“Palm Trees (Love Guitar)” is World Music Classic #381

Steve Hillage’s “Palm Trees (Love Guitar) “[1] from his Green album is World Music Classic #381.

Icon of Erotic Art #54

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1878) is a watercolor painting by Belgian artist Félicien Rops. Freud commented on this work in his essay “Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva”:

“The engraver has chosen the model case of withdrawal into the life of saints and penitents. An ascetic monk takes refuge – probably to escape worldly temptations – near the image of the crucified Saviour. This cross fades like a shadow and in its place the radiant image of a naked woman in full bloom, takes its place, also in the shape of a crucifixion. Other painters, whose psychological insight was not as penetrating, positioned their analogous representations of temptation, with sin insolent and triumphant, somewhere alongside the Saviour on the Cross. Only Rops made it take the place of Our Lord Himself on the Cross; he seemed to know that the repressed thought returns at the very moment of its repression…” —Translation James Strachey

Some snippets in original German:

“Eine bekannte Radierung von Felicien Rops illustriert diese wenig beachtete und der Würdigung so sehr bedürftige Tatsache eindrucksvoller”

“Ein asketischer Mönch hat sich – gewiss vor den Versuchungen der Welt – zum Bild des gekreuzigten Erlösers geflüchtet. Da sinkt dieses Kreuz schattenhaft nieder und strahlend erhebt sich an seiner Stelle, zu seinem Ersatze, das Bild eines üppigen nackten Weibes in der gleichen Situation der Kreuzigung.”

Some of the stories of the demons and temptations that Anthony is reported to have faced are perpetuated now mostly in paintings, where they give an opportunity and pretext for artists to depict their more lurid or bizarre fantasies. Emphasis on these stories, however, did not really begin until the Middle Ages, when the psychology of the individual became a greater interest.

Many visual artists have depicted these incidents from the life of Saint Anthony; in prose, the tale was retold and embellished by Gustave Flaubert.

The subject of Saint Anthony was first presented in the 10th century at Italian fresco paintings. In the European Middle Ages one can watch an accumulation of the theme in book illumination and later in German woodcuts.

About 1500 originated the famous paintings of Martin Schöngauer (ca. 1490), Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1505) and Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1510).

In modern and contemporary art (Félicien Rops and Salvador Dalí) the Temptations of Saint Anthony are stable elements in European art.

I would love your company

Hi WordPress crowd and longtime friends.

I’m probably spending too much time at Tumblr and I need questions answers with things such as image IDs.

Please come and see my lifestream there, I would love your company.

Latest post from Tumblr:

RIP Phyllis Gotlieb, need image cover-ID

image via members.cox.net

RIP Phyllis Gotlieb, 83, Canadian science fiction author, best-known for her novel Sunburst, a post-acopalyptic novel. A strong element in contemporary Canadian culture is rich, diverse, thoughtful and witty science fiction. Its best-known exponents are William Gibson (Neuromancer), David Cronenberg (The Fly) and Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale).

What does it mean to be a revolutionary today? by Slavoj Zizek’s @ Marxism 2009

Via Belgian blogger Martin Pulaski comes What does it mean to be a revolutionary today?, Slavoj Zizek’s response[1] to Alex Callinicos at Marxism 2009.

At exactly 21:55 comes a hilarious joke on the self-inflatibility of futile resistance.

In the good old days — now comes the dirty conclusion, I’ve warned you, it’s really dirty — in the good old days of really existing socialism a joke was popular among dissidents. A joke used to illustrate the futility of their progresses. In 15th century Russia, occupied by Mongols, that’s the joke, a farmer and his wife walked along a dusty country road, a mongol warrior on a horse stops at their side and tells the farmer that he will now rape his wife. He then adds, but since their is a lot of dust on the ground, you should hold my testicles, while I am raping your wife so that they do not get dusty — dirty. After the Mongol finishes his job and rides away, the farmer starts to laugh and jump with joy. The surprised wife asks him: “How can you be jumping with joy when I just brutally raped?” The farmer answers: “But I got him! His balls were full of dust.”

This sad joke tells of the predicament of dissidents. They thought they were dealing serious blows to the party nomenclatura. But all they were doing was getting a little bit of dust on the nomenclatura’s testicles.

What is so brilliant in this piece of “toilet philosophy“[2] (I am more inclined while writing these words of nobrow philosophy, of which Zizek and Sloterdijk are the greatest contemporary examples in this category) is that Zizek returns to this joke for closing his arguments. In the same vein in the same speech he has the embodied metaphor of “cutting of the balls of capitalism” and how to proceed for capitalism’s castration. Brilliant.

Other outstanding episodes include Victor Kravchenko I Chose Freedom/I Chose Justice case.

Lee Hazlewood @80

“Some Velvet Morning“.

click to play

Lee Hazlewood @80

Lee Hazlewood (9 July 1929 – 4 August 2007) was an American musician best-known for “These Boots Are Made for Walkin“[1] and “Some Velvet Morning“.

“Some Velvet Morning” is WMC #347

“These Boots” is WMC #348

Introducing Anton Solomoukha and Icon of Erotic Art #53

Via Ponyxpress comes Anton Solomoukha

via vonneumannmachine.files.wordpress.com

Anton Solomoukha (born 1945, Kiev) is an Ukrainian painter and photographer, currently living in Paris, France. He graduated from the Fine Arts School of Kiev and left the USSR in 1978. His works are mostly neoclassicist; Sigmund Freud, eroticism and psychoanalysis are recurring themes in his works.

RIP Mollie Sugden (1922 – 2009)

RIP Mollie Sugden, 86, British actress (Are You Being Served?).

Mrs. Slocombe at the hairdresser’s

Mary Isobel Sugden (21 July 1922 – 1 July 2009) was an British comedy actress, known as Mollie Sugden, who is best known for playing Mrs. Slocombe in the popular and long running British sitcom Are You Being Served? from 1972 to 1985.

Are You Being Served? rarely left the store, and to parody the stereotype of the British class system, characters rarely addressed each other by their given names, even after work.

Mrs. Slocombe was the Head of the Ladies Department in a department store. She frequently died her hair unusual colours such as lime green or orange. Mrs. Slocombe’s husband left her and she lived with her cat, Tiddles, which she referred to as “my pussy;” this was the source of many a double entendre, most of which Mrs. Slocombe herself completely misses. It is often suggested that when she was younger she had quite a wild life and possibly even worked in a bar.

At various times, Mrs. Slocombe has (often while drunk) tried to flirt unsuccessfully with various members of the male staff.

The Cut-Ups is World Cinema Classic #108

The Cut-Ups is World Cinema Classic #108

The Cut-Ups

Yes, hello. Yes? Hello! Yes, hello.

Yes? Hello! Yes, hello. Yes? Hello!

- Look at that picture – Yes, hello.

Yes? Hello! Yes, hello. Yes? Hello!

Yes, hello. Yes? Hello! Yes, hello.

Yes? Hello! Yes, hello.- does it seem

to be persisting? – Yes? Hello!

Yes, hello. Yes? Hello! – Good!

– Yes, hello. Yes? Hello! – Thank

you – Yes, hello. Yes? Hello! Yes,

hello. Yes? Hello! Yes, hello. Yes?

Hello! Yes, hello. Yes? Hello! Yes,

hello. Yes? Hello! Yes, hello. Yes?

Hello! – Look at that picture – Yes,

hello. Yes? Hello! Yes, hello. Yes?

Hello! – Does it seem to be persisting?

– Yes, hello. Yes? Hello! Yes, hello.

Yes? Hello!Yes, hello. Yes? Hello! Yes,

hello. Yes? Hello! – Good! – Yes, hello.

Yes? Hello! Yes, hello. Yes? Hello!

– Thank you!

The Cut-Ups[1] is an experimental film by British filmmaker Antony Balch and American writer William Burroughs, which opened in London in 1967. It was the second time Balch and Burroughs had collaborated after their earlier Towers Open Fire. The Cut-Ups was part of an abandoned project called Guerrilla Conditions meant as a documentary on Burroughs and filmed throughout 1961-1965.

The film contains 19 minutes of someone saying “Yes, Hello?”, “Look at that picture,” “Does it seem to be persisting?,” and “Good. Thank you,” accompanied by a repetition five or six basic film clips shot in New York City and featuring Brion Gysin.

Inspired by Burroughs’ and Gysin’s technique of cutting up text and rearranging it in random order, Balch had an editor cut his footage for the documentary into little pieces and impose no control over its reassembly. The film opened at Oxford Street’s Cinephone cinema and had a disturbing reaction. Many audience members claimed the film made them ill, others demanded their money back, while some just stumbled out of the cinema ranting “its disgusting”.

Included in The Cut-Ups are shots of Burroughs acting out scenes from his book Naked Lunch. The idea of bringing Naked Lunch to the big-screen was Balch’s dream project. First developed in 1964, a script was completed in the early 1970s which would have adapted the book as a musical. Personal differences between Balch and the film’s would-be leading man Mick Jagger caused the project’s collapse.

For an indepth description of the films of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Antony Balch, see brightlightsfilm [1] by Rob Bridgett.

“Lesson #1 for Electric Guitar” is WMC #342

“Lesson #1 for Electric Guitar” is WMC #342

Lesson #1 for Electric Guitar[1] was the first album released by Glenn Branca, originally in 1980 on 99 Records as a mini-album. It was re-released in a remastered form in 2004 by Acute Records and is variously classified as no wave or noise rock. It combines punk aesthetics with those classical music.

Glenn Branca[2] is an avant-garde composer and guitarist of the New York “downtown music” scene known for his use of volume, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series.

99 Records was an independent record label that existed from 1980-1984. 99 (pronounced Nine Nine) Records was run out of a record store with the same name, located at 99 MacDougal Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and owned by Ed Bahlman. Artists included ESG, Liquid Liquid, Bush Tetras, Glenn Branca, Y Pants, and others.

Downtown music is a name given to the New York music scene from the 1960s to the 1980s. A scene that suppposedly began in 1960, when Yoko Ono — one of the Fluxus artists, at that time still seven years away from meeting John Lennon — opened her SoHo loft to be used as a performance space for a series curated by La Monte Young and Richard Maxfield.

Bernard Purdie @70

“Funky Donkey“

From Lialeh.

Bernard Purdie turns 70 today. He is best-known in rare groove circles for his “Funky Donkey[1],” collected on Last Night a DJ Saved my Life (1999), played on Gabor Szabo’s “Jazz Raga” and did the soundtrack for the blaxploitation flick Lialeh[2].