Memento Mori?

Memento Mori? (misprinted as Momento Mori? on the poster) opened at Jam in Bangkok on 25th September and runs until 23rd October. The exhibition consists of images of dead animals (mostly small birds and reptiles), photographed by Dhanainun Dhanarachwattana, and each photograph is displayed behind a black wooden shutter.

Approaching each of the twenty-six boxes creates a sense of both anticipation and trepidation: what unfortunate creature will be behind the next door? The coffin-like boxes, dead flowers, and velvet drapes blocking out any daylight create an appropriately funereal atmosphere.

Je Suis Charlie

The new documentary Je Suis Charlie is a profile of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in the aftermath of the terrorist attack against it this January. The film was co-directed by Daniel Leconte (who also made a previous authorised Charlie Hebdo documentary, "C'est dur d'etre aime par des cons") and his son, Emmanuel.

The documentary includes interviews with most of the editorial staff who survived the attack, with the exception of Renald Luzier (known as Luz). Luzier drew a defiant Mohammed cover illustration only a week after the murders, though he recently announced that he is leaving Charlie Hebdo.

(One of the original 2005 Mohammed cartoons was reprinted last month. Kurt Westergaard's caricature, first published by Jyllands-Posten, was reprinted by the Chinese newspaper Global Times on 28th September.)

A Rape On Campus

Rolling Stone magazine is currently facing two lawsuits over an investigative article it published last year. Sabrina Erdely's nine-page feature A Rape On Campus appeared in the 4th December 2014 issue. It alleges a culture of sexual assault on American college campuses, and profiles a student who claims she was gang-raped during a fraternity party at the University of Virginia: "at UVA, rapes are kept quiet, both by students... and by an administration that critics say is less concerned with protecting students than it is with protecting its own reputation from scandal."

The rape victim, identified only as Jackie (a pseudonym), recounts her ordeal in graphic detail: "seven men took turns raping her, while two more - her date, Drew, and another man - gave instruction and encouragement." She also describes her friends' reactions following the attack, explaining how they discouraged her from reporting it: "The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie's rape".

After the article was published, a police investigation found no evidence that a rape or assault had taken place. In fact, many of the details Jackie provided turned out to be incorrect. For instance, she said that her attacker was a Phi Pappa Psi member who worked as a lifeguard, though no members of that fraternity were employed as lifeguards at the time. There was also no party or social function on the date Jackie claimed to have been raped.

Jackie's story was discredited, and Rolling Stone retracted the article, deleting it from its website. The magazine also commissioned an investigation by the Columbia University School of Journalism, which it published on 23rd April. That report, titled What Went Wrong?, found that Erdely had relied on Jackie as her only source for the rape story, and had not attempted to verify the information Jackie gave her: "the problem was that she relied on what Jackie told her without vetting its accuracy."

Jackie's three friends launched the first legal action in relation to the article, though their case was dismissed earlier this year. Lawsuits issued by the University and Phi Kappa Psi are still in progress. Rolling Stone's managing editor, Will Dana, left the magazine last month.

Filmvirus In Weimar Germany

This weekend, the Filmvirus group will begin an extensive season of German silent films from the Weimar era. Filmvirus In Weimar Germany opens on 27th September and runs until 27th December, at the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University's Tha Prachan campus in Bangkok.

GW Pabst's The Joyless Street (1925) will be shown on 15th November. Pabst's film, starring Greta Garbo, was one of the first cinematic examples of Neue Sachlichkeit ('New Objectivity'), a movement which also influenced German painting and photography in the 1920s, favouring realism over Expressionism. The Joyless Street is also the most famous of the Strassenfilme ('street films') depicting poverty-stricken life on the city streets.

Arnold Fanck's The Holy Mountain (1926) is being shown on 29th November. This is one of a series of Bergefilme ('mountain films'), a genre pioneered by Fanck, and it stars Leni Riefenstahl, who would later become notorious as the director of Triumph Of The Will.

Japanned Papier Mache & Tinware

Japanned Papier Mache & Tinware c.1740-1940, by Yvonne Jones, is the first comprehensive study of the 'japanning' industry, a Western imitation of the Japanese lacquerware that was imported into Europe in the seventeenth century. Jones focuses on the English Midlands (which became the epicentre of the japanning trade), though the book also covers japanning elsewhere in the UK, France, Germany, Holland, Austria, Russia, and America.

Japanese lacquer was produced from the sap of trees native to South-East Asia, and Western craftsmen "began a long search to formulate a suitable substitute. Their enquiries show that the meeting of art and science was very characteristic of the time and ran parallel, for example, to the similar search for a European ceramic body that would equal that of Oriental porcelain." (Western ceramicists attempted to replicate the translucence of the kaolin found at Jingdezhen in China.)

The book includes introductory chapters on tinware, papier mache, and the origins of japanning. The main focus is on the manufacturers of japanned items, and the detailed profiles of each company and decorator are unprecedented. Most fascinating are the extensive chapters on the various techniques of japanning decoration and the wide range of japanned products. The bibliography is limited (reflecting the lack of previous literature on the subject), though there are thorough notes and hundreds of beautifully-reproduced colour photographs.

Lacquer: An International History & Illustrated Survey (1984), a global survey of lacquerware, contains several pages on English and American japanning. The Penguin Dictionary Of Decorative Arts (John Fleming and Hugh Honour, revised in 1989) and World Furniture: An Illustrated History (edited by Helena Hayward, 1965) both include brief descriptions of japanning.

Elle Men Film Festival 2015

The Elle Men Film Festival 2015 opens on 24th September, and runs until 30th September at the EmQuartier CineArt cinema in Bangkok. The films have been selected by members of the Thai film industry, including director Pen-ek Ratananruang and critic Kong Rithdee.

The Festival’s theme is ‘18+’, and this is most clearly demonstrated by Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, which contains hardcore sex scenes. Nymphomaniac will be shown in an extended director’s cut, in two parts: part one on 27th and 28th September, and part two on 27th and 29th September.

International Arts & Crafts

The Victoria & Albert Museum's International Arts & Crafts exhibition was held in London in 2005 and transferred to Indianapolis and San Francisco in 2006. It was the first Arts & Crafts exhibition to include artefacts not only from Britain (where this "first truly modern artistic movement" was founded), Europe, and America, but also Russia and even Japan (the Mingei movement).

The exhibition catalogue, edited by Karen Livingstone and Linda Parry, includes multiple chapters on British, American, and Japanese Arts & Crafts, and essays on several other countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The final chapter is by Edmund de Waal, author of The Pot Book. There is also an extensive bibliography. The V&A has also organised other international decorative arts exhibitions, including Baroque 1620-1800, Art Nouveau 1890-1914, and Art Deco 1910-1939.

Nokta

Police in Istanbul raided the editorial offices of the Turkish weekly magazine Nokta yesterday. All copies of the 14th September issue were seized before distribution, and the magazine was banned for insulting President Erdoğan. Nokta's cover shows a Photoshopped picture of Erdoğan smiling while taking a selfie in front of a Turkish soldier's coffin. The photograph is an adaption of Photo Op, the 2005 image of Tony Blair created by Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps.

Erdoğan has a long history of suppressing any criticisms of his leadership, both as Prime Minister and President. He filed lawusits against Cumhuriyet newspaper in 2004 and the magazine Penguen in 2005. Artist Matthew Dickinson was charged with insulting Erdogan in 2006; he was charged again shortly afterwards, though was later acquitted. Two Penguen cartoonists received jail sentences earlier this year, after caricaturing Erdoğan in a 2014 magazine cover.

Cameron at Ten:The Inside Story 2010–2015

Cameron at Ten, by Anthony Seldon and Peter Snowdon, profiles David Cameron’s first term as UK Prime Minister. (Matthew d’Ancona’s In It Together covered the progress of Cameron’s coalition government during the same period.) More than 600 pages long, and based on 300 first-hand sources, including interviews with Cameron, this is another of Seldon’s exhaustive political biographies.

In fact, according to the blurb, it is “the most intimate account of a serving prime minister that has ever been published”, though Seldon’s previous Tony Blair biographies are equally revealing. Written in the historical present tense, it’s divided into forty chapters, each focusing on a different event or policy. The subtitle, The Inside Story 2010–2015, echoes those of In It Together (The Inside Story of the Coalition Government) and Andrew Rawnsley’s Servants of the People (The Inside Story of New Labour).

Cameron is a relatively bland subject in comparison to his predecessors Blair and Gordon Brown, though the book does have a headline-grabbing quote from an SMS he sent to Boris Johnson: “The next PM will be [Ed] Miliband if you don’t fucking shut up.” More ominous is his comment on the European Union referendum during a private meeting with Angela Merkel: “I need to make a pitch to the country. If there is no acceptable deal, it’s not the end of the world; I’ll walk away from the EU.”

The World of Tattoo:An Illustrated History

The World of Tattoo (De wereld van tatoeage: een geïllustreerde geschiedenis), by Maarten Hesselt van Dinter, is an attempt to write a modern, illustrated equivalent to Wilfred Dyson Hambly’s The History of Tattooing, published in 1925. The author praises Hambly’s book for its “brief descriptions of all known tattooing cultures”, though he also notes that it “contains little illustrative material to fire the reader’s imagination.” The World of Tattoo is subtitled An Illustrated History, and the key word is ‘illustrated’, as it contains many more photographs and drawings than Hambly’s book.

Whereas Hambly focused on the magico-religious meanings of tattoos, The World of Tattoo highlights variations in tattoo design. Also, of course, it contains more recent findings, such as the mummified body of the tattooed man known as Ötzi. In his preface, the author claims that he gave up his job, his girlfriend, and half his furniture during the eight-year writing process; the result isn’t quite the definitive tome that such sacrifices would suggest, though it is a comprehensive history of tattooing in every continent, with an extensive bibliography.