure he originally scored this Youtube clip. The very young Dmitri Shostakovich helped to make ends meet by playing the piano in movie houses and later went on to compose film scores for many silent films, including his debut The New Babylon.
Like many of Pabst’s contemporary films, The Joyless Street concerns the plight of women in German society.
“The Needle and the Damage Done”
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-6AME4iSzY]
The Needle and the Damage Done (1972) Neil Young
“The Needle and the Damage Done” is a song by Neil Young that chronicles the descent of musicians he knew into heroin addiction. Neil has introduced the song thus:
“Ever since I left Canada, about five years ago or so.. and moved down south.. found out a lot of things that I didn’t know when I left. Some of ’em are good, and some of ’em are bad. Got to see a lot of great musicians before they happened… before they became famous.. y’know, when they were just gigging. Five and six sets a night… things like that. And I got to see a lot of, um , great musicians who nobody ever got to see. For one reason or another. But.. strangely enough, the real good ones… that you never got to see was.. ’cause of, ahhm, heroin. An’ that started happening over an’ over. Then it happened to someone that everyone knew about. So I just wrote a little song.”
This post is dedicated to my friends Walter and Dominique.
Parisian “book hell” open to public
Dessin d’un boudoir () – J. J. Lequeu
Three days ago, I reported that it was Jean-Jacques Lequeu‘s 250th anniversary. My good friend Dominique alerted me that the Parisian “enfer” will open its doors from December until March of next year. This will be a unique opportunity to see books and illustrations which have been hidden from the general public for more than 170 years.
Enfer is French for hell. In this instance it refers to the private case of the French national library. The contents of this library were cataloged by Pascal Pia and Guillaume Apollinaire in the 1913 Les livres de l’Enfer, and in 2007 the “Enfer” will be shown to the public in an exhibition titled Eros au secret. Children are not admitted.
I hope this will be an impetus for other European libraries to do the same. Let the gates be opened of all private cases, Giftschränke and Remota.
View the original French advertisement here and my entry Eros au secret.
Antonio del Pollaiolo and other erotic art
Study by Antonio del Pollaiolo
Image sourced here. More lesbian erotica of this gallery below.
Previously we showed the work of Anders Zorn.
Cherchez la femme
Correspondance amoureuse avec Antoinette de Watteville (1928-1937) (2001)
Balthus and Gin (a young Belgian diplomat) fight over the love of the lovely but fickle Antoinette de Watteville, who can’t make up her mind. After many adventures, the young Swiss noblewoman settles on the painter. Two hundred and forty letters make up this veritable epistolary novel of passion, fury and tears. But these pages are also a chance to discover Balthus in his own words (during these decisive years, he painted three of his masterpieces; “La Rue”, “La Leçon de guitare” and “La Montagne”). Writing to Antoinette, Balthus defends his choices, his conception of painting, his interest in the erotic… He talks of theatre and literature. He evokes his friends: Antonin Artaud, Pierre-Jean Jouve, Michel Leyris, Rainer Maria Rilke. He gets annoyed with the world, which is slowly tipping into a generalized and murdering madness. He suffers endless money worries, and faced with Antoinette’s hesitations, he attempts to take his own life… This correspondence was prepared by Balthus and Antoinette de Watteville’s children, Thadée and Stanislas. Sketches, photographs, notes, and a foreword written by the couple’s sons complete this edition of this moving correspondence — a darkly romantic love story that publicly bares the extraordinary painter’s heart for the first time.
The painting on the cover is La Toilette de Cathy.
