Just an update from us to say that the second volume of Ken Hollings'
fascinating foray into the cultural netherworlds of trash aesthetics is
available to order now and shipping immediately.
Purgatory: Towards The Decay Of Meaning continues the journey begun by
Hollings in Inferno (2020).
Purgatory
Ken Hollings £17.99
ISBN: 9781913689230
344 pp. | 130x 182mm
30 illustrations
In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, British artist
Basil Hallward sets off for Paris, intending to take his greatest artwork with
him. In the 1961 film The Rebel, another British artist, Anthony
Hancock, also sets off for Paris, intending to take his greatest artwork with
him. Seventy years may separate the two stories, but very little else.
For this sequel to 2020’s Inferno, Ken Hollings turns his
attention to Europe at the height of decadence and decay, following the twin
fates of Hallward and Hancock as they are drawn, like so many nineteenth-century
artists, towards the French capital. It was here that August Strindberg
struggled to turn iron and carbon into gold, while esoteric aesthete Sâr
Péladan staged his sumptuous Salons de la Rose+Croix.
In thirty-three essays modelled on Dante Alighieri’s
Purgatorio, personal reflection, historical incidents and unexpected
mythological correspondences combine to unearth a restless underground of
alchemists, poets, painters, and philosophers.
Their influence would shape the future events of May 1968 and presage the
emergence of a uniquely European form of Trash cinema devoted exclusively to
beauty, sex and despair. Hollings’ radical retelling reveals that, while
Hell may be a tough act to follow, Purgatory can be just as weird and far more
dangerous.
