16 February 2016

Plastic Dreams:
Synthetic Visions in Design


Plastic Dreams iMac

Plastic Dreams: Synthetic Visions in Design, by Charlotte and Peter Fiell, features 120 “landmark designs” manufactured from plastic since 1925. There are full-page colour photographs of each product, and concise essays on their design and significance. The book comes in an orange plastic slipcase designed by Edson Matsuo.

The 1930s was “the First Modern Plastic Age”, due in part to the Great Depression: “The rapid expansion of plastics usage that occurred during this period was, of course, inextricably linked to the constrained economic climate of the 1930s.” Highlights from this era include beautiful Art Deco appliances such as the DBH 1001 telephone, the Kodak Baby Brownie camera, and the Ekco AD-65 radio, all made from Bakelite.

Plastic’s second golden age was the 1960s, when “a vast range of synthetic polymers and moulding processes were available to designers.” Sixties plastic products include the single-moulded Panton chair (“one of the most important chairs of all time”) and the Valentine portable typewriter (“a quintessential Pop design that celebrated the Plastics Age of the 1960s”).

Like Plastic Dreams, Slyvia Katz’s earlier book Plastics also included an introduction tracing the history of plastic design, and a plates section illustrating products chronologically. Katz’s book was the first history of plastics in industrial design, though Plastic Dreams benefits from larger photographs, a bibliography, and coverage of more recent products such as the Apple iMac.

Plastic Dreams was published twenty-five years after Katz’s Plastics, and the two books reflect shifting attitudes towards plastic. Katz writes in her introduction: “This book is a celebration of plastics.” She argues that plastics “make modern life richer, more comfortable and convenient, and also more fun.” Her enthusiasm is unqualified, and sometimes excessive: “Plastics are truly magical because they are created by pure alchemy.”

Like Katz, the Fiells acknowledge the value of plastics: “they are simply one of the most important and useful materials known to man.” However, they also recognise the problems plastic creates: “our use of plastics is still too often marked by wastefulness”. They conclude that, “although ambivalence surrounds the use of plastics both in design and in our everyday lives, it would nonetheless be difficult to conceive of a world without them”.

On its back cover, Plastic Dreams is described as “the definitive guide to plastics in design.” It’s certainly the most authoritative and attractive survey of plastic as a design medium. The Fiells have co-written numerous design books, including Modern Furniture Classics, Industrial Design A–Z, Design of the 20th Century, and The Story of Design. Plastic Dreams is the first book from their independent publishing house, Fiell.

15 February 2016

“The draft charter is retrogressive...”


Democracy Monument

The Constitution Drafting Committee has announced the completion of proposed new constitution, which will be put to a referendum later this year. Meanwhile, the prospect of an election continues to recede, as the Bangkok Post noted in an editorial on 1st February: “The roadmap produced shortly after the May 22, 2014, coup promised elections would be held in 2015. A subsequent roadmap promised elections in mid-2016. That then became 2017...”

The proposed constitution is a replacement for the previous draft, which was controversial as article 260 authorised an unelected committee to seize power from the government in an emergency. That draft was rejected by the National Reform Council last September, and Meechai Ruchuphan was appointed to lead a new CDC. (Meechai is a distinctly pro-military politician: he led the tribunal that exonerated Suchinda Kraprayoon after ‘Black May’ in 1992, and he was President of the National Legislative Assembly following the 2006 coup.)

Democrat Party leader (and former PM) Abhisit Vejjajiva told the Bangkok Post: “The draft charter is retrogressive compared to the 2007 charter”. Abhisit was even more critical last year, when the CDC’s first proposed charter was being drafted: “This is a step backward for democracy. It will snatch democracy away from the people”.

One of the main points of contention is that, under the proposed new voting system, constituency and ‘party list’ MPs will appear on a single ballot paper. Under this system, the main political parties would have a reduced overall share of the votes, potentially making it harder to gain an outright majority in parliament. (Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck are the only leaders to win overall parliamentary majorities, and they were both deposed by coups aimed at ending their political influence.)

The draft constitution’s provision for an unelected Senate (article 102) is equally controversial. It specifies that senators will be selected from a series of committees, a reversal of the changes made in the 1997 constitution. (After the 2007 constitution, the Senate was 50% elected; an attempt to restore a 100% elected Senate was rejected by the Constitutional Court.) The unelected senators will also be given votes on the appointment of a new prime minister.

The proposal also allows political parties to nominate prime ministers who are not elected politicians, and confirms the Constitutional Court as the final arbiter in disputes over issues not covered in the charter (article 207). This replaces the vague article seven from the 2007 constitution, though the Constitutional Court’s political neutrality has been repeatedly questioned, after it disqualified Thaksin, Samak Sundaravej, and Somchai Wongsawat.

Needless to say, like all post-coup charters, the constitution also includes an unconditional amnesty for the coup leaders (article 270). This is carried over from the interim constitution, and is arguably the most contentious element of the entire document.

11 February 2016

Eames: The Architect & The Painter

Eames: The Architect & The Painter
Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey's feature-length documentary Eames: The Architect & The Painter explores the life and work of Charles (the architect) and Ray Eames (the painter). The Eames' collaborative designs "did more to change the public perception of Modern design than just about anyone else in the 20th century" (Charlotte and Peter Fiell, Industrial Design A-Z).

The documentary begins with the development of arguably the most influential Eames design, the plywood LCW chair (part of the Essential Eames exhibition at TCDC last year). This is the only item of furniture or product design that the film discusses in detail, though, as the focus shifts to the dynamics of the Eames' relationship and the working practices in their design office.

Numerous sequences from the Eames' short films are included, notably their most famous film, Powers Of Ten (1977). There are also clips from multi-screen installations such as the seven-screen Glimpses Of The USA (1959) and Think (1964), shown on twenty-two screens at the World's Fair in New York.

Interviewees include Pat Kirkham (author of Charles & Ray Eames: Designers Of The 20th Century, and co-editor of History Of Design), and John and Marilyn Neuhart (co-authors, with Ray Eames, of Eames Design, an objective catalogue raisonne described by Ray as "a book without adjectives"). Charles Eames' daughter (Lucia) and grandson (Eames Demetrios, author of An Eames Primer) also appear.

Eames Demetrios takes us on a tour of the Eames' house, and this archetypal Mid-Century Modern property reflects the different personalities of Charle and Ray Eames. The house has Modernist architecture (open-plan exterior, high ceilings, and glass walls) designed by Charles, and is filled with art and knick-knacks collected by Ray.

Though the Eames Office co-operated with the documentary, this is not a rose-tinted portrait of the designers. For example, art historian Judith Wechsler describes her affair with Charles Eames: "We had a very profound love for each other. He wanted very much for us to get married and have a child, and he wanted to close the Eames office".

On a lighter note, architect Kevin Roche describes dinner at the Eames' house: "what they had arranged for dessert was three bowls of flowers, that they put in front of you to admire, so it was a visual dessert. I was really fucked off with that, I can tell you! I hadn't eaten much, I was saving up for the dessert. So I'm looking at these stupid flowers, saying 'What the hell's wrong with these people?' I got in my car and I drove out to the nearest Dairy Queen!"

Eames: The Architect & The Painter was made for the PBS American Masters television series and first broadcast on 19th December 2011. It was also released theatrically.

10 February 2016

La Bruja & Don Cristobal

La Bruja & Don Cristobal
La Bruja & Don Cristobal
La Bruja & Don Cristobal
Alfonso Lazaro de la Torre and Raul Garcia Perez, two members of the Titeres desde Abajo puppet theatre company, were arrested in Madrid on Friday and charged with promoting terrorism. They had been performing their play La Bruja & Don Cristobal as part of a Madrid street festival, though some members of the audience complained to police that the play was offensive.

The play was certainly violent (featuring, amongst other things, a nun being raped and then stabbed with a crucifix), though the puppets and their actions were not portrayed with any sense of realism. Also, the play's provocative nature is evident from the poster promoting it, which includes images of the violent SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas and the anti-democratic GAC's book Contra La Democracia.

The puppeteers were arrested because the play also included a hand-held sign reading "GORA ALKA-ETA", an apparent reference not only to the Basque separatists ETA but also to the Islamic terrorists Al Quaeda. If convicted, they face up to four years in jail.

09 February 2016

The Art Of Osamu Tezuka

The Art Of Osamu Tezuka
Astro Boy
Sosaku No Himitsu
The Art Of Osamu Tezuka: God Of Manga, by Helen McCarthy, is the first English-language study of Tezuka's life and work. Tezuka is Japan's most celebrated and influential manga artist, as Katsuhiro Otomo (creator of Akira) explains in his preface: "It is no exaggeration to say that it is largely due to the genius of Tezuka... that Japanese animation and manga have developed into a form largely without comparison in the world."

The book's title is presumably modelled on The Art Of Walt Disney, by Christopher Finch; as the subtitle recognises, Tezuka is known in Japan as the 'God of Manga'. Giannalberto Bendazzi's Cartoons notes that "he was referred to as the 'God of comic-strips'." Maurice Horn's World Encyclopedia Of Comics calls him the "King of Japanese Comics". (Tezuka wrote the preface to Frederik L Schodt's Manga! Manga!, the first English-language book on manga.)

The Art Of Osamu Tezuka includes many rare illustrations from the Tezuka Productions archive (including, tantalisingly, an envelope containing a letter to Tezuka from Stanley Kubrick). A DVD of an NHK television documentary, Tezuka Osamu: Sosaku No Himitsu (1986), is also included. A dozen pages are reproduced from Tezuko's most famous manga, Tetsuwan Atom (known in English as Astro Boy), serialised in Shonen magazine and later adapted into an anime series for Fuji TV.

Tezuka's complete manga works have been reprinted in the 手塚治虫文庫全集 series, and the earliest Astro Boy stories can be found in volume 221 (鉄腕アトム 1). The Astro Boy Omnibus series features English versions of the Astro Boy manga, translated by Frederik L Schodt, who wrote an introduction for the first volume. Schodt has also translated The Osamu Tezuka Story, a biography of Tezuka in manga form written by Toshio Ban, which will be published in English later this year.

The Anime Encyclopedia (co-written by McCarthy) notes that Astro Boy is "erroneously described as the first TV anime" (for example, Maurice Horn's World Encyclopedia Of Cartoons calls it "Japan's first television cartoon serial"), and Anime: A History points out the series' limited production values: "Tezuka himself claimed to have reduced the cell count on Astro Boy down to the bare bones of 1,200 cells per episode". Despite this, Astro Boy remains the most successful manga and anime series ever created.

04 February 2016

22nd Open Air Film Festival

22nd open Air Film Festival
My Neighbour Totoro
Avatar
The Impossible
Godzilla
The 22nd open Air Film Festival takes place from 10th to 12th February at Silapakorn University. This year's theme is Green Film, with a selection of films about nature and the environment, and admission is free.

Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbour Totoro (which, like his later Ponyo, has an environmental theme) will be screened on 10th February. James Cameron's Avatar (the most commercially successful film ever made) is showing on 11th February in 2D. The Impossible (one of several films about the 2004 tsunami) and Ishiro Honda's classic Godzilla will be shown on 12th February.

01 February 2016

Sayonara, Setsuko

Japanese Film Festival 2016
Sayonara, Setsuko
Late Spring
Repast No Regrets For Our Youth
As a tribute to the veteran Japanese actress Setsuko Hara, who died last year, the Japanese Film Festival 2016 has organised a triple-bill of some of her most acclaimed performances. The films will be screened in 16mm at The Reading Room in Bangkok on 7th February.

The three films are: No Regrets For Our Youth (directed by Akira Kurosawa; previously shown at the Kurosawa 100 Years Retrospective), Late Spring (directed by Yasujiro Ozu), and Repast (directed by Mikio Naruse; previously shown at the Japanese Film Festival 2008). Admission is free.

In his obiturary of Setsuko for Sight & Sound magazine, Alexander Jacoby writes: "Shortly after the death in 1963 of her frequent collaborator, director Ozu Yasujiro, Hara Setsuko announced her retirement from cinema. She was only in her early 40s, and for half a century was to live as a recluse in Kamakura... in retirement she earned comparisons with Greta Garbo, declining interviews and refusing to discuss her work in the film industry."

Wim Wenders:
A Retrospective


Wim Wenders: A Retrospective

A season of films by German director Wim Wenders, organised by the Goethe-Institut, will take place this month, at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya. One of the highlights is Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit), screening on 27th February. There will also be an outdoor screening of Wings of Desire (Der Himmel Über Berlin) at Lumpini Park on 25th February. Wim Wenders: A Retrospective runs from 25th February to 5th March.

30 January 2016

Art Deco Complete

Art Deco Complete
Art Deco Complete, by Alastair Duncan, surveys the development of Art Deco furniture, sculpture, graphics, glass, ceramics, lighting, textiles, metalwork and lacquer, and jewellery. (Architecture and industrial design are not included.)

The book is divided into two parts: profiles of the major designers in each medium, and an encyclopedic guide to 500 other designers and manufacturers. It's justifiably subtitled The Definitive Guide To The Decorative Arts Of The 1920s & 1930s.

Art Deco takes its name from the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Duncan notes that the style evolved from pure Deco into Streamline Moderne - "Just as the Art Deco style had supplanted Art Nouveau in France, it in turn began to give way to Modernism in the late 1920s" - though his coverage of Deco is broad and inclusive.

Art Deco was popularised by Bevis Hillier's book Art Deco Of The 20s & 30s (1967), and Hillier later co-wrote Art Deco Style (1997; with Stephen Escritt). The Victoria & Albert Museum's superb exhibition catalogue Art Deco 1910-1939 (2003) is the most comprehensive Art Deco book.

Reviewing Art Deco Complete, Hillier called it "certainly the most luscious, lavish book ever to appear on the subject". However, he also highlighted its author's chequered past: "He was found guilty of conspiring with a grave-robber and... sentenced to 27 months in a Federal gaol." Hillier adds: "Some may feel that this ropey past makes anything Duncan has to say suspect; but I do not" with a hint of the famous phrase from House Of Cards: "You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment."

Art Deco Complete contains over 1,000 illustrations, and the UK edition has an elegant dust jacket based on a 1938 design by Georges Levitsky. Its publisher, Thames & Hudson, bills it as "the most comprehensive account of the decorative arts of the Art Deco period ever assembled".

26 January 2016

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle, is loosely based on Walter Isaacson's authorised Jobs biography. Isaacson praised the products Jobs released but criticised his methods, while the film criticises both. Apple disliked Isaacson's book (and this film) and co-operated with Brent Schlender's more sympathetic Becoming Steve Jobs.

Aaron Sorkin's script is smart and funny, with more laughs than some comedies. The structure - compressing so many events into the moments before three product launches - is artificial but dramatic. As Michael Fassbender (playing Jobs) says in the film, "It's like five minutes before every launch everyone goes to a bar, gets drunk and tells me what they really think."

24 January 2016

Atlas Of Human Anatomy & Surgery

Atlas Of Human Anatomy & Surgery
Atlas Of Human Anatomy & Surgery
JM Bourgery and NH Jacob's Trait Complet De L'Anatomie De L'Homme was published between 1831 and 1854, issued as a series of unbound fascicles. In Understanding The World, Sandra Rendgen noted that it "remains the most lavishly illustrated anatomical atlas ever produced." This classic anatomical treatise has been reprinted by Taschen in two volumes, as Atlas Of Human Anatomy & Surgery. (It was previously available in a slightly larger fomat.)

As the editors, Jean-Marie Le Minor and Henri Sick, explain in their introduction, the Atlas "represents one of the most remarkable works in the whole history of anatomy". What distinguished the Atlas from earlier anatomical works was the scale of its illustrations: it had 725 plates, ten times more than its predecessors. The Atlas was also significant for its use of colour: the plates were initially hand-stencilled, though the second edition was (like The Grammar Of Ornament by Owen Jones) an early example of chromolithography.

Leonardo and Michelangelo both dissected corpses and made detailed anatomical drawings, though the first and most significant anatomical publication was De Humani Corporis Fabrica, by Andreas Vesalius (published in 1543, the year of Copernican heliocentrism). The editors of the Atlas describe Vesalius's work as "indisputably the most outstanding book in the whole history of anatomy"; his illustrations were reprinted in 1934 and 1950.

The history of anatomical drawing was presented in the exhibition The Quick & The Dead: Artists & Anatomy, curated by Deanna Petherbridge in 1997. (I saw it at Warwick Arts Centre in 1998.) Today, the most (in)famous anatomist is probably Gunther von Hagens, who created the Bodyworlds exhibition of plastinated corpses later imitated by Our Body and The Body Show.

23 January 2016

Roboticlism From Unconscious Mind

Roboticism From Unconscious Mind
Love Machine II
Roboticism From Unconscious Mind
After Carnivalism and Gagasmicism, Thai art has a new 'ism': Roboticlism, a concept devised by Noshpash Chaturongkagul. Noshpash's exhibition Roboticlism From Unconscious Mind opened at Jamjuree Art Gallery in Bangkok on 15th January.

According to the exhibition catalogue, "Roboticlism is represented by robotic machines, mechanical armor, monsters and various creatures." Noshpash's oil paintings do indeed depict robots and monsters, though they are inspired by creatures from Thai mythology such as garudas and dragons. One of these creations, shown in Love Machine II (2014), is a monstrous insect with a vagina dentata.

In addition to the paintings, the Roboticlism concept also encompasses performance (Noshpash sits on a painted throne throughout the exhibition), comic art (a Garuda Lord comic is included in the exhibition catalogue), and graphics (a logo and the theory behind its design). The exhibition will close on 2nd February.

Notes On The History Of Origami

Notes On The History Of Origami
Senbazuru Origata
John Smith's Notes On The History Of Origami was first published by the British Origami Society in 1972, and revised editions appeared in 1973, 1975, 2005, and 2014. As the title suggests, it "is not intended to be a history of paper folding or Origami but brings together what is available with references and notes." Unlike other origami books, most of which are instruction manuals with brief historical introductions, Smith's booklet provides an illustrated guide to the development of origami.

Origami has been practiced and perfected in Japan for more than 400 years, and the first book on the subject (Senbazuru Origata) appeared in 1797. However, there is evidence that paper-folding originated in China and was exported to Japan, just as Chinese penjing influenced the more famous Japanese bonsai. Akira Yoshizawa, who died in 2005, was the most celebrated Japanese origami master, and Smith calls him "the dominating genius".

Robert Harbin popularised origami in the UK and America with his book Paper Magic (1956; illustrated by Rolf Harris, before he became famous as a TV presenter and convicted paedophile). Paper Magic also introduced Akira Yoshizawa's work to a Western audience, and Smith describes it as "one of the most important and influential books on paper folding ever to appear."

22 January 2016

Wheel Of A Dark Soul

Wheel Of A Dark Soul
Wheel Of A Dark Soul V
Nipon Jungkina's exhibition Wheel Of A Dark Soul opened at Jamjuree Art Gallery in Bangkok on Christmas Day last year, and will close tomorrow. The exhibition features paintings of monks with muscular torsos, wearing their saffron robes as loincloths. The monks' heads have been replaced by lotus buds, and they are surrounded by naked women.

One especially dramatic painting, Wheel Of A Dark Soul V, shows a monk and a woman embracing, with the woman's mouth resembling a bird's beak. The exhibition is a commentary on Buddhism and morality: the lotus buds symbolise the monks' inability to reach Nirvana as they succumb to sexual temptation.

Representation of monks is a sensitive subject in Thai art. Vasan Sitthiket's painting Buddha Returns To Bangkok (1992) depicted monks raping women, and his ตัวใครตัวมันนะโยม (2011) shows two monks fighting and having sex. Anupong Chantorn painted monks with beaks (Hope In The Dark, 2009), and his Moral Boundary (2010) depicts a monk with an erect phallus. Withit Sembutr's Doo Phra, a painting of monks crowding around an amulet-seller, was withdrawn from a 2007 exhibition.

21 January 2016

Thai Rath

Thai Rath
Thai Rath
Popular Thai actor Tridsadee Sahawong died on Monday, after contracting dengue fever and spending several months in a coma. At his funeral, Thai paparazzi were criticised for intrusively crowding around his coffin, and the funeral was front-page news for every national newspaper yesterday.

However, only one newspaper, Thai Rath, published a photograph showing Tridsadee's face as he lay in his open casket. (The picture appeared yesterday on page one, below the fold.) On its website, Thai Rath blurred the photograph to obscure the dead actor's face, though the image in the printed newspaper was not blurred.

Thai Rath is Thailand's most popular newspaper, and has a tabloid reporting style despite its broadsheet size. It has a reputation for regularly printing (pixelated) images of car-crash victims on its front page, and notoriously it printed an alleged photograph of actor David Carradine's body at the scene of his death.

15 January 2016

Jashn-E Ummeed

Indian comedian Kiku Sharda has been charged with insulting spiritual leader Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, and sentenced to two weeks in jail. Playing a character called Palak, he impersonated Ram Rahim on the TV variety show Jashn-E Ummeed, broadcast by the cable channel Zee TV on 27th December last year.

14 January 2016

20th Century Pewter

20th Century Pewter
20th Century Pewter: Art Nouveau To Modernism, by Paul Carter Robinson, is a history of modern pewter objects from Europe, America, and Japan. The book's glossy photographs (mostly of Art Nouveau works from the 1900s) are its main attraction, though it also profiles significant pewter manufacturers and designers. Whereas earlier studies focused on more functional pewter items, Robinson emphasises its use as a medium for decorative objects and ornaments.

Vanessa Brett's Phaidon Guide To Pewter (1981) is a survey of European and American pewter since the seventeenth century, ending with a chapter titled Art Nouveau To Contemporary. Robinson's book is essentially an expanded treatment of the material in that chapter. He discusses German and British pewter in considerable detail, and also covers pewter from France, Holland, Austria, Scandinavia, America, and (briefly) Japan. Gabriele Sterner's Pewter Through 500 Years (1979) has a useful annotated bibliography.

Killing For Culture

Killing For Culture
Killing For Culture, by David Kerekes and David Slater, was first published in 1994, and a second edition appeared the following year. The book "explores images of death and violence, specifically moving images, and the human obsession with looking (and not looking) at them" and after twenty years it has been updated in a third edition.

The book discusses the use of 'snuff' films as a plot device in horror films, including Peeping Tom, Slaughter (retitled Snuff), and - in the new edition - August Underground's Mordum and A Serbian Film. It also examines the history of mondo documentaries (from Mondo Cane to Executions) and the representation of real death in the media.

The new edition is over 600 pages long, more than twice the length of the second edition. The most significant addition is its coverage of the internet as a medium for extreme content. (Despite condemning the media for sensationalising horror films, the book quotes extensively from descriptions of violent material in anonymous chatrooms, which is arguably also sensationalist.)

The previous editions were about the myth of snuff, though today snuff films arguably do exist. The new edition, subtitled From Edison To ISIS: A New History Of Death On Film, covers terrorist propaganda videos (hostages beheaded by Al Quaeda and ISIS) and Luka Magnotta's murder video One Lunatic, One Ice Pick. (Fox News posted an ISIS video showing the execution of Muadh al-Kasasbeh on its website in 2015, the only mainstream news outlet to publish ISIS footage uncensored.)

There are other works dealing with similar topics, such as Sweet & Savage and the Channel 4 documentary Does Snuff Exist? (2006; directed by Evy Barry), though Killing For Culture is the first and most comprehensive study of its subject. (I had to replace my copy of the second edition, after reading it so many times that most of the pages fell out.)

Killing For Culture is a definitive examination of the most extreme films ever made. Kerekes and Slater also wrote See No Evil (an in-depth guide to 'video nasties'); Kerekes wrote Sex, Murder, Art (a monograph on Jorg Buttgereit) and edited the journal Headpress.

08 January 2016

Walls

Walls
Walls: Mural, Wood Panel, Stencil, Wallpaper is a survey of decorative wall coverings written by Florence de Dampierre. (The dust jacket adds a further subtitle: The Best Of Decorative Treatments.) After a brief introduction on tapestries, there are substantial chapters on murals, wood panelling, stencilling, and wallpaper.

The chapter on murals includes tempera, Renaissance frescoes, and decorative styles such as Baroque and Rococo. The panelling chapter discusses French boiserie, Italian intarsia (marquetry), and lacquer. The stencil chapter, with a guide to stylistic developments, is especially interesting because little has previously been written about the history of stencilling. In contrast, the history of wallpaper has been covered in much greater detail elsewhere.

Walls has colour illustrations throughout, and many full-page, full-bleed photographs, though it has no index or bibliography. The Papered Wall (edited by Lesley Hoskins; second edition, 2005) is the standard history of wallpaper. A History Of Tapestry (WG Thomson, 1906) was the first comprehensive survey of tapestries, and Tapestry (Barty Phillips, 1994) is a modern history of the subject.

06 January 2016

Magician

Magician
Magician: The Astonishing Life & Work Of Orson Welles, directed by Chuck Workman, is a documentary profile of Welles covering his work for theatre, radio, and cinema. It's a broad survey of his entire career, featuring clips from all of his completed films, divided chronologically into five chapters (1915-1941: The Boy Wonder, 1942-1949: The Outsider, 1950-1957: The Gypsy, 1958 to 1966: The Road Back, and 1966-1985: The Master).

Welles wrote and directed Citizen Kane, probably the greatest film ever made. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, The Lady From Shanghai, Touch Of Evil, F For Fake, several other features and shorts, and numerous incomplete films and scripts. (Extracts from the unfinished films are included in Orson Welles: The One-Man Band.)

Welles was also a film and stage actor, and one of the most innovative theatre and radio producers of the last century. He wrote newspaper columns and political speeches, directed television documentaries, and even edited and illustrated editions of Shakespeare's plays. But as Magician is only ninety minutes long, there's not enough time for it to cover any of these achievements in much depth.

Magician features interviews with Welles scholars including Joseph McBride (author of Orson Welles), Jonathan Rosenbaum (author of Discovering Orson Welles), Henry Jaglom (author of My Lunches With Orson), and Peter Bogdanovich (author of This Is Orson Welles, edited by Rosenbaum). It also includes contributions from Welles's daughters Beatrice and Christopher, and his long-term partner, Oja Kodar.

Most of Welles's biographical details are provided by Welles himself in clips from his TV interviews, especially the two-part Arena profile The Orson Welles Story (BBC2, 1982). Welles was an excellent raconteur, but his stories were often heavily embellished, so it's a shame that Magician relies on them unquestioningly. Only once is a Welles story challenged - his account of how he asked for a fee to adapt a random book that he picked up - though only a technicality is queried (his $47,000 or $55,000 fee), when it might be more appropriate to question the entire anecdote. (The book, which became The Lady From Shanghai, was actually optioned by William Castle, who sent it to Welles.)

Hollywood In Eirinn

Hollywood In Eirinn
In an episode of Hollywood In Eirinn, broadcast by the Irish TV station TG4 on 1st January, Denis Conway interviewed people in Waterford, Ireland, who were involved in the production of Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon. The programme was produced and directed by Darina Clancy.

The documentary includes plenty of previously unseen photographs of Kubrick on location during the making of Barry Lyndon. Most of the programme's interviewees played minor roles in the production of Barry Lyndon, though musician Paddy Maloney of The Chieftains tells an interesting anecdote about visiting Kubrick's house and selling him the rights to twenty-five minutes of music.

This is the second Irish documentary about the making of Barry Lyndon: the radio documentary Castles, Candles, & Kubrick was broadcast in 2013. Chapters in Stanley Kubrick: New Perspectives, the Kubrick exhibition catalogue, and The Stanley Kubrick Archives also discuss the making of the film.

New Portraits

New Portraits
Photographer Donald Graham has filed a lawsuit against artist Richard Prince at the Southern District Court of New York, alleging copyright infringement. Prince appropriated one of Graham's photographs, Rastafarian Smoking A Joint, as part of his New Portraits series last year.

New Portraits consisted of enlargements of Instagram screenshots featuring photographs posted by Instagram users with additional comments by Prince. Prince did not contact the Instagram users prior to his exhibition, and did not seek permission to reproduce their images.

Graham's photograph, slightly cropped to conform to Instagram's square frame, was posted on Instagram by Jay Kirton. Kirton's post was enlarged by Prince and exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery in New York from 12th June to 15th August 2015.

This is not the first lawsuit resulting from Prince's technique of appropriating existing photographs. In 2009, he was sued by another photographer, Patrick Cariou, who claimed that Prince's Canal Zone exhibition had infringed his copyright by incorporating images from his book Yes Rasta. That case was eventually settled out of court in 2014. Prince's Spiritual America, his appropriation of a photograph by Gary Gross, caused controversy when it was censored from the Pop Life exhibition and catalogue in 2009.

03 January 2016

Seduction Month

Lolita
Lolita
Bangkok's Jam Cafe is hosting a Seduction Month film season this month, which begins on Wednesday with Stanley Kubrick's Lolita. Jam's previous seasons have included Dreams Month, Forking Paths Month, Resizing Month, Banned Month, Doppelganger Month, American Independent Month, Anime Month, 'So Bad It's Good' Month, Philip Seymour Hoffman Month, and Noir Month.

31 December 2015

Hua Hin Countdown

Hua Hun Countdown
Hua Hin, a seaside town south of Bangkok, is holding a new year's eve countdown tonight. However, one of the posters advertising the event used a mirrorball to replace the 'O', thus inviting people to a "C UNTDOWN".

A missing 'o' has caused unintended amusement on various occasions. Some previous examples from Bangkok: "60 C UNTRIES" (Royal Porcelain billboard, with a globe replacing the 'O'), "A C UNTRY WIFE" (Bangkok Community Theatre poster, with a lemon replacing the 'O'), "C unter Service" (retail sticker, with a sun replacing the 'o'), and Bangkok University's "School of Acc unting" (with a ship replacing the 'o').

30 December 2015

รุ่นพี่

รุ่นพี่
After taking a five-year break from commercial filmmaking following studio interference during the making of The Red Eagle, Wisit Sasanatieng has now written and directed รุ่นพี่, a horror/romance film aimed at a mainstream teenage audience. รุ่นพี่ is Wisit's third ghost film, as he previously directed The Unseeable and wrote Nang Nak.

The central character, Mon, studies at a Catholic school in present-day Bangkok, though she can sense the ghost of a senior student who studied there before it became a convent school. He tells her that the building's original owner was killed fifty years ago in mysterious circumstances, and they investigate the murder case together.

With its flashbacks to half a century ago, รุ่นพี่ continues Wisit's fascination with period detail, as seen previously in Tears Of The Black Tiger and The Unseeable. It features malevolent ghosts and some horrific moments, including an unsettling sub-plot involving Mon's schoolfriend, though it combines this (quite incongruously) with a budding romance between Mon and the senior ghost.

Wisit has also directed Citizen Dog, the music video เราเป็นคนไทย, the art film Norasinghavatar, and a segment of the anthology film Sawasdee Bangkok. He also wrote the outline for Slice (directed by Kongkiat Khomsiri), and he designed the posters for the Bangkok International Film Festival in 2008 and 2009.

29 December 2015

The Thames & Hudson
Dictionary Of Photography

The Thames & Hudson Dictionary Of Photography
The Thames & Hudson Dictionary Of Photography contains more than 1,000 entries, two-thirds of which are capsule biographies of significant photographers. As editor Nathalie Herschdorfer notes in her preface, the ubiquity of digital information means that "it may seem almost perverse to publish a dictionary on paper." Her purpose, she explains, was "to publish a book that reduces a seething mass of information to a structured and orderly work of reference." The resulting Dictionary is not only authoritative but also elegantly designed and printed.

Some of the world's most famous photographs are included: Richard Avedon's portrait of Dovima with two elephants, Eddie Adams's snapshot of a Viet Cong prisoner's execution, Robert Capa's picture showing the death of a Spanish Civil War fighter, Nicephore Niepce's view from a Le Gras window, Robert Doisneau's The Kiss, and Henry Peach Robinson's Fading Away. There are also images from some of the most influential photography monographs, including The Pencil Of Nature (William Henry Fox Talbot), The Decisive Moment (Henri Cartier-Bresson), and Die Welt Ist Schon (Albert Renger-Patzsch).

The Dictionary's only serious rival is The Focal Encyclopedia Of Photography. Both works cover the art and technology of photography, though the Dictionary's emphasis is primarily on art while the Encyclopedia focuses more on technology. One of the advantages of the Encyclopedia is its extended bibliographic essay, though it contains very few photographic illustrations. The Dictionary includes 300 photographs, though it has no bibliography.

Other (lesser) photography reference books include The Photography Book, Photography Visionaries, 100 Ideas That Changed Photography, Photographers A-Z, and The Visual Dictionary Of Photography. The Thames & Hudson Dictionary Of Photography is one of a series of arts dictionaries published by Thames & Hudson, including dictionaries of Art Terms, Graphic Design & Designers, and Fashion & Fashion Designers.

Beaumont Newhall wrote the first history of photography as an art form, The History Of Photography, which was originally published as a MoMA exhibition catalogue. Helmut Gernsheim's The History Of Photography, dedicated to Newhall, discusses the early development of photography. Naomi Rosenblum's A World History Of Photography became the standard modern history of the subject. Mary Warner Marien's Photography: A Cultural History is the most recent, and most comprehensive, survey of photographic history.

Hitchcock/Truffaut

Hitchcock/Truffaut
François Truffaut's book Hitchcock is one of the best books ever written about film. It was the first time that such an extensive interview with a director had been published, and it helped to popularise the 'auteur theory'. (Hitchcock was released a year before Andrew Sarris wrote The American Cinema.) It inspired many other in-depth interview books, notably those by Peter Bogdanovich (This Is Orson Welles and Who The Devil Made It) and Richard Schickel (The Men Who Made The Movies, Woody Allen: A Life In Film, and Conversations With Scorsese).

In articles for Cahiers Du Cinema, Truffaut and other critics maintained that directors, rather than producers or script-writers, were the true authors of the films they made. His most famous essay, Une Certaine Tendance Du Cinema Francais (1954), was a "deliberately pessimistic examination I have undertaken of a certain tendency of the French cinema". Truffaut also directed one of the key films of the French New Wave, The 400 Blows.

Truffaut interviewed Hitchcock in 1962, though their book was not released until 1966. It was first published in French, as Le Cinema Selon Hitchcock, and the first English edition appeared the following year. The interview tapes were broadcast by France Culture in 1999, in twenty-five episodes, and they reveal significant discrepancies between Hitchcock's recorded answers and the printed transcript. (Janet Bergstrom discussed "the lack of correspondence between the interview as spoken and the interview as published" in her essay Lost In Translation?, published in 2011.)

Robert Fischer made a short documentary for German television, Monsieur Truffaut Trifft Mr Hitchcock (1999), about the background to Truffaut's book. A feature-length documentary by Kent Jones, Hitchcock/Truffaut, was released this year and features directors such as Martin Scorsese and David Fincher discussing their love of Truffaut's book and Hitchcock's films. Peter Bogdanovich also appears, and his This Is Orson Welles is the nearest equivalent to Truffaut's book.

Hitchcock/Truffaut features detailed discussions of Vertigo and Psycho, though it presumes some prior knowledge of Hitchcock's work: major aspects of his modus operandi, such as his definition of the MacGuffin, and his distinction between suspense and surprise, are excluded. His famous remark that "actors are cattle" is included, though not explained.

The documentary exists in two versions: English and French. The talking-head interviews are the same in both, though shots of pages from Truffaut's book feature the English and French editions respectively. (I've seen the French version, as this is currently the only one available on DVD.)

28 December 2015

The Hateful Eight

The Hateful Eight
The Hateful Eight
The Hateful Eight is Quentin Tarantino's eighth film. I know that not only because I've seen the previous seven (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained) but because the opening titles announce it as "the 8th film by Quentin Tarantino".

The 'hateful eight' (clearly the antithesis of The Magnificent Seven) are all heading, for various reasons, to Red Rock, Wyoming, though a blizzard forces them to take shelter at Minnie's Haberdashery. The only woman among them, Daisy Domergue, has a bounty on her head, and almost everyone has secrets and deceptions that are eventually revealed. Some of the backstories remain ambiguous and unresolved, with the audience left to judge what is true or false.

The film is almost three hours long, and divided into six chapters, though the plot doesn't really begin until chapter four. Even after this, the tension doesn't reach the level of the farmhouse and basement tavern sequences in Inglourious Basterds. The first draft of the script (which has a different ending) was leaked online last year, and Tarantino organised a live table-read of that draft in Los Angeles shortly afterwards.

The cast includes Samuel L Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained), Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs), Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), Kurt Russell (Death Proof), and Zoe Bell (also Death Proof). Jackson plays an African American bounty-hunter, like the title character in Django Unchained. Tarantino delivers a brief voice-over at the start of chapter four. Jackson and Walton Goggins give outstanding performances; in fact, the hateful eight are all so fascinating that the innocent characters in the flashback sequence seem one-dimensional in comparison.

This is essentially a chamber piece, with the action almost completely confined to a single location - the interior of Minnie's Haberdashery - just as Reservoir Dogs took place largely in a warehouse. (It's also reminiscent of two Humphrey Bogart films: The Petrified Forest and Key Largo.) The flashback reveals a shift in point-of-view, as in Pulp Fiction's diner-robbery scenes and Jackie Brown's shopping-mall sequence.

Like all Tarantino films, The Hateful Eight has its share of violence, with an exploding head being the most graphic example; the violent climax is especially similar to Django Unchained. Also, as in Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Django Unchained, the n-word is used throughout.

The Hateful Eight was filmed with 65mm cameras, and is projected in Ultra Panavision, with an extremely wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio, only a fraction less than Cinerama's 2.77:1. (Ultra Panavision was the widest of the widescreen processes developed in the 1950s as anamorphic alternatives to Cinerama; it was used most notably for Ben-Hur in 1959.) As in early CinemaScope films such as The Robe, the wide frame emphasises the blocking of the actors, which looks simultaneously theatrical and cinematic.

The film has been released in a standard version (which is the one I've seen) and a 70mm roadshow version, which includes an overture, intermission, and several minutes of additional footage: the exact opposite of the grindhouse experience Tarantino recreated with Death Proof. Like Christopher Nolan with Interstellar, he is using The Hateful Eight to highlight the superiority of 70mm distribution.

16 December 2015

The 2001 File

The 2001 File
The 2001 File: Harry Lange & The Design Of The Landmark Science Fiction Film features material from the archives of Harry Lange, who was one of the production designers of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book is by Christopher Frayling, who has also written two previous books about another Kubrick production designer, Ken Adam: Ken Adam Designs The Movies and Ken Adam & The Art Of Production Design.

The book begins with a lengthy account of 2001's pre-production, quoting from Kubrick's correspondence and script drafts. Kubrick initially approached Adam to work as production designer on 2001, though Adam wavered and Kubrick replied: "I can appreciate how ambivalent your feelings may be towards my mystery film... I would suggest, therefore, that we drop all further discussions about it and I will seek divine guidance elsewhere." Kubrick then contacted matte artist Chesley Bonestell, explaining that he was working on "a science-fiction film, which might prove to be the definitive attempt."

Lange was ultimately hired as production designer, and the book includes photographs of memos from Kubrick to him. The Lange archive is The 2001 File's main focus, and 250 pages are devoted to reproductions of his designs: blueprints for various spaceships, sketches of spacesuits, and drawings of equipment. It's therefore a companion to Adam K Johnson's 2001: The Lost Science, which includes similar designs by 2001's scientific advisor, Fred Ordway.

This is the latest of many books devoted to 2001. Others include The Making Of Kubrick's 2001 (by Jerome Agel), The Making Of 2001: A Space Odyssey (by Stephanie Schwam), 2001 Memories (by Gary Lockwood), Moonwatcher's Memoir (by Dan Richter), Are We Alone? (by Anthony Frewin), 2001: A Space Odyssey (by Peter Kramer), 2001: Filming The Future (by Piers Bizony), and The Making Of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (also by Bizony).

Frayling is also the author of Once Upon A Time In Italy, Something To Do With Death, and Spaghetti Westerns. He contributed to 1,000 Films To Change Your Life and Gothic; he has recorded commentaries for the DVDs of James Whale's Frankenstein, Sergio Leone's The Colossus Of Rhodes, and Leone's 'man with no name' trilogy.

15 December 2015

International New York Times

International New York Times
The International New York Times has been censored by its Thai printer for the fourth time this year. An article on page four of today's newspaper was replaced by a blank space and a brief explanation: "The article in this space was removed by our printer in Thailand. The International New York Times and its editorial staff had no role in its removal."

The article, headlined "Thai man may go to prison for insulting king's dog", is a report by Thomas Fuller about Thanakorn Siripaiboon, who was arrested last week and charged with lèse-majesté. As the headline suggests, the charges against Thanakorn reflect a wider interpretation of the lèse-majesté law, though this aspect of the case has not been mentioned by mainstream Thai media.

Two previous International New York Times articles were also censored by the newspaper's Thai printer this month, and on 22nd September the company refused to print the newspaper altogether. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the newspaper will cease its print distribution in Thailand on 31st December.