And for further edification, there’s “A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood” about the “origins of the C.I.A.’s drone war in Pakistan” by Mark Mazzetti and “Targeted Killing Comes to Define War on Terror,” about the policy of the “drone campaign” by Scott Shane. They’re part of a continuing NY Times series. Mazzetti’s latest […]
N.O. Mustill’s ‘Critic’ Lowers the Boom, Whimsically
If I said I put him in a class with the great collagists dating back through the 20th century (like Hausmann, Heartfield, or Höch) — which I do — he’d laugh at the presumption. But anyone who has seen Flypaper, his book of demonic collages in black and white, or the huge collages in blazing […]
Kid Congo & The Pink Monkeybirds: ‘Conjure Man’
I think of it as “Four Notes and the Dreamachine.”
MacFadyen Takes ‘Front Porch’ Look at Burroughs
![Detail of shot canvas [Photo: Eric Andersen]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/shot-detail-e1363456364335.jpg)
I knew when RealityStudio posted Ian MacFadyen’s review of “The Name Is Burroughs: expanded media at the ZKM, Karlsruhe” that it would be a major critique. I had already read his “Codename Burroughs,” the pamphlet that accompanied the retrospective, which was excerpted from a more complete text in MacFadyen’s book, William S. Burroughs. Cut. With […]
Now for Something from the Lookalikes Department
Ben Schot’s drawing, “Study of Majesty” — executed on the stationary of LES FREGATES Hotel **NN Restaurant, which the Dutch artist uses as a “conceptual constant” for all his drawings — was not separated at birth from Picasso’s “She-Goat.” But they look a helluva lot like fraternal twins. I’d say they make a lecherous brother […]
Red Factory Newspaper, Zurich, Special Issue
![Rote Fabrikzeitung, Special Issue in Memory of Carl Weissner [March 6, 2013] Click to download the complete issue.](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/CW-RFZ-Memorial-Issue.jpg)
Click to download a PDF of the complete issue. It’s in German and English.
More from the Comparative Obscenities Department
And here’s a Topor bonus.
From the ‘Let Us Compare Obscenities’ Department
The other day a call went out for “comparative obscenities” to add to the literary examples by Bukowski and Catullus. One reader obliged by sending a drawing by Topor, whom he regards as a “sheer genius.” Straight Up’s staff of thousands agrees and decided to pair Topor’s drawing with one of Tomi Ungerer‘s. (And here’s […]
‘Artaud Fragmentations’
![Gerard Bellaart's 'Artaud Fragmentations' [2005]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/artaud-fragmentations-31gb480.jpg)
And now for another kind of poem, as unlike “Death Is a Wind That Will Carry You Off” as day from night. It’s part of a large series of stenciled texts by the Dutch artist and writer Gerard Bellaart. At the urging of my staff of thousands, examples from Bellaart’s word-based series of artworks have […]
‘Music for the End of Time’
Excerpted from the complete 52-minute work for trombone, video and quadraphonic electronics. Based on the Book of Revelation, the music had its premiere in Montreal, at McGill University, in March 1998. The video was premiered in Taos, New Mexico, in September 2007. Personnel: Abbie Conant, trombone; Norbert Bach, digital stills; William Osborne, music and video.
Raw Data: Armed Drone Prototype
This comes from Norman O. Mustill’s “raw data” pile. It appeared during World War II in an ad for Good Housekeeping Magazine, warning against “A Dictator’s Newest Dream.” According to the text that accompanied the ad, “The army has specified that it must be able to carry 4 soldiers with full equipment or a machinegun […]
Edith Piaf, ‘The Sound of Suffering Humanity’
La Môme et de Rouge, by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox.
VDRSVP #3 for Old Times’ Sake
![VDRSVP #3, eds. Jan Herman & Norman O. Mustill [San Francisco, 1969]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/VDRSVP3bothsides560.jpeg)
Someone told me he knew what RSVP stands for. But what did VDRSVP mean? “Black humor,” I said. No point giving away the joke.
Unbeatable Sinclair Beiles Tells It As It Was
He talks about William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Tangiers, the Villa Deliria, the Thousand and One Nights, Naked Lunch, cut-ups, Minutes to Go, the Beat Hotel, Jean Fanchette, Ian Sommerville, the Dream Machine. It’s an unbeatable discovery. Gary Cummiskey, co-editor of Who Was Sinclair Beiles? and the publisher of Dye Hard Press, tipped me to this […]
Don’t Forget to Give a Box of Chocolates
There’s the Valentine Victorian. And then there’s the Valentine Mustillian.
‘The Green Man Is a Green Terrorist’
My blog staff of thousands didn’t have to do much to persuade me that Heathcote Williams’s newest dissident poem, a rhymed marvel of CAT-scan clarity, will be seen one day as a YouTube classic. Here are the opening lines transcribed from the video in four-line stanzas: Tangled vegetation sprouts from each orifice From his mouth, […]
‘Throws Up Words’
These two stenciled texts by Gerard Bellaart are from a series of more than 500 created in 2005. Bellaart is a Dutch artist and writer, now living in France. He creates etchings, drawings, paintings and monotypes of figures, landscapes, and still lifes, as well as works strictly from the imagination. He notes that he employs […]