Sticker City

Sticker City: Paper Graffiti Art, by Claudia Walde, is the first book to examine the use of the sticker as an artistic medium. After a short history of "adhesive art, a subset of the booming street art scene", Walde profiles twenty-six sticker artists. As she acknowledges, sticker art is closely associated with other forms of urban art, and the book also features early examples of graffiti and 'pochoir' (stencilling). (The first book on street art was The Faith Of Graffiti, from 1974.)

Sticker City begins with a legal notice: "The publisher and the author in no way endorse vandalism or the use of graffiti for the defacement of private and state-owned property." Despite this over-cautious disclaimer, the publisher (Thames & Hudson) has released several other books on graffiti, including Subway Art (Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, 1984), Spraycan Art (Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, 1987), and Stencil Graffiti (Tristan Manco, 2002).

Istakhdem al-Haya

Egyptian author Ahmed Naji has been sentenced to two years in jail on a charge of public indecency, after an excerpt from his novel Istakhdem al-Haya (استخدام الحياة) was published in the state-owned literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab. The magazine's editor, Tarek al-Taher, was fined 10,000 Egyptian pounds (equivalent to over 1,000 US dollars).

The author and editor were charged in August 2014 after one of the magazine's readers complained to police that the extract (chapter five of the novel) was immoral. The charges were dropped last month, though that acquittal has now been reversed following an appeal by the prosecution.

In 2009, Magdy El Shafee's graphic novel Metro was banned under the same Egyptian law. It was published in America (translated by Chip Rossetti) in June 2012, and an Arabic edition was finally published in Egypt two months later.

Thailand Eye

Thailand Eye: Contemporary Thailand Art is (at least, according to its sponsor, Prudential) "the first and most comprehensive publication on the Thai contemporary art scene." Steven Pettifor might disagree: his Flavours (2003) was a turn-of-the-century guide to contemporary Thai art.

Thailand Eye may not be the first publication on contemporary Thai art, though it is the most comprehensive, at almost 400 pages. While Flavours profiled only twenty-three artists, Thailand Eye features seventy-five. Thailand Eye is primarily a visual resource, with little analysis or criticism, though it has a detailed appendix listing the previous exhibitions of each artist. In contrast, Flavours has no such lists, though it includes double-page essays on each artist.

The artists profiled in Thailand Eye include Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (images from her video The Class, which was shown at Crossover and Dialogues), Anupong Chantorn (his painting Perceptless and other works painted on saffron robes), Manit Sriwanichpoom (This Bloodless War, his consumerist parodies of Vietnam War photographs), Prasert Yodkaew (his installation Angel), Thunska Pansittivorakul (stills from his films Middle-Earth, KI SS, This Area Is Under Quarantine, Reincarnate, Supernatural, and The Terrorists), and Kosit Juntaratip.

Of the seventy-five artists, twenty-four were selected for a Thailand Eye exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London last year. (The exhibition will be shown at BACC in Bangkok from 18th March to 7th August.) The exhibition was curated by Serenella Ciclitira (editor of Thailand Eye and other books in the Eye series on Asian contemporary art), Nigel Hurst (director of the Saatchi Gallery) and Apinan Poshyananda (Permanent Secretary for Culture), though the twenty-four artists were ultimately approved by the Ministry of Culture as the exhibition is part of the Ministry's Totally Thai project.

As a result, some of the more provocative artists in Thailand Eye were not selected for the exhibition. Thunska Pansittivorakul's film This Area Is Under Quarantine, for example, is banned in Thailand, so it had little chance of being included. Likewise, Montri Toemsombat's granite carving Bangkok Art & Coup Centre (a pun on the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre) would presumably have irritated both BACC and the NCPO.

Kosit Juntaratip is the most interesting of the twenty-four selected artists, and the book is a rare opportunity to see photographs of his performances in which he painted with blood flowing from a vein in his arm. Sakarin Krue-On, whose installations were featured in Imply Reply, is also included. Apinan Poshyananda has curated many previous exhibitions, notably Traces Of Siamese Smile (whose 300-page catalogue acts as another broad survey of current Thai art).

Plastic Dreams: Synthetic Visions in Design

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.

“The draft charter is retrogressive...”

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.

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.

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.

The Art Of Osamu Tezuka

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.

22nd Open Air Film Festival

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.

Sayonara, Setsuko

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

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.

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".

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."

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.

Roboticlism 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

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."

Wheel Of A Dark Soul

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.

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.

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.

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 —From Edison to ISIS: A New History of Death on Film

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 (subtitled From Edison to ISIS: A New History of Death on Film).

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. It also examines the history of mondo documentaries (from Mondo Cane to Executions) and the representation of real death in the media.

Previous editions were about the myth of snuff, though today snuff films arguably do exist. The new edition 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 and Savage and the Channel 4 documentary Does Snuff Exist? from 2006 (directed by Evy Barry), though Killing for Culture remains a definitive examination of the most extreme films ever made. Its new edition is over 600 pages long, more than twice the length of the second edition.

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.

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

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

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.

Seduction Month

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.

Hua Hin 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').

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.