William Levy was a maverick of post-war underground press and counterculture. He was involved with IT and founded Suck.
The documentary, Beyond Criticsm (2013) by Malcolm Hart, gives a good overview of his life and work.
Tag Archives: 1939
RIP Clive James (1939 – 2019)
Clive James was an Australian-born author, satirist and critic working in the United Kingdom.
I was introduced to his work in the 1990s when he presented tv series such as …on Television (1982-88) and Clive James’s Postcard from… (1989-95).
His self-deprecating tone was priceless.
Querying my database, I found out James also expressed his political views. As early as 1969 he contributed “Wind Up Black Dwarfs” – a plea for realpolitik – to London OZ.
RIP Marie Laforêt (1939 – 2019)
Marie Laforêt was a French singer and actress known for songs such as “La Plage” (1964), “Mon amour, mon ami” (1967), “Viens, viens” (1973) and films as Male Hunt (1964).
RIP Charles ‘death of modern architecture’ Jencks (1939 –2019)
Charles Jencks was an American cultural and architectural theorist best-known for playing a decisive role in the historiography of postmodernism by publishing the book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977) more than fifty years ago.
He was not the first to play a role in this historiography, Robert Venturi, who died in 2018, had published Learning from Las Vegas (1972) before him.
For me, Jencks’s death was a good occasion to score a copy of The Language of Post-Modern Architecture at my university library.
I got hold of a first edition, which is important because it features the introduction which is not part of subsequent editions (it’s not, for example, in the 2002 edition which I also lent).
This introduction is the one which reflects on the adequacy of the new term postmodernism in these words:
“The phrase ‘post-modern’ is not the most happy expression one can use concerning recent architecture. It is evasive, fashionable and worst of all negative – like defining women as ‘non-men’.”–p. 9
The second section of the book, titled “The death of modern architecture” has a poignant criticism on modern architecture, more particular a criticism of Purist ‘living machine‘ Corbusier style architecture. The critical analysis of this type of architecture, which reminds me of the progressivism-skeptic discourse of John Gray states:
“[The] Purist style, […] was meant to instil […] corresponding values in the inhabitants. Good form was to lead to good content, or at least good conduct; the intelligent planning of abstract space was to promote healthy behavior. Alas, such simplistic ideas, taken over from philosophic doctrines of Rationalism, Behaviourism and Pragmatism, proved as irrational as the philosophies themselves. Modern architecture, as the son of the Enlightenment, was an heir to its congenital naivities […] These shortcomings are now well known, thanks to the writings of Ivan Illich, Jacques Ellul, E. F. Schumacher, Michael Oakeshott and Hannah Arendt.”–p.10
This second section also contrasts the “not the most happy” genesis of the term postmodernism with the happiness of being able to determine the exact moment of the “death of modern architecture”:
“Modern architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt–Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite.”–p.9
Jencks was not the first to criticize modern architecture and certainly not the last. “Machines for living” schemes such as the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, for various critics, including Tom Wolfe, illustrated both the essential unlivability of Bauhaus-inspired box architecture, and the hubris of central planning.
Incidentally, the death of modern architecture coincides with the death of the avant-garde.
But enough.
I leave you with a fragment of Koyaanisqatsi (1982) which features footage of Pruitt–Igoe and of its demolition (above).
RIP Ginger ‘Cream’ Baker (1939 – 2019)
Ginger Baker was an English drummer best known for his work with Cream (“Sunshine of Your Love“, 1967).
More importantly, he also played with Fela Kuti on Fela’s London Scene (1971), Why Black Man Dey Suffer (1971), Live! (1972) and Stratavarious (1972):
He also recorded two albums with Bill Laswell: Horses & Trees (1986) and Middle Passage (1990):
RIP Sid Haig (1939 – 2019)
Sid Haig was an American actor known for his parts in Jack Hill’s exploitation fare (Spider Baby (1968), Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974)). He also had a part in THX 1138 (1971), the science fiction film directed by George Lucas in which in a dystopian future the populace is controlled through mandatory use of drugs that suppress emotions.
Cult Movie Stars (1991) describes Haig as:
“Ugly, ruddy faced, usually bald, and occasionally bearded — he looks like an original member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention — Haig has been a seedy presence in low-budget, sex- and action-packed drive-in movies since the mid-sixties.”
Above is Spider Baby (1968) in which Haig is Ralph, one of three inbred, demented, and dangerous siblings. Ralph is a sexually advanced, but mentally deficient simpleton who moves through the house via the dumb-waiter. Unable to speak, Ralph communicates with only grunts and leers.
The siblings are introduced by their guardian as:
“Well, no. It’s more than a retardation. It’s sort of a regression, a progressive deterioration of the mental faculties, a rotting of the brain, so to speak. It begins in late childhood and progresses rapidly, ultimately resulting in physical deformity, rather like the last stages of paresis […] The unfortunate result of … inbreeding.”
The full film is on YouTube.