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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfuHwrHG76U
Prozac Nation

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.

Claude Frollo et la Esmeralda 

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 short documentary on Baldessari’s work and legacy narrated by Tom Waits.

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:

RIP Sue ‘Lolita’ Lyon (1946 – 2019)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYq3s6PUJCc&t=103s
Lolita (1962)


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.

‘Out There’ featuring Alasdair Gray.

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 Jerry ‘I Am What I Am’ Herman (1931 – 2019)

“I Am What I Am”

Jerry Herman was an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He was nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles.

By pure coincidence I was watching Paris Is Burning (1990) this afternoon, it features the Jerry Herman-penned gay anthem “I Am What I Am” from La Cage Aux Folles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf6Cn2y2xEc
Paris Is Burning (1990)
This is the bit from Paris Is Burning (1990) where Brooke and Carmen sing “I Am What I Am” on the beach.