Velly

I am grateful to M. Higonnet for his e-mail pointing out that there is now a fine official website dedicated to the work of a favourite artist of mine, Jean-Pierre Velly. The site hosts a good selection of images of Velly’s graphic work, a biography, and some other texts by and about the artist.

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I’ve written about Velly before, but I don’t think that the site was in full operation at that time. And, while I’m on the subject, I thought I might present a few more scanned images of Velly’s oil paintings and watercolours…

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The images are from an exhibition catalogue simply entitled Jean-Pierre Velly, published in 1993 by Fratelli Palombi, Rome. Click on the images to see them enlarged.

Kahn & Selesnick

Several months ago a commenter wrote, further to my entry here about the Codex Seraphinianus, that ‘there is a photography duo named Kahn & Selesnick who produce imagery of similarly meticulous surreality’. Alas, I neglected to follow up this lead until yesterday, when I received a mail from Nicholas Kahn, one half of the duo, which included a link to a site featuring some of their marvellous series of panoramic photographs. The present images are from a distinctly Nerdrumesque series entitled Scotlandfuturebog.

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…photographers Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick construct a strange and beautiful world that they describe as being of ‘infinite promise that cannot possibly be described or communicated except by direct experience.’ The characters we meet are bogdwellers, sole inhabitants of a planet emptied by an apocalyptic event. Left to perform obscure ceremonies in a terrain that is as intriguing as it is uninviting, the bogdwellers exist in a historical vacuum. The viewer’s imagination will soar, creating personal pretexts for the masked characters and the strange rituals they conduct. - source here.

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Kahn and Selesnick also collaborate on sculpture and writing, and are currently working on a project called The Apollo Prophecies that ‘takes place on the moon in Edwardian times and in the late ‘60s’, and which is due for its first exhibition at the Pepper Gallery in Boston, on May 20th.

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Click on the images above to see them enlarged. These photographs are Copyright © 2003 Kahn & Selesnick and are reproduced here with permission.

Four Babels

I recently subscribed to FMR magazine, and my first copy arrived in the mail the other day. This current issue happens to be the first one produced without the editorial hand of Sig. Ricci himself, and is a kind of ‘best-of’ compilation of pieces from past issues. This might have pissed me off had I been a long-time subscriber, but, as a relative newcomer to the magazine (I had subscribed once before, for one year, back in ‘95-‘96) it serves as the perfect re-introduction, featuring a fine selection of beautifully-illustrated articles by such big-name writers as Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Octavio Paz, Angela Carter, Michel Butor and Yves Bonnefoy.

One of the pieces in the magazine is concerned with pictorial representations of the Tower of Babel, and reproduces a fabulous selection of paintings and miniatures with the Tower as their subject. I picked out just four of the most readily scannable of these reproductions to feature on this page: click on the images to see them considerably enlarged.

The only one of these paintings I had seen before was the first one, Brueghel’s, and had naïvely supposed that this colossal imaginary ziggurat was a singular product of his extraordinary imagination, whereas I now see it as just one instance of an oft-depicted theme, although, I don’t know (and I’ve yet to read the article right through), perhaps it was the first…

One of the nice things about FMR magazine is the little glossy booklet that comes with it, the ‘guide for the inquisitive traveller’, which lists current and forthcoming art exhibitions of note throughout the world: just the thing for the globe-trotting, museum-going aesthete that I sometimes daydream of becoming.

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Clutter & Junk

I visited the incredibly cluttered junkshop on Drottinggatan (Queen Street) on Saturday morning. This is an establishment which seems to exist primarily as an extension of its proprietor’s mania for accumulation and acquisition, and only secondarily as a place of business. There are sundry pieces of furniture there whose foremost function is as a base stratum upon which numerous other layers of trinkets, whatnots and boxes of stuff have since been sedimented. There are bookshelves there which are impossible to peruse, as they have been wholly or partially occluded by stacks of prints, or cases of scratched ‘78s, or by oddly-shaped brass objects such as may have once fallen off the back of a boat, and one would move these objects aside if only there were a square foot anywhere that they could be moved aside to.

And then there is the shelved alcove where the majority of the vinyl is stored, in cases and boxes and loose stacks. Whenever I visit the incredibly cluttered junkshop, I make a point of trying to look through as large a sampling of these discs as I can. This is not as easy as it might be, however, as the floor of the alcove is piled high with jumbles of books and piles of comics, such that there is only just about room in one particular spot to plant both of ones feet, and one is obliged to stretch up and twist awkwardly around in that cramped and dimly-lit nook to manhandle the boxes and cases on the shelves, which all becomes tiring after a while. Even so, on Saturday, I came away with an armful of records.

The first thing to catch my eye was a 7" single (above) promising to include sample extracts from a late ‘50s-vintage BBC English course. I like listening to some of that old-school Received Pronuciation, and went to the trouble of grabbing some mp3s from this disc, which follow below:

1. Calling all beginners
2. Revise your English
3. Meet the Parkers
4. English Intonation

The disc was quite warped, which accounts for some of the background noise. Besides this, I bought a few classical albums: a disc of pieces from Khachaturian’s ballets; Dinu Lipatti playing the Schumann and Grieg concertos; and a disc of Chopin waltzes. Amongst the many dozens of dodgy early-‘80s mainstream LPs and singles at this store, one oddity stood out, and I brought that home too: a typically eccentric 12" single by The Associates called Message Oblique Speech, whose b-side, Blue Soap features Billy Mackenzie singing in the bath while another Associates track plays in the background. Oh, and I bought two LPs by Shaun Cassidy as a gift for my wife, who had mentioned just a few days before that, as a 10-&-11-year-old, she was a big fan of his: until then, I’d only ever heard of his half-brother, David.

On a vaguely-related note: I owe the image that I’ve added the bottom of this page to another recent trip to one of this town’s second-hand emporia. I picked up a copy of a collection of short stories called Open the Door by Osbert Sitwell that had been published in 1947 by the Stockholm-based Bonnier company, under their Zephyr Books imprint, which issued numerous English-language titles under license from British and American publishers for distribution in post-war continental Europe, hence the text on the book’s back cover:

I took a liking to this text, and decided to scan & photoshop it to the best of my limited ability such that it could sit unobtrusively at the foot of these pages…

Moralia Bornitiana

Here are some emblems from another of the books in the Herzog August Bibliothek (see the previous entry, here), which I present in lieu of having anything more worthwhile to write about. The source this time is a 1678 emblem book by one Jakob Bornitz: Moralia Bornitiana Hoc est: Symbola Et Emblemata Politico-Sacra Et Historico-Politica…

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As usual, I’ve just cut out a few of the images that caught my eye when I leafed through the on-line edition of the book. For example, I liked the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ image above: who knows, this could be one of Led Zeppelin’s very earliest influences…

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I think the large bird (second picture up), is supposed to be an eagle, but it has, to me, a disconcertingly poultry-like look about it. Perhaps this impression was strengthened by the surprising number of emblems in the book that feature chickens. In the other image above we see the stilts of youth worn down to become the walking-sticks of old age.

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For me the single most striking image in the Moralia is the hovering mouthless heart-face, above, which, I presume, is making some or other point about the word of God, but, my knowledge of Latin being so meagre, I can’t figure out exactly what.

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Also intriguing is the last engraving here, where we see some proto-rockstar behaviour as this musician, evidently out of his mind on ale or wine, improvises a percussion solo with his instrument… Click on the images to see enlarged versions of the same.

Dog Toys

Our dog is in the habit of destroying any and all soft toys that we give to him. He will unerringly locate a weak point along one of the toys’ seams, and gnaw at that spot until the stitches break, or the fabric rips, giving access to the sweet ‘brains’ therein. Sometimes he may bite out the toys’ eyes first. This may happen immediately, or weeks, or even months after the toy has been given to him. So many ‘victims’ have been dispatched in this way that we could open a Circus of Disemboweled Plush Toys all of our own.

As with most pathological behaviours, this one may be traced back to the patient’s childhood. As a developing puppy he bonded closely with a teddy-bear I had won on Brighton pier earlier that year. As our pup matured, he initiated a quasi-sexual relationship with this teddy, who thereafter became known as Bitch. Another toy, Chris Moose (below), was also, on occasion, used as an object of gratification. Our pup, however, was at no great age when we arranged for his castration. After the operation, the nature of the confused puppy’s relationship with his companions took a sinister turn, and the mutilations and ‘debrainings’ began…

The only one of our disturbed canine’s childhood toys to (partly) escape this mournful fate was baby puppy (below, right), but this survival owed more to our having taken him out of reach of his persecutor (lest his plastic-bead innards spill out everywhere) than to any mercy on the part of his erstwhile playmate. Since then, we have, as accomplices in this fluffy carnage, brought home many dozens more toys, each unaware of their sacrificial fate, destined for debraining and disembowelment: as well as Chris Moose, there was Chris Mouse; there were the long-lived Monster and Camel; there was Giant Bunny: there were Tug-Lion and Tug-Monkey, there was Batty the sinister plush bat, and there was the malevolent Evil Baby Puppet, and there have been many more too short-lived even to accrue a nickname.

In the present images we see, in the first picture Yellow Bear, Purple Bear and Orange Bear, all purchased before Christmas last at a local supermarket. Of the three, Purple Bear is in the worst shape, being altogether decerebrate. In the second picture, similarly debrained, is poor old Chris Moose, barely recognisable as such. The third picture (above), shows the original Baby Puppy, trying to comfort a much more recently-acquired teddy-bear.

And, in the final picture, we see the melancholy spectacle of a Smurf without a face, and a face without a Smurf… Click on the images to see them enlarged.

Figurines

At the end of William Vollman’s discourse on the ‘Defence of Class’ as a justification for violence, in volume II of Rising Up and Rising Down, he presents us with a novelistic interlude entitled ‘The Countess and the Clay Eater’ which sketches the fortunes of a pair of conjectural characters through the Russian Revolution. We are asked to ‘consider the case of a hypothetical Russian countess, a cultured woman, talented on the piano, who dabbles in watercolors’, a charitable soul we might say, or, less kindly, a bit of a bleeding-heart, who in any case takes a concerned interest in the welfare of the peasants on her estate. One day she encounters a frail child who, through poverty and hunger, has been reduced to chewing on a lump of bluish clay. She gives the boy two kopeks. The Revolution reverses their fortunes. The boy is fed and educated, becomes an ardent Party-member, a shock-worker, an exemplary Communist. The Countess, meanwhile, is gradually stripped of her possessions…

See her on the streets of an unfriendly city, standing in her shabby coat, offering for sale her silver thimble, her dancing shoes […], and the medal which her husband received at a reception for the tsar. She needs to eat.

No more than a day or two after reading this, I browsed my way to the Russian Avant-Garde Gallery, a site tracing and illustrating several of the most important threads in early 20th-Century Russian art. Much of the art there, and many of the artists’ names were new to me. I was particularly interested by the section of the site devoted to Mass and Agit Art, where my eye was caught first by the figurine (left) of A Bourgeoise Selling Her Jewellery, Petticoats and a Teddy-Bear. I was struck by the likeness of this image with the one that Vollman describes, but, on reflection, I daresay that it was not uncommon in those years to see women and men of means so reduced: but to look at this woman commemorated thus in porcelain is somehow shocking, at least, it is to me. Perhaps, unlike Vollman’s notional Countess, this particular bourgeoise had been far from charitable, and had it coming to her: rich scum, your time has come, but even so, this seems to me a spiteful little work of art.

Less disturbing are the figurines sculpted by Natalya Dan‘ko: her post-revolutionary work is celebratory in tone, and glorifies The Red Sailor, The Partisan on the March, The Woman Sewing a Banner, and, in the piece called International, (left), a triumphant worker standing atop the terrestrial globe, a figure, perhaps, who may stand for the clay-eating boy made good of Vollman’s tale. Besides being a gifted artist, Dan‘ko was evidently a courageous woman:

[During] the Stalinist era, […] Dan‘ko was creating a series of bas-relief medallions of friends and colleagues from the intellectual and artistic circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg who had been caught in the cycle of betrayal, trials, and murders, and whom she wanted to commemorate, expecting that they would not survive this nightmare time. All of the medallions were hidden, for to be caught with them would mean that their creator would in turn be condemned. Natalya Dan'ko died of starvation in 1942 during the siege of Leningrad - source here.

Of the several works of Dan‘ko’s illustrated at the Russian Avant-Garde site, one in particular stands out by dint of its unexpected elegance and its dubious political correctness, and that is the 1924 figurine of The Great Russian Poet Anna Akhmatova (left). Although a volume of Akhmatova’s verse had been reprinted the previous year, she was hardly a Party favourite, and, in 1925, ‘the Central Committee of the Party issued a specific instruction that none of her original work was to be published’, a ban not lifted until wartime. In the intervening years, then, Akhmatova was, in effect, as silent as the porcelain model made in her image… 1924 was the year she wrote these verses:

The Muse

All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
as I wait for her whom no one can command.
Whatever I cherish most—youth, freedom, glory—
fades before her who bears the flute in her hand.

And look! she comes … she tosses back her veil,
staring me down, serene and pitiless.
“Are you the one,” I ask, “whom Dante heard dictate
the lines of his Inferno?” She answers: “Yes.”

This translation is by Max Hayward and Stanley Kunitz, and is taken from this book. Click on the images above to see them enlarged.

February Books, March Books

In February I read the larger part of vol. III of William Vollman’s Rising Up and Rising Down (which I’ve made mention of before), and, undaunted, continued on to complete vols. IV and V in relatively short order, before setting course, full-speed-ahead, into vol. VI, where, at last, I ran aground, a little more than half-way through. Even though I generally enjoy Vollman’s prose, and, for the most part, thought his ‘long essay’ to be an admirable endeavour, I found I could stomach no more for a time, and took a break of two weeks or so, during which I read nothing at all. Meanwhile, February went, and March came.

When I picked up volume VI again, it was with slightly diminished enthusiasm, and I admit that I skimmed my way through much of what remained. I then dipped selectively into the index volume before closing that and declaring myself as good as done with the whole book, even though I had hardly read every page. Was the book too long? I would say yes, but not by all that much…

In Vollman’s 1989 collection The Rainbow Stories, there are some pieces, combining fiction and reportage, which focus with attentive and sympathetic fascination on marginalised individuals: outcasts - pariahs, even - such as neo-Nazi skinheads, drug-addicted street prostitutes and hopelessly alcoholic hobos. In the journalism collected in vols. V & VI of Rising Up and Rising Down it was interesting to see similar preoccupations coming to the surface in Vollman’s no-less-sympathetic accounts of life in countries that have been marginalised, that have become pariah states: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Taliban-run Afghanistan, Serbia. It seems to me that Vollman’s compulsion to come to know and even to love ‘the enemy’ inspires some of his finest writing.

The first book I started in March was another non-fiction title: Facing the Ocean - The Atlantic and its Peoples, 8000 BC to AD 1500, by Barry Cunliffe. This is a wide-ranging archaeological and historical account of Atlantic Europe from Mesolithic times to the Renaissance, with an emphasis on seabourne cultural and material trade & exchange. It was something that caught my eye at Amazon when I was looking for Christmas gifts for my folks. I’m only halfway through the book - it’s sporadically fascinating, and conveys a great breadth of information, but has also, here and there, some of a textbook’s flatness about it.

I also read a couple of volumes of short stories toward the month’s end: When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías and Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo Kiš. I hadn’t read anything by either author before. On balance, I liked the former book slightly better than the latter. I loved the urbane suavity of Marias’ prose. Although several of his tales were of the kind that, when I came to turn them over in my mind after I’d read them, seemed to me slighter and flimsier than they had while I was reading them, I considered this as more a tribute to the beguiling quality of Marias’ narrative voice than anything else. I thought that Marías’ repetition of motives and character-traits across unrelated stories worked as an effective and economical way of suggesting an extra sense of depth to the book, although I’ve no idea whether that was a deliberate ploy of the author’s, or just a side-effect.

Kiš’ book felt a little less inviting, with a less polished literary surface, and with a greater variety and discontinuity between the stories. I found some of the tales rather inscrutable, although to be fair, it’s easy to forget that they were written for publication in a Communist regime where a clear statement of intent would often have been inadvisable. A few of the tales were unambiguously fascinating, though, and I was particularly struck by one piece called, I think, The Book of Fools and Kings, a thinly fictionalised history of the tangled origins and baleful influence of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.