Resonant pop songs have a way of making a direct appeal to our hearts and emotions in a way little else can. It’s for this very reason that so many movies, and especially movie trailers, use pop songs so aggressively; they’re looking to forge a fast connection and only a song like “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” can do that to a wide audience of purchasing Boomers or slackers.

But that power has a double edge. That very potency, when placed in a desolate or otherwise off-kilter setting, can be doubly or triply off-putting, precisely because the stated mode is so explicitly one of uplift and/or pleasure.

This is the insight that a clever YouTuber named Cecil seems to have figured out sometime in the last year. He has put together a brilliant run of videos that simply present the songs as they would sound in certain depopulated settings.
 

 
Cecil’s videos come in a few different forms. The main ones, and the best ones, play a song in a public setting that has been abandoned or is otherwise empty. So you’ve got “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears For Fears playing forlornly to an empty shopping mall, A-ha’s “Take On Me” to a different depopulated shopping mall, the Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket” playing to—guess what—an empty supermarket aisle, and so forth.

Others present songs as heard “playing from another room.” These variants make use of a bit of disembodied footage on a loop, and also are pretty good but the mall ones are better.

I want Cecil to try the trick at empty airports. That’s the move.

The videos have been making the rounds over the weekend, because human beings respond to poignancy. We’ve selected a few for you below but it’s just a portion of the whole. Enjoy.

Echo & the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon” (playing in an empty shopping centre):

 
Queen and David Bowie, “Under Pressure” (playing in an empty shopping centre)

 
More videos after the jump…...
 

 
On December 11th, 1965, the Velvet Underground played at a high school in New Jersey. It was the first show the Velvets played for money, and the debut of the Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker lineup. To say that not everyone enjoyed their performance would be an understatement, though some most certainly did. A subsequent negative review of the Velvets’ set so ticked off a faction of fans, that they felt compelled to respond. 

The Velvet Underground’s first paying gig was booked by their manager, Al Aronowitz. The show was to take place at Summit High School, 25 miles from the band’s home base in New York City. The Myddle Class, another group managed by Aronowitz, would headline. When original VU drummer, Angus MacLise, got wind of it, he promptly quit. MacLise didn’t want to be told when to show up and play, and was turned off by the fact they would receive money (75 bucks) for their performance. Suddenly, the Velvet Underground needed a drummer—and fast.

Clippings from Plainfield, New Jersey paper, ‘The Courier-News,’ November 29th, 1965:
 

 

 
Maureen Tucker, the sister of a college friend of Reed’s and Morrison’s, who Reed had met once before, was quickly brought into the fold. Her first rehearsal with the Velvet Underground was the afternoon of December 11th. That night at Summit High, they blew everyone’s minds.
 

 
The Velvets were the second act on stage, and performed just three songs—but get a load of what they played: “There She Goes Again,” “Venus in Furs,” and “Heroin” (in that order). All three would be included on their 1967 debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico, but that night, the sold-out crowd of mostly teenagers would’ve been wholly unprepared for the taboo lyrics and avant rock of the VU. A good portion of the audience headed for the exits, but some stayed, intrigued by what they were witnessing. One attendee who dug it was Rob Norris, later of the power pop band the Bongos. Norris was also involved in the post-Lou Reed version of the Velvet Underground, playing guitar for the group during a 1972 European tour. In 1979, Norris wrote about the experience of seeing the group at Summit High.

When the curtain went up, nobody could believe their eyes! There stood the Velvet Underground—all tall and dressed mostly in black; two of them were wearing sunglasses. One of the guys with the shades had VERY long hair and was wearing silver jewelry. He was holding a large violin. The drummer had a Beatle haircut and was standing at a small, oddly arranged drum kit. Was it a boy or a girl?

Before we could take it all in, everyone was hit by a screeching surge of sound, with a pounding beat louder than anything we had ever heard. About a minute into the second song [sic], which the singer had introduced as “Heroin,” the music began to get more intense. It swelled and accelerated like a giant tidal wave, which was threatening to engulf us all. At this point, most of the audience retreated in horror for the safety of their homes, thoroughly convinced of the dangers of rock & roll music. My friends and I moved a little closer to the stage, knowing that something special was happening. (from ‘Kicks’ magazine. Read his whole account here)

Not long after the show, an example of an opposing viewpoint was printed in a local newspaper. On the front page of the December 16th edition of the Sentinel, a brief review of the concert appeared in the teen column, “Suzie Surfer.”
 

 
Ms. Surfer praised the headliners, though she obviously didn’t care for the Velvets.
 

 
And, you know what? That’s fine. It’s completely understandable that the groundbreaking music of the Velvet Underground wasn’t going to instantly appeal to all—surely not someone who used “Suzie Surfer” as a nom de plume. At the time, though, a group of VU fans who didn’t care for Suzie’s comment really let her have it.
 

 

December 30th, 1965.

Ha! Priceless stuff, for sure, but who exactly were these Velvet Underground fans? My guess is that they were Summit High students, converted by what they saw and heard on December 11th. I suspected Rob Norris as having something to do with it, but I can find no indication that he was involved in its writing. Hey, if YOU had something to do with the brilliant rebuff, by all means, reveal yourself in the comments section.

As for the Velvets, they would move on to a residency at the Café Bizarre in Greenwich Village. It’s where future manager Andy Warhol saw them perform for the first time.
 

 
An animated documentary, The Velvet Underground Played at My High School, chronicling the 1965 Summit concert, will have its premiere in a few weeks.

Watch the trailer, after the jump…

 
A recently uploaded video features some of the earliest footage of Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics, performing March 1st, 1979 at CBGB, doing their song “Tight Black Pants” from their first LP, New Hope For the Wretched.

The video below comes to us from Paul Tschinkel, who recorded it for his punk and new wave cable TV show, Inner-Tube, which ran for ten years on Manhattan Cable. We’ve written about Tschinkel and Inner-Tube here before.

Though the upload bills this as the “earliest performance of the band,” the band had been performing for some months prior. We wrote about their actual earliest recorded performance, from July 26th, 1978, HERE.

The Plasmatics, formed by lead singer Wendy O. Williams and manager Rod Swenson in 1977, were at the forefront of American punk, getting their start at the legendary CBGB. Their taboo-busting stage show gained them a huge cult following through the early 80s, featuring the shock antics of Williams, who was prone to wearing little more than electrical tape over her nipples and short school-girl skirts, while chainsawing guitars in half and blowing up cop cars onstage. Wendy O. Williams, who sadly passed in 1998, was one of rock’s all-time ballsiest performers, and her act lead to 1981 obscenity arrests in Cleveland and Milwaukee, where she was also beaten by police and received a charge of battery to an officer (which was later dropped, along with the obscenity charge).

In the clip below, we see, first, a recording of a TV playing an extremely rare music video for the song “Concrete Shoes.” The video is rather racy, featuring a close-up of Wendy doing some over-undie masturbation. When the video ends, Wendy sets up some transistor radios tuned to different stations on a small table and then procedes to smash them all to bits. The band then kicks in with a blistering version of “Tight Black Pants.” Wendy is in a stunning skin-tight pink and black-striped bodysuit that seems to be in danger of falling off of her at any second. At this point, she did not have her signature mohawk—though guitarist Richie Stotts was sporting the Mohican look.

This is priceless historical footage and after watching I find myself saying the same thing I say after viewing any of Paul Tschinkel’s amazing YouTube uploads: “please show us the rest!”
 

 
A singer, writer, and producer since the mid ‘70s, Deirdre Cozier can claim an enviable résumé that begins with a stint as the Euro-disco diva who, affecting an outer-space persona and the pseudonym “Dee D. Jackson,” gave the world Cosmic Curves, which spawned the internationally successful singles “Automatic Lover” and “Meteor Man” (if the “meatier man” pun was intentional, bravo!), all before she’d even escaped her early ‘20s.

And like all amazing journeys, this one started when someone left home.

The British-born Cozier was only 19 in 1976 when she married a musician who absconded with all of their belongings after only three weeks. Justifiably livid at such an outrageous betrayal, Cozier set off to find her husband and retrieve her stuff by following the only lead she had—his association with Abi Ofarim, an Israeli musician living in Munich. Cozier graciously shared her story with Dangerous Minds:

I borrowed a little cash from a mutual friend and took off to Germany on a train and boat. I remember getting off the train in Munich with nothing but a little brown beaten up suitcase very empty purse because he took everything else. I walked into a record shop at the train station and asking them if they knew where Abi Ofarim lived—and they did! What are the chances of that, but he told me that I would probably find him working in Union Studios, which was a taxi ride out of Munich, so I spent more than half of what I had in my purse on the ride to Union Studios, and from there on my life totally changed.

When I walked into the studios the musicians and technicians were on a break and most of them were British expats—Keith Forsey, Harold Faltermyer, engineer Zeke Lund, and the bassist Gary Unwin. I kinda walked in sat down and all eyes were on me (I was also rather cute) I introduced myself, all shyness disappearing with the bat of my eyelashes, and they were all so curious as I told them my tales of woe, then next came the question of well what do you do for a living? Telling them I was a singer and song writer seemed like the right thing to say, I had written a few songs in my life and I had sung with a few bands, and I actually did play guitar and a little piano so it wasn’t exactly a huge fib, but definitely not what I thought to be my vocation in life.

Not a “huge fib,” perhaps, but blurting out that she was a singer was hugely transformative. She soon began to sing with a Turkish/German jazz band in strip clubs, and started writing music with Unwin, with whom she contrived the Dee D. Jackson alter-ego, mining that era’s vivid imaginings of futuristic fashion and sci-fi’s preoccupation with artificial/mechanical life. The collaborators landed a recording contract with Jupiter records, leading to a hit in Austria and Switzerland with the single “Man of a Man,” and so in 1978 Cosmic Curves was born, along with a persona that made for a WONDERFUL series of sexy sci-fi camp record sleeves.
 
Much more after the jump…

 
Back in the heyday of Demonoid, some magnificent person, or persons, unleashed a downlaodable ISO file that had been made from a quadraphonic reel to reel tape of Bitches Brew, the groundbreaking Miles Davis jazz-rock fusion album of 1970.

Quad was a four channel surround sound format the record labels tried out in the 1970s that was ultimately abandoned. For several years you could buy quadraphonic albums, 8-track tapes and reel to reel tapes (the ultimate “Rolls-Royce” audiophile format of the era) that decoded to four speakers. It was similar enough to today’s 5.1 home theatre systems except that today’s 5.1 music is mixed with an assumption of a front facing “home theater” listener, whereas with quad it was four speakers and you were more or less in the middle of it. No front or back orientation. It was as if you were standing in the room when it was recorded. Not in the booth, but with the band. Popular quad titles included Black Sabbath’s Paranoid (Imagine the sound effects of “Iron Man” swirling around you) and The Best of The Doors which included a live version of “Who Do You Love?” not released in another format and a mix of “Hello I Love You” with a 360 degree flanging sound effect. Gimmicky, but very cool. Quad was marketed as “music for people with four ears.”

But back to Bitches Brew. Every serious music fan would have to have at least some familiarity with this album. It’s justifiably included in every single “top 500” of all time lists and most “top 100” lists as well. It is in the top ten best-selling jazz albums of all time, too. I’m not going to “review” an album that’s been a well-established cornerstone of 20th century music, but I will say that hearing the performances on Bitches Brew in surround sound is an incredible revelation, almost like hearing it for the very first time.

Here’s why: There is a hell of a lot going on at the same time in Bitches Brew. There were two electric keyboard players. Joe Zawinul was placed in the left channel of the stereo mix and Chick Corea in the right. (They’re joined by the great Larry Young on a third electric piano in “Pharaoh’s Dance”!) There were two drummers, 19-year-old Lenny White’s kit is heard in the left channel and Jack DeJohnette is on the right. You had both Don Alias and Juma Santos (credited as “Jim Riley”) on congas and other percussion. Dave Holland played floor bass while Harvey Brooks played electric bass.

And then you still had Miles’ trumpet, Wayne Shorter’s sax, Bennie Maupin’s bass clarinet and John McLaughlin on guitar! This is a very “crowded” thing for two speakers to accurately reproduce, but the quad mix opens all of this up into a considerably wider sonic vista and gives the listener a very, very good spatial sense of who was standing where when the recordings were made and even how big the studio was. It’s probably as close as you can get to being in a room with Miles Davis playing his trumpet, like an audio hologram.
 

 
The album was recorded live on eight tracks over the course of three sessions (August 19-21, 1969) in New York and then extensively, even radically, manipulated in post production by producer and longtime Davis collaborator Teo Macero. Ray Moore (mixing and editing engineer) quoted by Paul Tingen, author of the fascinating book Miles Beyond: Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967-1991 gives some insight into the recording:

Like In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew was recorded live on 8-track tape, which meant you had a lot of spill. Engineer Stan Tonkel complained to me that Miles wanted John McLaughlin right next to him, which meant there was a lot of trumpet on the guitar track. You had the good and the bad together on all the tracks, and a lot of information that you didn’t really want, which meant that we had to work hard on the mixing. Teo decided where the edits would be, and I executed them for him. Some of the edits were done on the original 8-track, others on the 2-track mix. The edits could be for musical, or for technical reasons, for example to correct levels. We also added effects to the mix, such as the repeat echo on Miles’s trumpet [which can be heard at the beginning of “Bitches Brew” and at 8:41 in “Pharaoh’s Dance”]. When I was working with Teo in the early 1990s on a recording of a performance by Miles in Newport in July 1969, I was surprised to hear that Miles was actually playing an effect like that. So he and Teo must have been talking about this effect before the recording of Bitches Brew.

The sessions included Davis compositions that had been developed live by the band, “Pharaoh’s Dance,” composed by Joe Zawinul and the Wayne Shorter ballad “Sanctuary.” Macero then worked his magic utilizing tape loops, delay, reverb chambers and echo effects. Macero’s contributions to Bitches Brew are well-documented. He would lift a few inspired bars from one thing and graft it on to another section, or repeat something in order to give the improvisations a structure that listeners would recognize as “songs.” It was an unprecedented way to work in a studio at that time.

Continues after the jump…

Princess Tinymeat promo poster

The extremely extreme Irish post-punk band the Virgin Prunes was formed in 1977 by vocalists Gavin Friday and Guggi (Derek Rowen), along with third singer Dave-iD Busaras, guitarist Dik Evans (brother of U2’s The Edge), bassist Strongman (Guggi’s brother Trevor Rowen) and drummer Anthony Murphy (known as Pod) who would leave almost immediately, but later rejoin the group. Pod was replaced on drums by Haa-Lacka Binttii (né Daniel Figgis, a former child actor who was in a 1969 stage production of Waiting for Godot with Peter O’Toole among other things) who also contributed tape loops and keyboards. Binttii performed only on their first two singles “Twenty Tens (I’ve Been Smoking All Night)” and “Moments and Mine (Despite Straight Lines)” and two compilation tracks, “Red Nettle,” which was a part of the famous NME cassette release C81, and “Third Secret” which appeared on a Cherry Red comp called Perspectives and Distortion. (Both tracks are included on the Prunes’ essential rarities album Over the Rainbow.)

After this Binttii was kicked out of the group. What in Satan’s name would you have to do to be kicked out of the Virgin Prunes I wonder?
 

 
When Binttii resurfaced a few years later with his new project Princess Tinymeat (a reference to Montgomery Clift’s penis size as revealed by Kenneth Anger in his bitchy gossip classic Hollywood Babylon) it was with a single called “Sloblands” that featured a rather provocative cover (both sides have Figgis with his own meat and two veg out!) and a confrontational abrasive/hypnotic sound that called to mind Swans and also somewhat presages the sound of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. Some of it was abstract, some slightly poppier, if not exactly commercial either. The project’s trash/trans esthetic could be described as being somewhere on the continuum between Frank Tovey/Fad Gadget and Coil on one side and Alien Sex Fiend and Pete Burns’ Dead or Alive on the other, although this is not quite giving Figgis his due as the music heard on Princess Tinymeat’s three singles and sole album, the Herstory compilation of 1987, is much smarter, evil sounding and far more considered than either of these later named acts. Still, I’d put Princess Tinymeat in the category of “Batcave bands,” like the Specimen.

The core of the group besides Figgis were Tom Rice on guitar, Ian Sissy Box on bass and C. Zappa on drums and frankly, aside from this, there is virtually no other information to be found—anywhere—about Princess Tinymeat and this would appear to be the way Daniel Figgis would prefer it, as his own website’s bio page doesn’t even mention the group (or his tenure in the Virgin Prunes for that matter) saying only…

Continues after the jump…

 
In 1989 the B-52s returned from a hiatus of several years with their most successful album ever, Cosmic Thing, which spawned two immortal singles “Roam” and “Love Shack.” It was a major turning point for the band: after the death of Ricky Wilson from AIDS in 1985, few observers could say for sure that the B-52s would even continue to exist, especially considering that Wilson was regarded as the most musically talented member of the outfit. Obviously, the surviving members persevered and are a popular touring band to this day.

As part of the promotional efforts for Cosmic Thing, the now-quartet made themselves available to MTV’s Tim Sommer for a tour of their hometown of Athens, Georgia, which, with the exploding popularity of REM, was rapidly becoming a well-known trope even for casual music fans.

Sommer refers to a “homecoming gig” with REM but I have not been able to pin down the barest information about this show. Does anyone remember anything about it? [Update: My friend Annie Zaleski astutely points out that the impression of REM playing at the show is the product of an awkward phrasing on Sommer’s part. This surely refers to the October 14, 1989, show at Legion Field.]

Anyway, the gang start out at the “Hot Corner,” the intersection of Hull and Washington where the Bluebird Café stood at that time but had previously been the location of a “natural foods” restaurant called the Eldorado where Fred Schneider had once worked as a waiter. I’ve always wondered why the B-52s included a tribute to third base on 2007’s Funplex, and now I know what “Hot Corner” is a reference to. Thanks, MTV!
 

 
Touring the college town in (what else?) a convertible, the band passes the Georgia Theatre, where the B-52s played on May 20, 1978, and February 2, 1979. Interestingly, they also pass a courthouse, which prompts a comment from Kate Pierson that that was where she got divorced….

More after the jump…

 
Henry VIII’s grotesque Horned Helmet might sound uncannily like a saucy euphemism for the royal fat bastard’s wing-wang but it is, unsurprisingly, a rather fitting description for a genuine piece of kingly armor presented to HRH by Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor in 1514.

This grotesque yet intricately crafted helmet was given as a present after ye olde King Henry had assisted Maximilian in holding back/defeating the French at the Battle of Spurs in 1513. The helmet was designed by Konrad Seusenhofer, the Austrian armorer who worked for the Emperor. It was made from copper alloy and was originally gilded. The helmet is all that remains of the original suit of armor gifted by Maximillian—the rest of the suit is believed to have been recycled or rather thrown out as scrap metal.

Henry’s Horned Helmet features a beautifully crafted face of a rather ugly fool complete with a set of spectacles. The face is finely detailed with crow’s feet around the eyes, stubble, eyebrows, a sniveling drip of snot drooping from the nose, and a ghastly set of tombstone teeth. The helmet is believed to be a likeness of Henry’s favorite court jester Will Sommers who faithfully served the king throughout his life and was said to be the only man who could raise a smile on the old bloated king when he was ill and near death. The helmet also has a pair of ram’s horns which are thought to have been added by Henry which may suggest a cuckold or possibly the Devil. The Horned Helmet was mainly worn in royal parades rather than battle, though its bizarre design would have probably put the wind up any enemy soldiers.
 

 

 
See more of King Henry VIII’s Horned Helmet, after the jump…
 

 
Last summer, Dangerous Minds introduced you to “Mrs. Smith,” an outrageous, hilarious, posh New-Englandy matron who plays breakneck-speed heavy metal guitar solos. Since then, her profile has grown tremendously, and she’s accordingly been very, very busy, playing a residency gig at NYC’s Cutting Room, releasing a video for her cover of Adele’s “Hello,” (yes, really, see below), and making a lauded appearance at the musical instrument industry’s annual NAMM conference. And last weekend, Mrs. Smith did something seriously wonderful—a presentation for L.A.’s Voyager Institute arts & pop culture lecture series called “The State of Shred.”

The Voyager Institute is the latest cultural offering from Bret Berg, who’s previously curated cinema for Alamo Drafthouse and Cinefamily, and was the brains behind the wonderful but now defunct MP3 sharity blog/video series Post-Punk Junk, and the much broader Egg City Radio. Berg produced “The State of Shred” with underground music promoter Sean Carnage, and in addition to Mrs. Smith’s history lesson, the event included a panel talk that saw Berg and Carnage picking the brains of Smith, musician David Rothbaum, probably best known for his work on the Room 237 soundtrack, or for playing with Berg in a Goblin tribute band called Nilbog, and Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss, who recently became the first female player to be honored with an Ibanez signature guitar.
 

 

 

 
Mrs. Smith is great fun to gab with, so we were gladdened that she took the time to share this with DM:

I had the occasion to be in Los Angeles for the 2018 NAMM show where I appeared as a demonstrator for Mezzabarba, an Italian amplifier company. I was looking for additional engagements while in LA and Sean Carnage pitched the idea of me presenting at The Voyager Institute, a kind of bohemian salon of talks by artists on intriguing topics. As Sean and I discussed what I could present, “The state of shred” popped out of my mouth and inspired the idea for a short presentation. I had to leave so much out, I look forward to filling in ever more details in this concept. 

A great deal of the information for my lecture was acquired at the last minute on Google. I apologize if I got a Guitar God’s name wrong! It would seem many of these people know me but I don’t know them which is a very surreal experience indeed. I don’t know them! I mean no offense by it. If you look at it logically you’ll recognize there’s truly only one of me and so very many of them—it’s natural to confuse. I’m so sorry if I’ve offended!

 
Watch ‘The State of Shred,’ after the jump…

Georgiana Houghton (1862).
 
Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884) claimed her artistic talent came from the dead. Houghton was a spiritualist, a medium and (apparently) a self-taught artist though there are suggestions she may have had a basic training in art. Houghton said her drawings and watercolors were the product of her communication with the spirit world. She took part in séances, where she sat with paper, pencils, and gouache, and drew her pictures from the energy, words, and images the spirits used to communicate with her. Her first spirit guides were deceased relatives and friends, in particular, her late sister Zilla. She drew their spirits as fruit and flowers. Later, she said her spirit guides included the Renaissance artists Titian and Correggio which were mighty fine talents to commune with. Often, on the back of her pictures, she explained how her drawings were made—on one occasion explaining how Titian had worked through her to create a picture. Whether we believe Houghton’s supernatural claims is irrelevant. What is important is Houghton’s artwork which is mesmerizingly beautiful, utterly original, and denies any easy classification—though some critics have (perhaps rightly) described Houghton as “arguably the first ever abstract artist.” Houghton was producing her abstract image long before Kandinsky and Mondrian and even another spiritualist Hilma Af Klimt, who is also often credited as the first Abstract artist.

Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1814, little appears to be known of Houghton’s early upbringing until around 1859 when she started producing her “spirit drawings” during private séances held in the homes of fellow spiritualists. She used these séances as a means to focus her artistic talents and produce her astonishing watercolors and undoubtedly believed she was communicating with the dead. It should be noted that it was very difficult for women to become artists in Victorian society. The art world was dominated by men who excluded women from their guilds and art clubs that promoted their work. Women had to find other ways to express themselves and their talents. Houghton found hers through the ethereal world of the spirit world. At a time when figurative and narrative art was the dominant genre, Houghton’s strange, swirling, peacock-feathered watercolors look like the psychedelic creations of some hip 1960s artist. She was expressing a deeply private world—a belief system and her feelings towards it. Many of her drawings featured the eye an all-seeing God which is arguably a reflection of her own subconscious feelings about the unrelenting and controlling male gaze of the world in which she lived. There are also the expected drawings of her religious icons like Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

However, “[a]t a time when few opportunities were present for women to explore creative practices,”:

Houghton’s work draws attention to the role of women within society by creating an alternative space through ritual. The perceived irrationality of Spiritualism has in the past been used as an excuse to systematically belittle the importance of Houghton (and other female artists such as Hilma af Klint) within a history of abstract art. Houghton’s strange mediations between individual self and the collective otherworld foreground a feminist investigation that complicates common tropes of hysteria and feminine theological excess as dangerous or disturbed.

Houghton’s seemingly frenetic, yet highly deliberate, and beautiful watercolours accept as legitimate that which lies beyond the bounds of conventional experience, and offers a fascinating context for an array of contemporary artists who are interested in the spaces between dream, afterlife and living reality. Artists such as Joachim Koester, Matt Mullican and Jess Johnson absorb both shared cultural and personal memories through the aesthetic of ritual to interrogate notions of the world beyond.

Houghton thought her work important enough to organize a self-financed exhibition of 155 pictures at a gallery on Bond Street, London, in 1871. The exhibition received mixed reviews—one critic in the Daily News described Houghton’s pictures as “the most extraordinary and instructive example of artistic aberration.” The show was a failure and almost bankrupted Houghton. This, together with her unfortunate association with the fraudulent spiritualist Frederick Hudson—a man who faked photographs of ghosts and spirits—saw Houghton cruelly dismissed as a charlatan and oddball by the art world. Houghton continued making her spirit drawings until her death in 1884. She would have been forgotten had not the Victorian Spiritualists’ Union in Melbourne, Australia, exhibited 35 of paintings in 1910. This led to sporadic exhibitions of her work over the past century most recently at the Courtauld Gallery, London in 2017. However, the bulk of Houghton’s startlingly beautiful artworks are either lost or hidden away in private collections.
 

‘The Flower and the Fruit of Henry Lenny’ (1861).
 

‘The Flower of Warrand Houghton’ (1861).
 
See more of Georgiana Houghton’s spirit drawings, after the jump…