Some magazines age well. Different readers come and go, but the magazine is never without them. Other magazines do not, and what was published comes to seem trivial, or even amusingly old-fashioned. And then are magazines that do not simply age well, but improve with age. Long after the final issue has been printed, people still talk, copies are still sought after, and there are rumours, never true, from time to time of a revival, of a resurrection. Such magazines stand as examples not just of what good writing once was, but still is, and may always be. Antæus is and was one such magazine.

I should say upfront that I have had only a limited a limited exposure to Antæus, the heyday of which was well before my time (in that way my admiration for it is a substantiation of the assertions in the first paragraph). I only have limited understanding of its lifespan and its multiple incarnations. My personal contact with the magazine is limited to two volumes of the special themed issues (the Jubilee Edition and the Literature as Pleasure edition), which were republished by Harvill Press, and which I bought second-hand one day when I found them by chance at closing down sale. Here are some of the dozens of incredible contributors in those two issues: John Ashbery, Eugenio Montale, Charles Simic, Margret Atwood, Ann Beattie, Guy Davenport, Peter Handke, Steven Millhauser, Susan Sontag, and Paul Bowles.

I only have what I can find online to go by, but as I understand it, Antæus was founded by Paul Bowles in Morocco, and was edited his friend Daniel Halpern. The magazine was a sort of rogue internationalist operation that came out of North America, and promoted a wild variety of literary points of view (something that is definitely true of the copies I have). At some point, the magazine moved from Tangiers to New York, and even had its own spin-off publishing house, Ecco (now owned by one of the big multinational companies). The magazine’s ambition was “to mix the well known and the unknown.”

The copy I have of Antæus: Literature as Pleasure embodies that ambition. I bought it initially because it contained so many of my favourite writers, but later, after I read some of its articles, became glad I’d bought so because of the writers whose work I was reading for the first time. Almost every single article, poem and story seemed to present a different sensibility, style and approach to writing, without any seeming false or contrived. One sentence from the book, the opening sentence of Guy Davenport’s On Reading, I can and hopefully always will remember vividly for the way it not just described but also embodied and enacted for me all the paradoxical, joyous familiarity and strangeness of reading:

‘To my Aunt Mae – Mary Elizabeth Davenport Morrow (1881 – 1964), whose diary when I saw it after her death turned out to be a list of places, with dates, she and Uncle Buzzie (Julius Allen Morrow, 1885 – 1970) had visited over the years, never driving over thirty miles an hour, places like Toccoa Falls, Georgia, and Antreville, South Carolina, as well as random sentences athwart the page, two of which face down indifference, “My father was a horse doctor, but not a common horse doctor” and “Nobody has ever loved me as much as I have loved them” – and a Mrs. Cora Shiflett, a neighbor on East Franklin Street, Anderson, South Carolina, I owe my love of reading.’

By Will Heyward

Stonecutter: A Journal of Art and Literature

Stonecutter is first off the rank for our new series of ‘Nods’ (rather than ‘Salutes’) for magazines that are alive and kicking!

I met Stonecutter’s editors at the Brooklyn Book Festival in July 2012, and fell for them, so to speak, straight away. I was first introduced to Stonecutter, when Will (HA Associate Editor) bought a copy online. He’d found Stonecutter via the writer Eliot Weinberger, who is a contributor (his daughter Anna Della Subin is an associate editor). I’d been a reader and admirer of Weinberger’s work for a while, and had had a great time when I’d met him at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival in 2011. (Note: his most recent book of essays, Oranges and Peanuts for Sale, is recommended strongly. If you’re interested, he’s also the author of the hilarious and witty slams of Republican nightmares: George Bush Jnr and Mitt Romney, which went viral on the London Review of Books website. But enough about Eliot.)

Stonecutter was founded in 2011 by editor-in-chief Katie Raissian; associate editors Ava Lehrer and Anna Della Subin; art editor Zara Katz and advisory editor Kate Abbey-Lambertz. An honourable mention must also go to Katie’s very charming and talented husband, artist Christopher Russell, who is responsible for the incredible contributor portraits in each issue (below) and these amazing posters. The publication is beautifully printed and very thoughtfully edited, featuring impressive contributions with a very special attention paid to poetry and translation. Editor Katie also writes notes to customers who buy Stonecutter online, a very nice touch, which sums up well Stonecutter’s intimate and warm approach to independent publishing.

To give you a direct taste of what I’m talking about, I quote the first paragraph of Katie’s ‘Letter from the Editor’ from Issue One,

A traveller on a road in 8th century China found a poem carved into a stone. Meditating on his discovery, he found many poems to speak to the mountain. A millennia of voices and experience flooded to him. The stone and word combined. The poet realized his work: his landscape held the key to his poetry. A sharing of humanity in stone.’

Stonecutter, now in it’s third issue, has already published the likes of Christopher Middleton, John Asbury, Sarah Holland-Batt, LK Holt, Tankred Dorst, Stuart Krimko and Lucy Ives.

It is now available at Readings St Kilda; Readings Carlton; The Hill of Content; and Paperback Books. Stock is selling fast so get in quick (or buy online here if you want a note from Katie – who wouldn’t?)

~ Mieke Chew

HAPPY NEW YEAR (etc.)!

Higher Arc would like to ring in the new year with a belated tribute to our friends Client Liaison, who played at the after party of the Higher Arc launch in November last year.

Harvey and Monty have been named a band to watch in 2013 by The Age.

We hope everyone enjoyed some prawn cocktails over Xmas.

Cheers to cosmopolitan living,

HA ~

Higher Arc is calling for submissions for the next issue.

Higher Arc publishes literature and visual art. There are no strict guidelines regarding the form of submissions.  Potential contributors, however, are expected to be familiar with the previous issues. Written submissions should not exceed 4000 words. Submissions of visual art should be made initially as low-res images. All proposals are also welcome.

There are already some very exciting contributors on board for the next issue, and the writers and artists who have previously contributed to the magazine include: Maria Takolander, Jeremy Chambers, Robert Walser, Tony Clark, Caleb Shea, Miles Allinson, Thomas Jeppe, Leanne Hermosilla, Gian Manik, Client Liaison, Klara Fletcher, Trevelyan Clay, Matthew Benjamin and Virginia Overell, Andrew Liversidge, Pat Foster, Gerald Murnane, Susan Bernofksy, Akiko Watanabe, Alasdair McLuckie, BLESS, Chris Barton, ffiXXed, Lindsay August-Salazar, Matthew Griffin, Martin Bell, Misha Hollenbach, and Tin & Ed.

All submissions, and inquires regarding submissions, should be sent electronically to submissions@higherarc.com.

The deadline for submissions is the 1^st of March 2013.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

The Higher Arc launch exhibition at Murray White Room has been extended until this Friday the 9th of November. If you couldn’t make the launch you can still see the work of Caleb Shea, Trevelyan Clay, Thomas Jeppe, Klara Fletcher and Tony Clark. You can also pick up a copy of the new issue for $15.

If you aren’t familiar with Murray White Room gallery – it’s on Sargood Lane in the CBD. See map here.

Photographs of the Higher Arc Launch at Murray White Room October 31.

The exhibition of contributing artists Tony Clark, Caleb Shea, Trevelyan Clay, Thomas Jeppe, and Klara Fletcher is on until November 9.

Thank you to everyone who attended and made the night magical and to our incredible sponsors Yering Station, Peroni and T2.

Special thanks to Murray White, Gian Manik, James Eden, Jackson Akers, Anna Heyward, Magenta Burgin, Laine Chew, Alice Heyward, Harvey Miller and Monte Morgan of Client Liaison, Antoung Ngyuen/Silky Jazz (DJ Comeback), Alex Akers and Thomas Kernot  of Forces, Geoff Newton, Melissa Loughnan, and the artists.

Congratulations to Will Heyward, Luke Brown, Jordan (JD) Dolheguy, Celia Brightwell, Samuel Rutter and Mieke Chew.

If you missed the launch Higher Arc is now available to buy online on our website – www.higherarc.com

ARTSCRIBE

Artscribe International (previously Artscribe) ran from the mid-80s through til the early 90s.  It was based in London, but had a group of international contributing editors, and subsequently their focus was largely on the American and European scenes of the time.  I’m most drawn to the period under the respective editorships of Matthew Collings and Stuart Morgan.

Where Artforum’s position was broad and equivocal, Al was pointed, and at times adversarial. This critical approach has made AI such a valuable reference through which to view the late-80s scene.  There was an acute awareness of the Postmodern tendency, but they side-stepped the nihilist cynicism; throughout its varied contributor list, a sincere belief in art’s value as a structure (in flux) pervaded.  This energised the content no end, to the point where I have managed to find something of interest or influence from every article in the magazine.

Two notable articles:
The September/October 1987 issue features an extensive interview with Collins & Milazzo, the New York couple responsible for shaping curating as we now know it. They may have been the first curators to operate ‘freelance’ between a string of commercial galleries and institutions; tied to none, but establishing a configuration of artists through their super productive programming (more than 40 shows in nine years) and relentless accompanying texts (which “simulate meaning”; as if “Hegel wrote ad copy for Madison Avenue”).  Every sentence in this interview is a good one: “To use the group show as something more than a filler, or as an end-of-season non-entity, or as a survey show – to escalate this degraded form to a very critical level – is something new”.  Also the accompanying images of their Manhattan apartment interior are a veritable who’s who of New York artists in the mid-80s; it’s great to see them all crammed against one another.  This in itself is a top group show, and the embodiment of their curatorial position (and others’ aspirational ideal) that no doubt gave rise to a lot of new collectors.

In the Summer 1989 issue, a George Condo show is reviewed by Merlin Carpenter, perhaps the most important careless rigorous artist working today (if I may).  He would have been 22 at the time of publishing.  The review savages Condo mercilessly, and perhaps works to contradict my earlier note of AI as free of cynicism, but this particular exception to the rule is most interesting as a telling foundation for the work Carpenter would go on to produce.  Some illustrative pull quotes: “Classic T.V. mini-series artist produces Greek shipping magnate yacht stateroom art”; “Elegance has replaced ideas or ideals, but I’m not complaining: some of the colours are very nice”; “Pink Nude in Prison, a cartoon of a Picasso-like figure, painted in pink, yellow and light blue is a failed joke about an 80s version of 50s style”; “Condo looks at his Rolex, says ‘who cares’ to questions of value and relevance, flicks through the Picasso books littering his studio floor, and makes a few more paintings”; “Deliberate nausea provocation confuses itself with real emotion, and vice-versa”; “He isn’t playing stupid, which is a position of critique, but playing middling-unsure”.  The review goes on like this, though it’s so fervent that I’m half-convinced he is actually Condo’s biggest fan.