RITUALISTIC

Storm de Hirsch (1912-2000) could have been content simply with having one of the greatest names of all time, but she was also a groundbreaking film maker. The screenshots here are from Peyote Queen, the second part of a trilogy called The Color Of Ritual, The Color Of Thought in which she scratches, etches and paints directly onto 16mm film and then adds a kitchen sink load of optical effects to create something wild and weird and psychedelic that reflects her early experience as an abstract-expressionist painter.

EINE KLEIN

 

A selection of Bernat Klein's impasto abstracts.

NOT TO BE CONTINUED

 

Bernat Klein was a Serbian textile designer and painter who lived and worked in Scotland from the early 1950s, where he established his own studio and a number of businesses that specialised in  weaving and knitting for carpets, tapestries and haute couture clothing, including for Dior, Chanel, Pierre Cardin - and Marks and Spencer.

Klein died in 2014 aged 91, and this photograph (by Gordon Burniston) shows his last, unfinished painting on the easel, forever a work in progress.

WISDOM

    

Gillian Wise (1936-2020)

I first saw Wise's work at the Sainsburys Centre in Norwich, the world class art gallery in the grounds of the University of East Anglia, where I studied from 1995 to 1998. I was amazed that these were drawings, and couldn't fathom how they could have been done by hand. I still can't. Magic, probably, or incredible skill.

Despite living only a few hundred metres from the gallery, I suppose I went in about a dozen times over a three year period. Now I'd be in there every single day, mainly because my appreciation of art has increased considerably, partly because I don't have nearly as much on these days. 

INBETWEENERS

Transitions, backgrounds and landscapes from Filmation's Aquaman cartoon that ran from 1968 to 1970. Here's Orin / Arthur Curry in action. Doesn't look much like Jason Momoa, does he? That's not important, of course, but I do wish DC made better films from their extraordinary back catalogue.

APE ART

Apes aren't natural artists, although they clearly have the thumbs for it, their hands being far more complex than ours - and they have twice as many. A chimp might trace its shadow on a wall with a finger, but that's generally as far as they go in terms of drawing and painting, unless they are presented with the right equipment and lots of encouragement. The pictures here are by Julia, Bozo, Jessica and Lady, respectively, all chimpanzees showing great promise. I love the great apes. That's where the future lays - not only in art, but of humanity.

BLACK RITUALS OF SATANIC SEX CULTS

A serious degradation.

INBETWEENERS

More just before and right after frames from Hanna Barbera, this time from The New Scooby Doo Movies (1972), a pretty average show in which Mystery Inc. team up with such luminaries as The Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, Sonny and Cher, Batman and Robin, the Addams Family, the Harlem Globetrotters, Davy Jones from The Monkees and Mama Cass. Yep, really. 

Why is everything so purple? Well, because Scooby Doo adventures mainly take place at night, that's when the fake ghosts come out. 

INBETWEENERS

Yet more abstracts, transitions and vacated frames from the golden age of cartoons, specifically Hanna Barbera's wonderful Wacky Races.