#jg ballard
Last week I published a new essay exploring the links between the 1956 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition ‘This is Tomorrow’, Pop Art, Brutalism and the specualtive fiction of J.G Ballard. You can read all 3000 odd words of it here:
There is also a design aspect to this project, including typography inspired by Edward Wright, used on some book covers for Ballard. But more on that soon.
My past blog posts on ‘This is Tomorrow’ can be found here:http://theoinglis.tumblr.com/tagged/this%20is%20tomorrow
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Last week I published a new essay exploring the links between the 1956 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition ‘This is Tomorrow’, Pop Art, Brutalism and the specualtive fiction of J.G Ballard. You can read all 3000 odd words of it here:
There is also a design aspect to this project, including typography inspired by Edward Wright, used on some book covers for Ballard. But more on that soon.
My past blog posts on ‘This is Tomorrow’ can be found here:http://theoinglis.tumblr.com/tagged/this%20is%20tomorrow
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Today is J.G Ballard’s birthday, so in his honour here are David Pelham’s iconic Penguin book covers created for Ballard in the 1970’s. I’ve always loved these covers, to me they capture the essence of the time and the prevalent moods of Ballard’s fiction.
I’ve only recently got into J.G Ballard’s writing, a big reason for my lateness is that I had always hoped to find an original copy with a Pelham cover to read first. But a few months a go I relented this irrational desire and bought some new copies, as expected I enjoyed them and am now slightly obsessed. I’ve been working on a Ballard inspired design project but it’s spiralled out of control into more of a visual essay and is not ready yet. So this will have to do for now.
For more info on Pelham’s Ballard covers you should read this interesting interview with him here:
http://www.ballardian.com/pelham-art-of-inner-space
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Matteo Ghidoni 2007.
High-Rise Autopsies, HR06 = first sequence of events (alliances, fights, blackouts)
primera secuencia de eventos (alianzas, disputas, apagones)
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Xero was an archangel, a figure of galvanic energy and uncertainty. As he moved across the abandoned landscape near the flyover, the very perspectives of the air seemed to invert behind him. At times, when Xero approached the forlorn group sitting on the embankment, his shadows formed bizarre patterns on the concrete, transcripts of cryptic formulae and insoluble dreams. These ideograms, like the hieroglyphs of a race of blind seers, remained on the grey concrete after Xero had gone, the detritus of this terrifying psychic totem.
JG Ballard from Atrocity Exhibition.
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The Robing of the Bride. The title of one of Max Ernst’s most mysterious paintings | J.G. Ballard
The Robing of the Bride. The title of one of Max Ernst’s most mysterious paintings | J.G. Ballard
The Robing of the Bride.
The title of one of Max Ernst’s most mysterious paintings. An unseen woman is being prepared by two attendants for her marriage, and is dressed in an immense gown of red plumage that transforms her into a beautiful and threatening bird. Behind her, as if in a mirror, is a fossilized version of herself, fashioned from archaic red coral. All my respect and admiration of…
The book tumbled from her fingers, the impact sound as it hit the floor muffled as it was intercepted by the pile of its brethren, a mess of words and paper at her feet. Her face was twisted in a frustrated, angry grimace.
It wasn’t there. It didn’t make sense.
The bookshelf behind her was half empty, books pulled at random as she started to drift through them, searching for the phrase that would explain him, the paragraph that would be the key to unlocking exactly why he was the way he was. She knew he read; he hardly spent a day without a book firmly lodged in his hand at some point. And he would quote philosophers and poets all day, using that condescending, irritatingly charming tone that would make her feel minuscule and turned on simultaneously.
It had to be here. Somewhere. There had to be one book that explained him, why he was the way he was. Otherwise she would never know, and that wasn’t something she wanted to consider.
She pulled another off the shelf, and opened it on a random page. Brow furrowed, and she tried to approach it with him in mind.
“Nothing about sex ever shocks women. At least, men’s kind of sex. We clean up after you, like those charladies with brooms who follow the coronation coach.” She kissed my mouth, curious about the taste of my lips, and then tested my still-flaccid penis, nodding like a serious minded child with some difficult homework. “Let’s concentrate on you. We’ll open a few doors. That robbery excited you. What else is there?”
“Try me. Turn a key.”
“I will… do you want to beat me?” She lay on her stomach, looking over her shoulder at her image in the mirror, and smacked her plump bottom. “I’ve got a nice rump - deliciously spankable, David used to say. There’s a dressing gown cord in the bedside table.”
Wide eyed, she put the book, down, lost in thought. Suddenly something flashed behind her eyes, and she grabbed one of those she cast aside, flicking through the pages till she found the one she was after, and her eyes flashed again, lids peeling back in an odd mimicry of a camera shutter. Another book came to her hand, another desperate flick through, and then another eye flash.
That was it, then. It wasn’t the books that had turned him into what he was. The books were a symptom, each one riddled through with him, little pieces that resonated with his personality.
It made sense, really. He was too grand to be the result of some words, even if they were powerful ones. He’d been doing what she was doing, right here; approaching the words with a perspective, looking for the things that excited him. She bit her lip, and her cheeks flushed ever so slightly. She felt like a fool.
A shadow fell across the room. He was leaning against the doorframe.
“Clean up the mess and then come to the study. Leave the clothes.”
Irritatingly charming.
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1974, Pinnacle Books, first US print of classic novel
…a dreamless ghost in flight from the cosmic Now.
–J. G. Ballard, from “The Waiting Grounds,” The Complete Stories (Norton, 2009)
When at last an elevator arrived, the doors opened to reveal a solitary passenger, a thin-shouldered and neurasthenic young masseuse who lived with her mother on the 5th floor. Laing immediately recognized her as one of the “vagrants”, of whom there were many in the high-rise, bored apartment-bound housewives and stay-at-home adult daughters who spent a large part of their time riding the elevators and wandering the long corridors of the vast building, migrating endlessly in search of change or excitement.
- J.G Ballard, High-Rise(1975)
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00:33:03Anthony Royal: By the way, I hear you’re fucking 374.
00:33:07Robert Laing: Her name is Charlotte Melville.
00:33:11Anthony Royal: Yeah, Charlotte. That’s right. She has quite a tight cunt, as I recall. Believe me, I understand. At your age, straightforward, biological reason supervenes. But some of the people who live here, haven’t you’ve seen them? The vanguard of the well-to-do. They’ve fitted themselves so tightly into their slots that… they no longer have room to escape themselves.
00:33:45Robert Laing: Slots designed by you.
00:33:49Anthony Royal: I know. I’d conceived this building to be a crucible for change. I must have missed some vital element.
High-Rise (2015)
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