(no subject)

[lapsedmodernist]

I love this photo series

the ones I like the best (which is like half of them!)

"winterfield"--this makes me thing of the final shot of "The Seventh Seal" if it was converted into the dimensions and proportions in which my dreams take place. It also makes me think of 99 Luft Balloons.

"gray dawn" reminds me of that painting, the name of which I can't remember right now, but it's of a dead young man with red hair in blue pantalones (who poisoned himself?) on a bed by a window. The painting is at the Tate Gallery, it's also a cover art for a novel I really like, "Chatterton" by Peter Ackroyd (thoroughbass--did I ever lend that to you? I can't remember, and if you haven't read it, you'd like it).

"mourning cloak" is probably the most derivative of these, and "stolen summer" is the least subtle, but I cannot resist anything with butterfiles any less than I can resist all things celestial and star-related.

"wound" and "interlude" both seam like lost shots from Tarkovsky's "Stalker"


"airway" makes me think of--I think it's a passage in Oryx and Crake? Or some other dystopian novel--of a misanthropic character saying that eventually the planet will be optimized in such a way that everyone will just be perpetually walking through tunnels, and their excrement will be turned into food, and that food will be delivered to them as they kept moving, and it would be the last closed ecosystem...hmm, maybe it wasn't Oryx and Crake..anyone remember where it's from?

"burn season" reminds me of Magritte's gentlement and also the cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here"

"earth coat," as theophile said when I was showing these to him, could be a Tom Waits album cover.

"passage" is like a parable and also like a Van Allsburg illustration

Comments

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

That dystopia thing reminds me of Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I can see why, but it definitely isn't from that. In the passage I am remembering it's a character's kind of hyperbolic speculation of how things will end up, whereas I Have No Mouth is all set in past and present tense, if I recall correctly. Also there's what, 8 people left alive in the Ellison story? The prediction is about the whole world being like that.

[lady3jane.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this series, I really like it! Especially Earth Coat and the Scribe.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I am glad you like them!

Scribe was actually one of the ones that didn't do anything for me. But man, Earth Coat...

[amberskyfire.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous work!

No, I don't think it was Oryx and Crake. I've not heard it so I'm not sure what it's from.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

yeah, you are right...but dang, where is it from?

TMI, but I did write about all these guys

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

It's "The Death of Chatterton" by Holman Hunt. George Meredith (the poet -- "Modern Love" -- and novelist -- The Egoist) is posing as Chatterton. Meredith was married to Thomas Love Peacock's daughter. Peacock was a close friend of Shelley, and Shelley wrote "The Defence of Poetry" in response to an anti-poetry essay by Peacock. Meredith met Peacock, and his daughter, because of his interest in Shelley. Shelley, like Wordsworth and Keats, was hugely interested in Chatterton, the poet who poisoned himself at seventeen out of despair at his own desperate poverty. Hunt (the painter) ended up eloping with Meredith (the model)'s wife, which is what induced Meredith to write the bitter and self-lacerating "Modern Love."

Re: TMI, but I did write about all these guys

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Now that you have refreshed my memory, I remember a lot of that backstory because the plot of "Chatterton" pivots around it--have you read the book?

Re: TMI, but I did write about all these guys

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

No -- I should read it. I liked his novel about Milton a lot (Milton in America), even though he dislikes Milton; and I like London: The Biography. He's a clever fellow. Let me know about Monday the 7th or whatever it is, or the 14th.

[rivertumbled.livejournal.com]

I love these, thank you so much for posting the link.

[kuru93.livejournal.com]

I've got his Architects Brother book. Wonderful stuff.

[annabelle.livejournal.com]

thank you for sharing these photos. this couple does amazing work and i'm happy that i got to see an exhibit of theirs at the de cordova museum. there's some newer work in that photo stream though. i love it.