[<<] September 2005 Jahsonic (09) [>>]
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"Method of this work:
literary montage.
I have nothing to say only to show." (Passagenwerk (1927 - 1940) - Walter Benjamin)
2005, Sep 29; 11:18 ::: The Grotesque in Art and Literature : Theological Reflections (1997) - James Luther Adams, Wilson Yates
The Grotesque in Art and Literature : Theological Reflections (1997) - James Luther Adams, Wilson Yates [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Book Description
While there has been a growing interest in the use of grotesque imagery in art and literature, very little attention has been given to the religious and theological significance of such imagery. This fascinating book redresses that neglect by exploring the religious meaning of the grotesque and its importance as a subject for theological inquiry.See also: grotesque - religion
2005, Sep 29; 11:06 ::: Fiction of the Modern Grotesque (1989) - Bernard McElroy
Fiction of the Modern Grotesque (1989) - Bernard McElroy [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: grotesque - grotesque literature
2005, Sep 29; 11:06 ::: On the grotesque: Strategies of contradiction in art and literature (1982) - Geoffrey Galt Harpham
On the grotesque: Strategies of contradiction in art and literature (1982) - Geoffrey Galt Harpham [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: grotesque - grotesque literature
2005, Sep 29; 10:38 ::: Grub Street: studies in a subculture (1972) - Pat Rogers
Grub Street: studies in a subculture (1972) - Pat Rogers [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Grub Street is the former name of the present day Milton Street, London, EC2. The name Grub Street in various forms dates back to 1217 and but was changed in 1830 in order to honour a local builder called Milton. According to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the term was "originally the name of a street near Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet".
In current usage the term is used in western literary and journalistic circles to characterize any hack writing, done quickly, for a fee, generally with minimal research. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grub_Street [Sept 2005]
Hack writing
A hack writer is a writer for hire, paid to express others' thoughts or opinions in felicitous verbiage, often in the form of political pamphlets. Some such writers are very talented. Nonetheless, in one vernacular usage, a hack is a person lacking talent or ability. It has been adopted (in British English) as a self-deprecating self-description by journalists.As a writer for hire, a hack writer is usually remunerated by the number of words: so the implication of hack writing is usually that quantity takes precendence over quality. Hack writing may take the form of ghost writing, or the production of generic novels under pseudonyms (for example romantic fiction under the Mills & Boon brand, or the old Sexton Blakes). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_writer [Sept 2005]
See also: writing - subculture
2005, Sep 29; 10:34 ::: L’Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751) - Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert
L’Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751) - Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers ("Encyclopedia, or Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts") was an early encyclopedia, published in France beginning in 1751, the final volumes being released in 1772.
From 1782 to 1832 an expanded edition of the work was published in 66 volumes. That work, enormous for the time, occupied a thousand workers in production and 2,250 contributors. The run of the press was 4,250 copies — a ridiculous number for the present but very large for the 18th century where editions rarely exceeded 1,500 copies. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie [Sept 2005]
See also: Encyclopedia - Denis Diderot - 1750s - enlightenment
2005, Sep 29; 09:55 ::: From early modern print culture to hypertextAn example of a late 1990s techno-utopian text on the liberating political powers of the internet:
George Landow contends that "the history of information technology from writing to hypertext reveals an increasing democratization or dissemination of power" (174). If this is true, then the texts of the Enlightenment and the hypertexts of the postmodern age can be seen as related moments in the historical liberation of information. Dan Nguyen and Jon Alexander refer to the Internet as "an enormously liberating force working against hierarchies of all kinds. This is the democracy citizens in advanced nations always dreamed of. What people are creating on the Internet is a conversational, demassified, non-representational democracy that transcends the nation-state" (111). It can be quite interesting to explore this development with students. With their great Encyclopedia, Diderot and other Enlightened philosophes dreamed of distributing knowledge throughout the world--or at least, throughout that part of the world which could afford the Encyclopedia's prohibitive subscription costs. In principle, the Net would seem to bring us closer to this Enlightened dream of free, universal information. For one thing, the Net evades the material cost of book production. After all, it costs nothing to copy a computer file. Theoretically, the Net could therefore serve as an Encyclopedia of greater size and scope than anything Diderot ever imagined.
Despite the lofty ideals of the philosophes, of course, the texts of the Enlightenment were hardly available to everyone. These texts were read by a literate minority with the money to purchase books. Similarly, despite the claims of Landow and others that hypertext necessarily leads to democratization, the postmodern philosophes of today are often stymied by a commodification of information which is in many ways quite similar to what went on during the Enlightenment. As Mark Poster points out, "the system of private enterprise does not easily surrender to the liberatory potentials of historical circumstances. Every effort is made to commodify information, regardless of how inappropriate, unlikely, ludicrous, or inequitable are the consequences" (75). Frequent Web surfers know that many Web sites require a credit card number for access, and even "free" sites are often supported by advertising. Michael Joyce argues that this commodification of information extends into the university as well: "we ration hours [of computer time] among our students, and allot technological upgrades to our colleagues, accounting hours and upgrades alike as actual capital within an intellectual economy" (93). During the Enlightenment, social distinctions were drawn between those who could afford books and those who could not. Distinctions today exist between those who can afford a computer powerful enough to run Netscape Navigator 4.0 and those who cannot. It would appear that the electronic age has its own well-developed class structure.
And yet as Poster points out, the Net is also one of the few places where meaningful protest can take place today: "the factory site, with its massed, impoverished workers, no longer presents, for so many reasons, the opportunity of revolutionary talk. If contestatory language is to emerge today, it must do so in the context of TV ads and databases, of computers and communications satellites" (80). This suggests that electronic communication may make possible a radical new kind of revolutionary politics. Particularly interesting in this context is the fact that it is possible, on the Net, to speak from a position of perfect anonymity. Surely this helps to explain why so much language on the Net today is not only contestatory but also radical, shocking and bizarre.
Students in a course on the Enlightenment might be pleasantly surprised to learn that anonymity played a similar role in the political culture of eighteenth century France. Robert Darnton points out that some of the most radical printed texts of the Enlightenment had no author. "They were the public discussing. They expressed the on dit, or talk of the town" (Forbidden Bestsellers 80). One can scarcely resist drawing a comparison between the radical, anonymous pamphlets of the Enlightenment and the vibrant, perpetual conversation that takes place throughout the world on Usenet newsgroups today. Certainly Usenet is the public discussing, and this public, like its Enlightened predecessor, frequently says things that are quite scandalous, all from behind the cloak of a comfortable electronic anonymity.
Of course, not everyone is delighted by the Net's free-flowing, worldwide conversation. One must consider here the recent attempt by the United States government to limit electronic speech through the so-called Communications Decency Act. Again, this invites comparison with the political culture of the Enlightenment. Net culture, much like the print culture of France during the Enlightenment, challenges the artificial distinctions which government attempts to impose upon it. The CDA claimed to be aimed against pornography--but where does pornography end, and where do politics and philosophy begin? Many feminists expressed justifiable concern, for example, that certain discussions about abortion could be labeled "obscene" under the CDA. Darnton points out that when we examine the turbulent political culture of the Enlightenment, "the seemingly self-evident distinction between pornography and philosophy begins to break down. . . .It no longer seems puzzling that Mirabeau, the embodiment of the spirit of 1789, should have written the rawest pornography and the boldest political tracts of the previous decade" (Forbidden Bestsellers, 21). The distinction between radical politics and pornography was not clear during the French Enlightenment, nor is it clear in today's Net culture. Indeed, Net culture almost obsessively promotes contestatory speech, including the "rawest pornography," and this seems very much in harmony with the spirit of the Enlightenment.
What is interesting about these brief examples is that they show how the seeds of a postmodern micropolitics are to be found in the political culture of the Enlightenment. As Darnton has pointed out, the lasting political meaning of the Enlightenment may not lie in the supposedly emancipatory metanarrative of Rousseau's Social Contract. Rather, it may lie in the scurrilous scribblings of Darnton's "grub street" hacks (Darnton, Literary Underground). These political pornographers produced a micropolitical discourse which challenged power on capillary levels invisible to a Voltaire or a Diderot. For centuries, this discourse was lost, obscured behind the monolithic texts of the "high enlightenment." Now that the discourse of the "low enlightenment" emerges once again, we see this culture reflected in the networks of the postmodern age. We begin to see that modern power is most effectively challenged not by metanarratives which reinvent and reinscribe power, but rather by electronic micronarratives about ethnicity, sexuality, vegetarianism, Taoism or even the Grateful Dead, to name just a few. --1998, http://mcel.pacificu.edu/history/jahcI1/Call/democ.html [Sept 2005]
Search string used: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22print+culture%22+philosophy+pornography+politics+enlightenment
See also: print culture - philosophy - politics - enlightenment
2005, Sep 29; 08:51 ::: Satan's Treasures (1895) - Jean Delville
Satan's Treasures (1895) - Jean Delville
Image sourced here.Jean Delville (January 19, 1867 – 1953) was a Belgian symbolist painter, writer, and occultist. He founded the Salon d’Art Idealiste, which is considered the Belgian equivalent to the Parisian Rose & Cross Salon and the Pre-Raphaelite movement in London. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean Delville [Sept 2005]
See also: symbolism - 1895 - fantastic art - Belgium
2005, Sep 29; 08:51 ::: Resurrection of the Flesh (detail of Fresco) (1499-1502) - Luca Signorelli
Resurrection of the Flesh (detail of Fresco) (1499-1502) - Luca Signorelli
Luca Signorelli (c.1445-1523), Tuscan painter, is noted for his ability as a draughtsman and his use of foreshortening. His work shows his interest in anatomy. His masterpiece is considered to be his fresco of the Last Judgment (1499) in Orvieto Cathedral. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca Signorelli [Sept 2005]
See also: flesh - 1400s - fantastic art - Renaissance - Italy
2005, Sep 29; 08:51 ::: The Battle of Alexander (1529) - Albrecht Altdorfer
The Battle of Alexander (1529) - Albrecht Altdorfer
Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480 near Regensburg – February 12, 1538 in Regensburg) was a painter, the leader of the Danubian School in southern Germany, and a contemporary of Albrecht Dürer.
He was a landscape painter of religious and mythological representations; most famously also for painting landscapes for their beauty and not as illustrating any story or parable, perhaps the first "pure" landscape painter.
His "Battle of Arbela" adorns the Münich Picture Gallery.
See also: Early Renaissance painting --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht Altdorfer [Sept 2005]
See also: 1400s - fantastic art - Middle Ages - Renaissance - German art
2005, Sep 29; 08:39 ::: The First Foolish Virgin (before 1483) - Martin Schongauer
The First Foolish Virgin (before 1483) - Martin Schongauer
Martin Schongauer (c. 1448 - c. 1488), the most able engraver and painter of the early German school. Schongauer was known in Italy by the names "Bel Martino" and "Martino d'Anversa".
His father was a goldsmith named Casper, a native of Augsburg, who had settled at Colmar, where the chief part of Martin's life was spent. Schongauer established at Colmar a very important school of engraving, out of which grew the "little masters" of the succeeding generation, and a large group of Nuremberg artists.
As a painter, Schongauer was a pupil of the Flemish Roger van der Weyden the Elder, and his rare existing pictures closely resemble, both in splendour of color and exquisite minuteness of execution, the best works of contemporary art in Flanders. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin Schongauer [Sept 2005]
See also: 1400s - fantastic art - Middle Ages - German art
2005, Sep 28; 22:57 ::: Neptune's Horses (1892) - Walter Crane
Neptune's Horses (1892) - Walter Crane
See also: 1892 - fantastic art - UK
2005, Sep 28; 22:57 ::: Thomas Traherne: Poetry and Prose
Thomas Traherne: Poetry and Prose [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Thomas Traherne
Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637 - October 10, 1674) was an English poet and religious writer. He was born in Hereford, son of a shoemaker, and got the name Traherne from a wealthy innkeeper who raised him after his parents’ death. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1652, achieving an M.A. in arts and divinity nine years later. In the meantime, he worked for ten years as a parish priest in Credenhill, near Hereford, before becoming the private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the Lord Keeper of the Seals of Charles II, in 1667. He died in Teddington after seven years in this service. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas Traherne [Sept 2005]See also: 1600s - religion - UK
2005, Sep 28; 22:45 ::: Orthodoxy (1908) - G. K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy (1908) - G. K. Chesterton [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Amazon.com
If G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith is, as he called it, a "slovenly autobiography," then we need more slobs in the world. This quirky, slender book describes how Chesterton came to view orthodox Catholic Christianity as the way to satisfy his personal emotional needs, in a way that would also allow him to live happily in society. Chesterton argues that people in western society need a life of "practical romance, the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome." Drawing on such figures as Fra Angelico, George Bernard Shaw, and St. Paul to make his points, Chesterton argues that submission to ecclesiastical authority is the way to achieve a good and balanced life. The whole book is written in a style that is as majestic and down-to-earth as C.S. Lewis at his best. The final chapter, called "Authority and the Adventurer," is especially persuasive. It's hard to imagine a reader who will not close the book believing, at least for the moment, that the Church will make you free. --Michael Joseph Gross via Amazon.comG. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (May 29, 1874 – June 14, 1936) was an English writer of the early 20th century. Chesterton was known as the "prince of paradox" because he communicated his conservative, often countercultural, ideas in an off-hand, whimsical prose studded with startling formulations. For example: "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." Most of Chesterton's works remain in print, including collections of his Father Brown detective stories, and Ignatius Press is presently undertaking the monumental task of republishing his complete works. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton [Sept 2005]See also: 1908 - religion - UK
2005, Sep 28; 21:26 ::: Colin WilsonWhen I was in Paris in the early 1950s, Samuel Beckett had just been discovered. Waiting for Godot was on in Paris and I thought ‘What fucking shit! Who is this half-witted Irishman who’s going around saying life’s not worth living? Why doesn’t he just blow his brains out and shut up?’ I felt the same about Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, and later on others such as William Golding. I had always had a passionate feeling that certain people I deeply approved of – like G K Chesterton, who spoke of ‘absurd good news’, for example – and people like Thomas Traherne… the mystics in general, that they were saying that we’re basically blind. --Colin Wilson, 2004Readers of Fortean Times will almost certainly be familiar with the work of Colin Wilson. In a career spanning nearly 50 years – and tackling subjects like existentialism, psychology, criminology and sex – Wilson has written a number of books on fortean topics: The Occult, Mysteries, Poltergeist, Alien Dawn, Afterlife, From Atlantis to the Sphinx, to name a few. Ever since he first came to a brief but incendiary celebrity with the publication of his first book, The Outsider, in 1956, Wilson has been what he calls a ‘writing machine’, producing book after book at a phenomenal rate. Incorrigibly prolific, at last count Wilson had written well over 100 titles, and there’s no sign of his letting up. His most recent work, Dreaming to Some Purpose, published in May 2004, is an autobiography, a fascinating account of his life and career so far. Highly readable, and full of charming anecdotes about himself and other writers – including Aldous Huxley, T S Eliot, Robert Graves and Henry Miller – Dreaming to Some Purpose takes us into the life of a writer who, whether we agree with him or not, has to be one of the most challenging and stimulating of the last half century.
Beginning with an account of his attempted suicide at the age of 16, the 73-year-old Wilson introduces us to the central obsession of his life: the search for a method of increasing the powers of consciousness at will, a theme that links the many, otherwise disparate, subjects in his considerable œuvre. Wilson is also refreshingly candid about the role of sex in his life, discussing in detail early exploits in the coffee bars of 1950s Soho, and later adventures when fame increased his opportunities to satisfy an already healthy appetite.
From being “A bum and a drifter… living outdoors to avoid paying my first wife maintenance,” the 24-year-old Wilson found himself an Angry Young Man, thrown into a whirlwind publicity campaign, hounded by the press and lionised by the literary set. But the honeymoon was soon over, and since those heady early days of The Outsider, Wilson has been more or less beyond the critical pale, his books either dismissed or, more frequently, ignored by the ‘serious’ critics. --http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/188_wilson1.shtml [Sept 2005]
Fortean Times
Fortean Times is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean_Times [Sept 2005]Anomalous phenomena
An anomalous phenomenon is an observed phenomenon for which there is no suitable explanation in the context of a specific body of scientific knowledge. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous phenomenon [Sept 2005]See also: Colin Wilson - knowledge
2005, Sep 28; 20:59 ::: Orlando Furioso
Orlando Furioso (1877) - illustration by Gustave Doré
See also: Gustave Doré - 1877
2005, Sep 28; 19:53 ::: Satan (c. 1028) - Anonymous
Satan: Enluminure réalisée vers 1028, extraite de l’Apocalypse de saint Sever, Landes.
Image sourced here.Satan proprement désigné, tel qu’il apparaît aux hommes du XIe siècle, entouré de monstres dont la morphologie rappelle celle des taureaux ailés de l’antique Assyrie. «C’est au XIe siècle, remarque Emile Mâle, (…) que les moines artistes élaborent le Satan monstrueux de l’âge suivant. On commence à l’entrevoir dans l’Apocalypse de saint Sever, avec son corps maigre, ses cheveux hérissés, ses ailes armées de dards. Dans le grand art monumental, c’est à Moissac, à Beaulieu, à Souillac, qu’il apparaît au commencement du XIIe siècle, dans toute sa nouveauté.» (L’Art religieux du XIIe siècle, p. 370.)
See also: Gustave Doré - 1877
2005, Sep 28; 19:24 ::: Putti Dancing and Making Music (1495) - Albrecht Dürer
Putti Dancing and Making Music (1495) - Albrecht Dürer
The putto is a figure of a pudgy baby, almost always male, found especially in Italian Renaissance art. The figure derives from Ancient art but was "rediscovered" in the early Quattrocento. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putti [Sept 2005]
See also: Albrecht Dürer - renaissance - 1400s
2005, Sep 28; 19:12 ::: Domus Aurea (1st century AD) - Italy
Domus Aurea (1st century AD) - Italy
See also: Rome - grotesque - domus aurea
2005, Sep 28; 19:11 ::: Celebes (1921) - Max Ernst
Celebes (1921) - Max Ernst
See also: 1921 - Max Ernst - modern art
Since the early nineteenth century it has not been possible to describe the grotesque as peripheral to the visual arts. The romantic period marked the entrance of the grotesque into the mainstream of modern expression, as a means to explore alternative modes of experience and expression and to challenge the presumed universals of classical beauty. The modern era witnessed an explosion of visual imagery that in various ways incorporated the grotesque. A remarkable number of canonical works of modernism, including Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, Ensor’s Entry of Christ into Brussels, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Ernst’s Elephant of Celebes, or Bacon’s Study after Velasquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, employ structures deeply rooted in the western tradition as grotesque.
2005, Sep 28; 18:49 ::: Grotesque and Modern ArtThe grotesque figures prominently in romantic, symbolist, expressionist, primitivist, realist, and surrealist vocabularies, but it also plays a role in cubism and certain kinds of abstraction. The reemergence of the grotesque in the fine arts was only one of a remarkable range of new expressive modes through which the grotesque was extended, expanded, and reinvented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These cultural vehicles for the grotesque included such disparate developments as psychoanalysis, photography, mass media, science fiction, ethnography, weapons of mass destruction, globalization, and virtual reality. The grotesque was first linked to the notion of “primitive” expression in this era, with profound repercussions for modern art and aesthetics. The grotesque gave expression to other primal realities. In Le monstre, published in 1889, J. K. Huysmans contended that the microscope revealed an entirely new field of monstrosities equal to any of those animating medieval art. Odilon Redon’s biological fantasies corroborate Huysmans’s claim. Similarly, Freud’s exploration of the unconscious was embraced by surrealists who employed grotesque modalities. A striking number of the period’s most influential thinkers, including Baudelaire, Ruskin, Nietzsche, Freud, Bataille, Bakhtin, and Kristeva, have drawn from and reinterpreted the grotesque. --Frances S. Connely, 2003 via http://www.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002041458.pdf [Sept 2005]
See also: grotesque - modern art
2005, Sep 28; 16:54 ::: Neuw Grottessken Buch (1610) - Christoph Jamnitzer
Neuw Grottessken Buch (1610) - Christoph Jamnitzer
Christoph Jamnitzer (1563-1618)
Jamnitzer’s designs are, perhaps, a high-water-mark of a trend in Northern European mannerist grotesquerie that had begun in Antwerp in the 1550s, with the stylised designs of Cornelis Floris, and which had been continued by such artists and craftsmen as Joris Hoefnagel, in the illuminated alphabet appended to the Mira Calligraphiæ Monumenta, and by the brothers de Bry, in their Neiw Kunstliches Alphabet of 1595. --http://www.spamula.net/blog/archives/000648.html#000648 [Sept 2005]
See also: grotesque - mannerism - 1600s
2005, Sep 28; 16:54 ::: Liaisons Dangereuses Belgian radio show selectionThis an hommage to the cult radio program Liaisons Dangereuses, which was broadcast from 1986 to 1994 over the Antwerp airwaves.
Liaisons Dangereuses was alternative dance, EBM, hard beat, new beat, acid, synth pop, electro, techno, ambient and hip house!
Sample selection
So Mote it Be - The Executive Slacks Dead Eyes Opened - Severed Heads Now An Explosive New Movie - Severed Heads Never let me down again (aggro mix) - Depeche Mode Nothing is True - Carlos Peron The Saint became a Lush - Psyche Ladyshave - Fad Gadget We have come to bless the House - Severed Heads Nudes in the Forest - Dark Day Harmony - Ganzheit Looking From The Hilltop - Section 25 Final Report - Absolute Body Control Walking Through Heaven - Chris And Cosey Roman Days - Fred Brown Unit - Logic System Hours + hours - the klinik Aimless - Typis Belgis Wheels over Indian Trails - Stanton Miranda Kick You... - Danton's Voice Bolt It Down - Portion Control Finland Red, Egypt White - Sisterhood One Foot in Heaven - The Edge Diabolical Guesture - A Thunder Orchestra Retrodect - Chris & Cosey bacteria - insekt Talax - Richard Strange flying turns - crash course in science The Faces of Horror - Liaisons D Businessman - Logo Excerpt from stone - Recoill alone, it's me - abfahrt Caravan - Beat-A-Max Mea Culpa - Eno & Byrne Wet Job - Fingerprintz Film 2 - Grauzone How much are they? - Jah Wobble Death disco - P.I.L. Jamahiriya - Savage republic 8:15 To Nowhere - Vicious Pink Disco Death - Arbeid Adelt eighty eight - Public Relations Euroshima (Wardance) - Snowy Red Love Dance - The Bridge Lack of Sense - Tribantura The Collosseum Crash - A Split Second When your Dream of perfect Beauty comes True - Bill Nelson Sexmachine - The Flying Lizards World domination - The Klinik Colonial Discharge - A Split Second Twanky Party - Cabaret Voltaire mafoombay - Cultural Vibe Virgin in-D Sky's - in-D brute force - insekt page 67 - mista E No UFO's - Model 500 Signal aout 42 - Pleasure and crime Eating violins - Psyche Heartbeat - Wasch! voodoo ray - a guy called gerald Yashar - Cabaret Voltaire Breaking-In - Carlos Peron cardboard lamb - crash course in science Föhn in den Bergen - Die Partei Mothdoom Ecstasy - Torch Song CrashBangWallop - All Systems Go Game above my head - Blancmange Shake the Mind - C Cat Trance Dropouts - Carlos Peron don't even think about it - chayell Und dann - Der Plan Perfume from Spain - Dr Calculus all systems out - force dimension The Spell - Honest Doc. & Mr. Driver Underpass - John Foxx Automan - Newcleus Fear of Gods - Simple Minds T.V.O.D. - The normal Quit poken me - THE POKE Free Yourself - Virgo Strict Tempo - Dave Ball Beat In-D Dream - In-D Breakdown - Kate B Big Man Restless - Kissing The Pink He Chilled Out - Liaisons D Elle et Moi - Max Berlin Voices - Neon Theme From Great Cities - Simple Minds burning inside - the klinik She's a skag - The Stereo Crew Rumours Of War - Alan Rankine E 3 A - B 2 Unit (Sakamoto) Birds Of Tin - Bill Nelson Nervous Acid - Bobby Kondors Jesus Loves The Acid - Ecstasy Club The Jezebel Spirit - Eno & Byrne Monkey Monkey - Eurythmics body mechanix authentic garage groove - L.B.Bad Heartbeat - Liaisons D I Sit on Acid - Lords of Acid Witness the Change - Pete Shelley French Emotions - Peter Godwin The Silver Gun - Robert Palmer No Way Back - Adonis They Made Them Up - C Cat Trance Moonlight - Chris Carter Why don't you Answer - Eberhard Schoener & Sting State of The Nation - Fad Gadget Special Forces - Front 242 Los Alamos - J&J Hudson Computer World - Kraftwerk Optimo - Liquid Liquid Cavern - Liquid Liquid the fashion party - neon judgement The Alarm - Nitzer Ebb Suicide Commando - No More No Separation (separated mix) - Nocturnal Emissions World Raw - Paul Haig Watch Out - Philadelphia Five No Hope, No Fear - Vomito Negro Baseball furies chase - Barry de Vorzon Put Out The Fire - Daryl Hannah Mathar - Dave Pike Set Proximity Switch (Accident In Paradise) - Informatics Blah blah cafe - Jean Michel Jarre Ghostdance - Cold SensationVia http://liaisons.yaba.be/v2/forum/charts.php?action=all_list
See also: new wave - dance - Belgium - New Beat
2005, Sep 28; 08:38 ::: Great Day of His Wrath (1851-53) - John Martin
Great Day of His Wrath (1851-53) - John Martin
Image sourced here.See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(painter)
See also: fantastic - art - fantastic art - 1850s
2005, Sep 26; 22:39 ::: Encore Hollywood: Remaking French Cinema (2000) - Lucy Mazdon
Encore Hollywood: Remaking French Cinema (2000) - Lucy Mazdon [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Synopsis
The remake is a prominent feature of Hollywood production. This title considers the implications of the remake in terms of its effect on the construction of a national cultural identity by examining key remakes of French films in Hollywood over 20 years. The text also highlights the increased importance of culture in political discourse of the 1980s as a fundamental reason for the negative reception of remakes in France. The author considers whether the remake can be considered as a positive form of cross-cultural exchange or if it in fact threatens the very identity of the originals. --via Amazon.co.uk[I]n sum, on the one hand she establishes a French tradition of complex, subtle character-centered texts with playful attitudes towards moral codes and mildly subversive social themes, and on the other an American tradition of action-centered films in which uncomplicated heterosexual heroes vanquish stereotyped villains according to linear generic conventions. All of this sounds very much like the opposition of a French high culture tradition to an American low culture tradition which she professed to be undermining.
Part of the problem here is the absence of any discussion by Mazdon of the comédie dramatique as a genre. French filmmakers frequently promoted the comédie dramatique, because they saw it as having precisely the qualities listed above, and because it thus served to contrast their national product and their national aptitudes to those of Hollywood. Another part of the problem is Mazdon's ambivalent attitude towards popularity (if it's popular it can't be art), towards comedy (if it's funny it can't be art), and particularly towards genre. To claim that À bout de souffle can't be a French art film because it borrows from cinematic genres that are neither French nor part of high culture is manifestly invalid (84). Indeed the chapter on À bout de souffle (1960) and Breathless (1983) is the least satisfactory of the chapters, involving some weak and tortuous argument, a paragraph in the middle of p85 which it would be unjust to the rest of the book to quote, and a strategic distortion of Godard's statement about his intention in making the film to make it seem aimed exclusively at French filmmaking traditions. (pp79, 88).
One other less than satisfactory aspect of the book is its tendency to try to correlate the analyses of specific films to broad social and political movements in France, and to a lesser extent in America. Given the lack of any concrete connections between filmmakers and movements, these correlations (to the stages of the feminist movement, to the disappearance of the patriarch, de Gaulle, to the election to government of the Socialist party, to the ideological configuration of the US in the 1980s, etc) are not presented with sufficient circumspection.
But if these are the major problems with the book, other niggling worries surface with a certain regularity. To take a few from the opening sections: is it really valid to attribute the novelty and diversity of the French cinema to directors unfettered by the "dictates" of producers (14); is it really valid to attribute the lack of a French cinematic action genre to the lack of adequate funding (24); is it really valid to say that shooting Pépé in the studio automatically signifies "the imaginary nature of the space (...), not 'real' but reconstructed for the purposes of the fiction?"(33) And is it valid to claim that the New Wave critics' aim in developing the politique des auteurs was "to interrogate the concept of traditional art cinema"(79)? Surely the aim was rather to exalt it, but extend it to auteurs working in Hollywood (just as French critics had been doing for the preceding 30 years).
Such worries, together with the more general problem of a PhD thesis inadequately edited into a more commercial format and dealing with two disparate topics, neither of them fully, make it difficult to recommend a book that is otherwise an honorable, well-informed study. Finally, the editors were most unwise to publish it in a faint and microscopic print which makes it painful to read. The editing job which ought to have been done on the thesis format might just have reduced it to a size that would have permitted a larger and more legible typeface, and at no extra cost. --Colin Crips, 2001 via http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/reviews/rev0301/ccbr12a.htm [Sept 2005]
In film, a remake may refer to a newer version of a previously released film, or a newer version of the source (play, novel, story, etc.) of a previously made film. For example, 2001's Ocean's Eleven is a remake of the 1960 film. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remake [Sept 2005]
See also: film - adaptation - Hollywood - American cinema - French cinema - version
2005, Sep 26; 20:53 ::: Loustal
La Reprise () Loustal after Alain Robbe-Grillet
Image sourced here.Jacques de Loustal, born April 10, 1956 in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, France is a French comics artist who uses a painterly style reminiscent of David Hockney. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_de_Loustal [Sept 2005]
Pool with Two Figures (1971) - David Hockney
Loustal artwork
See also Loustal Google gallery
See also: Loustal - Alain Robbe-Grillet - European comics
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