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L O O K I N G F O R T H E F O U R T H W O R L D |
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Rousseau (1844-1910)/Cheval (1836-1924) Henri "Douanier" Rousseau and Joseph Ferdinand "Facteur" Cheval: both French, both self-taught artists, both filled lowly jobs (Customs officer and postman respectively) which concealed rich inner lives. Rousseau achieved some degree of acclaim for his paintings, many of which are imaginary jungle scenes. Cheval laboured in obscurity for years creating Le Palais Ideal, an elaborate "Palace" constructed from cement and thousands of stones collected on his postal routes. Cheval's Palace presents an image of Eastern temples from the viewpoint of one who will never see such things for real but knows them only from books or dreams. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rousseau/ http://www.aricie.fr/facteur-cheval/
Max Ernst (1891-1976) Major Dadaist/Surrealist artist, some of whose paintings (like
Evening Song) owe an obvious debt to Rousseau's jungles although the exotic
elements here tend to be deeper and darker. His decalcomania landscapes fuse figures, vegetation and porous rockscapes and
have had considerable influence on later artists such as Mati
Klarwein. http://www.artchive.com/artchive/E/ernst.html
Mati Klarwein German painter, most famous for the use of his pictures as album
cover art for Miles Davis, Santana, Jon Hassell and Bill Laswell.
Also released an album of his own in 1997, No Man's Land, with Per Tjernberg. http://www.matiklarwein.com
Robert Venosa American Fantastic Realist, contemporary and friend of Mati Klarwein
and H R Giger. Paints glowing, crystalline forms which combine
figures, landscapes or abstract elements in a style which blends
some of Max Ernst and Ernst Fuchs but with extra qualities of
Eastern spirituality. http://www.venosa.com/
James Koehnline American collage artist. Came to prominence via Autonomedia book
jackets including work for anarchist philosopher Hakim Bey. His
intense, exotic, hyper-detailed collages have graced numerous
releases on Bill Laswell's Axiom label. Now working with digital
imagery. |
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Potential Fourth World scenarios are a rare breed in the cinema. Meetings of the First World and the Third tend to be seen in terms of "strangers in a strange land" or show disastrous encounters (Mosquito Coast, Castaway, et al) as Americans/Europeans fail to adapt to new circumstances. Here are a couple of exceptions: Black Orpheus (1958) — retelling of the myth of Orpheus, set in Rio de Janeiro during the carnival. Great Bossa Nova soundtrack. Apocalypse Now (1979) — Not necessarily the film itself but the soundtrack. The blend of Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzmann's River Devils percussion ensemble with Patrick Gleason's synthesisers and Carmine Coppola's choirs create an incredible and successful conjunction of the primitive, futuristic and sophisticated. (Gleason was synthesist for Herbie Hancock's electric jazz group in the early '70s) An album of the Rhythm Devils sessions was released on Rykodisc in 1989. |
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Robert Louis Stevenson — The great Scottish writer moved to the South Sea Island of Upolu, Samoa, in 1889 and wrote his final books there. The islanders named him "Tusitala", the Teller of Tales. His story collection, Island Nights' Entertainments, were Arabian Nights-style stories written for the Samoans. Italo Calvino — Italian author included mainly for Invisible Cities, an influence on City:Works of Fiction. In this episodic novel, Marco Polo relates to Kublai Khan his
journeys through numerous, fabulous cities, many of which contain
contemporary, anachronistic features.
http://www.themodernword.com/calvino/ Magic Realism — In literature, this term has become a kind of lazy shorthand used to describe any writer who happens to be Latin American (or "foreign" — ie: not from the US or Europe) whose writing mixes real and fantastical events in equal proportion. Many critics have pointed out that numerous science fiction and fantasy writers have been doing this for years but never seem to have deserved a similar description. The term was initially applied to authors like Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and came to include writers such as Jorge Luis Borges even though Borges work resists such simplistic labelling. The most visible proponent of the form today (if it still exists) is probably Salman Rushdie. JG Ballard — British writer, most famous (infamous, even) for Empire of the Sun and Crash (part of a series of contemporary dystopias) but also notable
for visionary and transcendent novels such as The Crystal World and The Unlimited Dream Company. Ballard's childhood experiences in wartime Shanghai are the
source for his obsessive exploration of the transmutation wrought
upon sophisticated cultures by exotic and uncontrolled forces
of nature. |