The Black Isle

From Charles D’Orbigny’s Dictionnaire Universel d’Histoire Naturelle published in 1849 by Renard & Martinet, Paris:

I’m gonna collect ‘em all!

Saw a delightful show at the Hammer museum yesterday: THE DARKER SIDE OF LIGHT 1850-1900, with sub-sections entitled “Creatures,” “Obsession,” “Violence and Death.”

The Morphine Addicts
Albert Besnard, 1887

The Vampire II
Edvard Munch, 1895

The exhibition website says it best:
… draws the visitor into the intimate alcoves of Paris, London, and Berlin — a private world characterized by contemplative and melancholy subjects. The Darker Side of Light presents work one imagines being unveiled in the confines of the smoky interiors of a collector’s home or an artist’s studio. This was art for those who kept their prints and drawings under wraps, compiled in albums and portfolios; who stored bronze medals in cabinets, set a statuette on a table in a corner, or mounted it above the shelves in the stillness of the library. Such works of art were not an evident part of one’s day-to-day environment, like a picture on the parlor wall. Rather, they were subject to more purposeful study on chosen occasions, much like taking a book down from the shelf for quiet enjoyment.

Also delightful works by Käthe Kollwitz, Felix Bracquemond (whose hanging mole picture I posted here several weeks ago) and Max Klinger, including his best-known series of ten etchings called Paraphrases about the Finding of a Glove (1881), based on images that came to him in dreams after finding a glove at an ice-skating rink. View the sequence HERE.

Then there’s this stunner by Eugene Grasset (1841-1917) called The Acid Thrower (La Vitrioleuse) from 1894 with a green-skinned wench poised to hurl a saucer of acid at you. Beware!

“Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death”: Crime scene dioramas built by heiress Frances Glessner Lee, combining her interest in dolls, dollhouses and forensic medicine. New York Times slideshow HERE.

Read this on the plane ride home.

p. 53:

There were abysses within abysses and trees rose like towers from the deep underground levels. They saw gaudy flowers open, large and small, some with paws, others with rounded kidneys of apple flesh. In the streams there were siren-like molluscs and, at the bottom, always swimming against the current, legions of pink salmon the size of lambs. The deep green of the auraucaria trees thickened to a velvety black or parted to reveal floating landscapes that always seemed upside down. Around the lakes, forests of delicate myrtle, with trunks like tubes of yellow rubber, smooth to the touch and cold as ice. Moss plumped up to form wilderness sofas; the airy lacework of fern fronds quivered nervously.

WOW!

Postcard from Cannes, Part 2: every word/phrase of the following comes from the Tuesday, May 19, 2009 issue of Variety (Cannes Daily edition), I KID YOU NOT:

II.

CHAOS REIGNS

In shimmering monochrome
with hardcore insert shots of pubescent bodily fluids
The Danish bad boy,
who’s kind of bored with rural, middle-aged gaydom,
demonstrates his own breach birth using
kitchen tongs,
a moist watermelon and
- ripped from the headlines -
an egg.

This is a heavy meal to digest outside of fest arena
with potential offshore as a niche item
that could reach fractionally beyond
the pain-is-pleasure demographic.

Yet Middle East auds, like its protags, are
subject to things like nitrate burning,
and vinegar syndrome.
They cut
a big fat art-film fart
at this arrogant endurance test, especially the oh-so-real dialogue.
Distribution outside of gay-fest ghetto is both unlikely and undeserved.

An unexpectedly jazzy fox, rising out of the ferns,
refuses to endorse this death sentence:
“Many incidental pleasures!”
The Tzar’s Dogs reply: “Too late!”

Postcard from Cannes: A “poem” I just came up with, inspired by charming “trades” lingo. Except for the line “extensive genital mutilation,” every word/phrase in this thing was found in the Sunday, May 17, 2009 issue of Variety (Cannes edition).
PS. Damn this wordpress-format thing, it doesn’t let me do my fancy-schmancy line indents, so here it is without ‘em:

THE TRADES

Gallic pic, while
not exactly
an exploding bathroom stall of a movie,
is a standout sales title
that will likely delight
the sibling auteurs’ marginal fanbase
without expanding it.

As popcorn entertainment, it fails to deliver:
Brit thesps and minimal dialogue above par
Tech package superb
Freshmen helmers and all-femme crew
have created a semi-glossy Egyptian meller, clocking in at 205 mins.
But the Cassavetes-esque camerawork with lingering
shots
of extensive genital mutilation
means
it looks like a mild B.O. contender
with no arthouse
prospects.

Flemish ancillary, however, should respond.

+

=

See ya later!

As tacky as this must sound, I will be Twittering from the Cannes film festival from next week. Brief little bits about movies that deserve more than brief little quips but, alas, the things we do for our friends…

Also, another quick confession to make. Isoldmydebutnovelyesterdayto GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING (the behemoth formerly known as Warner Books, now part of the Hachette Book Group). There, said it.

I have something to confess and it’s about time I came clean about this. For the past 10 years, I have been signing off in museum guestbooks around the world as “ZADIE SMITH.” Under comments, I invariably wrote, in surly hand: “NOT MULTICULTURAL ENOUGH.”

I did this at the Modernism show at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London four years ago, I did it again at the Freud Museum in March, and I would have done it at the Manzanar Japanese WWII internment camp as well if better judgment had not taken hold of me.

A few days ago, I made my last mark as the fictional Ms. Smith. I think. See HERE and scroll down to the comments. (In case you were wondering, yes, that’s me also as “Ms. Smith’s” fictional personal secretary, Mavis.)

I hang up my hat in semi-shame. It was fun while it lasted. I will and must repent.

Félix BRACQUEMOND
The Moles
1854, printed 1 July 1866

line and stipple etching with plate tone on laid paper
Printed by Auguste Delâtre
National Gallery of Canada (no. 23702.231)