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World Munching

Edvard Munch. There are Worlds Within Us

Bergen has one of the world’s largest Edvard Munch collections in the world, largely collected by Rasmus Meyer from the artist himself, and donated to the city. A whole room in KODE 3 is normally devoted to his version of The Frieze of Life, Munch’s overarching but flexible depiction of the cycle of life and death. Two more rooms bring together earlier and later work, with a spill out room that sometimes contains prints. But for now, those rooms are filled with photographs — more to come — as the collection moves to an exhibition in KODE 2 alongside selections from the National Museum of Art and Design, the Munch Museum and the Gundersen Collection.

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Snared

Laura Cumming, The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Veláquez (2017)

11DCFAA8-9739-41CB-8C40-CB74C289B9F0I was browsing the freebie table at Worldcon when I found this and picked it up. I confess that I haven’t much knowledge of Diego Veláquez, a seventeenth century Spanish painter, beyond Las Meninas as inspiration for Picasso and Pope Innocent X as inspiration for Bacon. It seemed to be a book about a single painting — and then I noticed the author was Laura Cumming, art critic for The Observer and author of On Chapel Sands, a biography of her mother’s hidden past.
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Dicks of the Light

Terrance Dicks (10 May 1935–29 August 2019)

First times are both easy and impossible to remember.

There must have been a book based on The Clangers. I read the “Bleep and Booster” cartoons in the annual Blue Peter book, with no sense of what it was. And children’s books, for the under sevens, often shade between fantasy and sf.

But for all my disdain for Wookiebooks (which is probably spelled wrong), I’d place my bets that the first sf novel I read was Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, followed by Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks. And I’d like to think that it was in October 1977, when I moved up to Nottingham Road Junior School, because I was probably allowed in a different section of the library by then. I suspect I’d watched “The Face of Evil” as my first television encounter — although I have a ghost memory of Three and Jo Grant looking out over a balcony in “Planet of the Daleks”. But I took these two hardbacks home and devoured them. Continue reading →

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Dublin Up

There are lots of great things going on at Worldcon in Dublin and there’s

‘Francis Bacon’s Alien’

Format: Paper
H. R. Giger, designer of the alien in Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, has said in various places that he was inspired by a painting: ‘Bacon did a crucifixion in 1945, and there is a kind of beast in it that has a head that is only a mouth.’ The three-canvas painting is Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which probably dates from 1944 but was worked on for a number of years and depicts three grotesque figures on a luminous orange background. Normally the three figures would include St John, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene, but elsewhere the Irish-born Protestant Bacon identified them with the Eumenides or Furies, female figures of vengeance. The canvasses have caused debate among Bacon scholars, because they do not include the cross and therefore the potential for salvation. Does the painting represent despair and horror, or salvation through suffering? By looking at this painting and other crucifixions by Bacon, in relation to Alien, I raise the possibility of a backwards infection of reading Bacon’s work as science fiction, through his ongoing engagement with the grotesque, his ‘invisible rooms’ frames within his canvasses, and his use of surreal juxtapositions.

part of: Different visions of Ireland18 Aug 2019, Sunday 11:30 – 12:20, Odeon 6 (Academic) (Point Square Dublin)

1. Dr Andrew M. Butler – ‘“We are meat, we are potential carcasses”: Francis Bacon’s Alien’
2. Dr Richard Howard – ‘Comfort Plus Excitement: Bob Shaw and David Hardy’
3. Val Nolan – ‘Narration and Recurrence in Neil Jordan’s Shade’

Unknown and/or forgotten artists

Format: Panel
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 13:30 – 14:20, Odeon 2 (Point Square Dublin)

Some artists enjoy commercial success, while many others stay in the shadows. Why does this happen? Panellists discuss artists who have been forgotten or haven’t received the attention they deserve.

Phil Foglio (Studio Foglio, LLC), Pat Robinson , Sue Mason, Dr Andrew M Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University) (M)

Get us out of the Twilight Zone: the work of Jordan Peele

Format: Panel
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 13:30 – 14:20, Stratocaster BC (Point Square Dublin)

With two extraordinary films and a reimagined Twilight Zone under his belt, Jordan Peele has made a huge impact as a weird/horror visionary over the last few years. This panel will discuss Peele’s work: what it says, how it works, and why it matters.

Catriona Ward, Dr Andrew M Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University) , Chris M. Barkley (M), Dr Wanda Kurtçu (California State University, Hayward).

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Imagine there’s no Beatles, It isn’t hard to do.

Benjamin (Simon Amstell, 2018)

Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

 

I’d not knowingly come across Joel Fry before, but here he is, playing essentially the same role of kooky and tactless best friend in two romcoms.

 

Back in the late 1970s, Brian Henderson suggested that the romcom was no longer possible – two broad schools of the genre divide into two questions. Continue reading →

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The Dead Don’t Do Subtext

The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch, 2019)

Jim Jarmusch is evidently one of those low budget indie auteur who both builds an ensemble around him and persuades A-List stars in search of artistic credibility to work for him (presumably for scale). A couple of years ago he cast the divine Tilda Swinton in a misjudged vampire film, Only Lovers Left Alive and now he shifts to the zombie film to pastiche.

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Rosmer Home from Home

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmerholm (directed by Ian Rickson, Duke of York’s Theatre)

I thought I’d never seen any Henrik Ibsen — aside from The Master Builder and perhaps Ghosts on the telly — but I did teach A Doll’s House twenty years ago. Rosemerholm (1886) is quite a late play, but I’ll avoid saying much more until I’ve read the whole play — and I’ll discuss that in a less spoiler-free blogpost.

Rosmerholm
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