Goldsmiths, University of London: Journals Online
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Book Review. Art Therapy in Australia: Taking a Postcolonial, Aesthetic Turn. Edited by Andrea Gilroy, Sheridan Linnell, Traquam McKenna and Jill Westwood
No full textThis book is a story using colour, form, words, with art: photos, collages, paintings, drawings, and sculpture providing content that is so much greater than its 425 pages. There is a sense of people and planning within fonts of different hues on pages of varying shades and brightness
Decadence and Cinema: Full Issue
Get PDFFull issue of Volupté Volume 2, Issue 2, Decadence and Cinema
Alla Nazimova’s Salomé: Shot-by-Shot
Get PDFAlla Nazimova’s Salomé was a strange film for its time and remains so today because it is so hard to categorize. What kind of film is it? The opening title card describes it as ‘An Historical Phantasy by Oscar Wilde’, even though Wilde called his play ‘A Tragedy in One Act’. Possibly, the Latinate spelling of ‘Phantasy’, from phantasia, is meant to preserve a sense of the original Greek meaning on which the Latin word is based, namely ϕαντασία, ‘a making visible’ (OED). If so, Salomé becomes comprehensible as a type of cinema that proliferated in the silent era (and continues to this day), one that sought to make events from some remote historical period visible to modern audiences. Understood thus, Salomé seems like a kind of matchbox biblical epic, a scaled-down version of the massively produced sword-and-sandals extravaganza, such as The Ten Commandments (1923) or King of Kings (1927), made famous by Cecil B. DeMille. Indeed, the lost Theda Bara Salomé (1919), called ‘an ambitious and elaborate spectacle’ in contemporary accounts, seems to have been just such a film. At the same time, Nazimova’s smaller-scale ‘phantasy’ is more than simply a historical visualization because the film includes some genuinely fantastic elements, such as the spectral salver floating before Salome as she holds aloft the scimitar she has taken from Herod’s bodyguard [fig. 1; see Appendix I, shot-list: shot 502]. Such effects, as well as the wildly ahistorical mise en scène (more evocative of the fin de siècle than of first century Judea) obviously work against the idea of the film as a mini-epic set in biblical times
Acting Aestheticism, Performing Decadence: The Cinematic Fusion of Art and Life
Get PDFIn 1917, the futurist artist Anton Giulio Bragaglia released what is today the only extant work of futurist cinema, a silent film called Thaïs, starring a Russian performer, Thaïs Galitsky. The overlap of performer and performance extends beyond the fact that the film shared her name: the Russian dancer portrays Vera Preobrajenska, a decadent aristocrat from Eastern Europe. Vera lives in a bizarre house constructed out of abstract geometrical shapes, equipped with secret rooms that include a gas chamber. This set, designed by Enrico Prampolini, is the most overtly futurist element of the film, as the plot consists of a typical love triangle leading to ruin: Vera seduces the lover of her friend Bianca (a countess), resulting in Bianca’s accidental death, which in turn drives Vera to commit suicide by locking herself in the secret gas chamber of her labyrinthine house. Her motivation for betraying Bianca is an aristocratic desire to experiment with the lives of others – an amoral aestheticism that explains her nickname in the film, ‘Nitchevo’, an obvious allusion to Nietzsche that signals a futurist intertext as well as a paradigm for her coldhearted game with life and death. Her liberated sexuality and amorality shape a tragic story where ultimately Vera is trapped in her own game (in the plot) and in the bizarre architecture of her own house (on the set). This dramatic death merges her with the romantic story she has crafted as well as with the artistic setting of her aesthetic existence
Decadence and the Necrophilic Intertext of Film Noir: Nikos Nikolaidis’ Singapore Sling
Get PDFAn erudite, inveterate cineaste, dedicated auteur and provocateur, Nikos Nikolaidis (1939–2007) became one of the most distinctive and uncompromising voices of Greek and world cinema. Singapore Sling: Ο Άνθρωπος που Αγάπησε ένα Πτώμα [Singapore Sling: The Man Who Loved a Corpse] (1990) is his chef d’œuvre, a bold, independent film that has acquired cult status internationally. The film is an elitist shocker that, as the exotic cocktail of its title suggests, blends genres and styles: black comedy, Grand Guignol, splatter horror, Gothic melodrama, tragedy, and, most of all, film noir. In fact, classic film noir is not only referenced but is the very skin that gives form and shape to Singapore Sling. This is a film whose narrative and visual motifs rely on allusions to other films. Shot in lush black and white, it is a quasi-prequel and tempestuous cinematic love letter of sorts to Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944) that also gestures towards Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950). Its exquisitely photographed, polished, and highly baroque mise en scène is replete with heavy furnishings, bibelots, objets d’art, vintage costumes, fabrics, and ostentatious jewellery. Its materiality blends with a fetishistic presentation of the female body in gorgeous, tactile textures and a geometry of dramatic contours. Its ambience of Gothic luxury and decay recalls Norma Desmond’s mansion in Sunset Boulevard and even Paul Mangin’s mansion in Terence Young’s debut feature, the noirish Gothic melodrama, Corridor of Mirrors (1948)
Book Review. Therapies for Complex Trauma: Helping Children and Families in Foster Care, Kinship Care or Adoption. Edited by Anthea Hendry & Joy Hasler
No full textThis book offers an overview of the research into complex trauma and the valuable role of creative therapies in supporting recovery for children. While it is intended for those working in foster care, kinship care or adoption, it is also useful for those working in other fields of trauma where children remain with parents. It will be of immense benefit for new creative therapists but can be thought provoking for those who have been working in the field for a considerable period of time.
Review: Lena Wånggren, Gender, Technology, and the New Woman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018)
Get PDFWånggren’s study offers insight into two phenomena of fin-de-siècle culture and literature that have not often been considered in conjunction, namely the New Woman and her relationship with emerging technologies. Whereas the archetype of the bicycling New Woman has become iconic in contemporary media and prominent in New Woman scholarship, Wånggren argues that an even wider variety of technologies provided New Women with the skills necessary to participate actively in the public sphere and modern life at large
Editorial: Editorial
No full textEditorial article from the two new Co-editors on: the editorial team being based at Goldsmiths; thanking the Founding Editor (Dr Matthew Ford); and expanding the Editorial Advisory Board
From Balletics to Ballistics: French Artillery, 1897-1916
Get PDFThe fighting on the Western Front during the First World War was characterized by the mass use of artillery and, thanks to scholarship from recent decades, is now understood as a crucible for learning and innovation. This article follows the trajectory of French artillery capabilities, mental and mechanical, from the late 19th century through to 1916