more vintage indolence

from Paris Magazine, November 1931

(Au carrefour étrange)

Matta 1970

Je-ographie


Dar a la vida una luz


Blotti sous l'escorpion

Three vast paintings by Matta, from the year of my birth.

L'apologie de la paresse

Pictures of old-time poppy enthusiasts from Histoire de l'Oeil

a home for dreamers

Ukrainian sky ship. More photos here.

Zu Abend mein Herz

Am Abend hört man den Schrei der Fledermäuse.
Zwei Rappen springen auf der Wiese.
Der rote Ahorn rauscht.
Dem Wanderer erscheint die kleine Schenke am Weg.
Herrlich schmecken junger Wein und Nüsse.
Herrlich: betrunken zu taumeln in dämmernden Wald.
Durch schwarzes Geäst tönen schmerzliche Glocken.
Auf das Gesicht tropft Tau.

--Georg Trakl, 1913

Vintage album art

Ted Coconis, Album cover for RCA Records, c. 1971

Kitsch but striking sleeve art for my favourite Shostakovich symphony, in a sort of Klimt meets Hammer Horror style. I'm not sure about the big skull, which appears to have been painted with toothpaste, but I like the interlocking nudes and crosses just below and to the right of it:

A quick Google search reveals that illustrator Ted Coconis is still around, though his recent paintings lack the period charm of works like this Jefferson Airplane sleeve, featuring a clever parody of Hugo van der Goes' Fall of Man:

Ted Coconis, Album cover for RCA Records (detail), date unknown

A film poster, Dorian Gray, yields this characteristic detail, which would have made an excellent, if trashy, cover for Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita:

Ted Coconis, Film poster for Dorian Gray (detail), c. 1973

Bulgakov brings us back round to Russia and Shostakovich's 14th Symphony, a harrowing, death-wracked song-cycle for soprano, bass, strings and percussion. Composed in 1969, it sets poems by Lorca, Apollinaire and Rilke. Much as I admire it, I can only bring myself to listen to it every two or three years, so tormented and tormenting is it. Perhaps I'm due another hearing.

The Isle of the Dead

1883

All day I have been listening obsessively to Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem "The Isle of the Dead", the composer's response to the famous painting by the idiosyncratic Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin. Rachmaninoff was obsessed with and terrified by death, and his music is mournful and doom-laden enough. Böcklin's intentions were perhaps somewhat different. He did not give the painting its title, and declared that he painted in order to make people dream: “Just as it is poetry's task to express feelings, painting must provoke them too. A picture must give the spectator as much food for thought as a poem and must make the same kind of impression as a piece of music. Who would ever have been able to anticipate the effect of music before having heard it? Painting should pervade the soul in the same way, and as long as it does not do this it is nothing more than a brainless handicraft. There is no end to the poetry of the beautiful.”

I have indeed dreamt long over these depictions of what seem, in my gloomier moments, ideal places of exile. If it is not, after all, a tomb-island, it would make a perfect retreat. I have left off the customary titles so as not to impede the dreaming.

1878


1886