James Reath
@jamesreath.bsky.social
Writer + Researcher /// C20 Culture /// Wellcome Early-Career Research Fellow //// University of Exeter /// modernism + post-modernism; human + more-than-human health
ANEXACT FORM & MODERNIST CULTURE (EUP: 2025)
WIP: MOLECULAR DREAMWORLDS
ANEXACT FORM & MODERNIST CULTURE (EUP: 2025)
WIP: MOLECULAR DREAMWORLDS
Lee Miller’s Man and tar (c.1929-1931)
November 11, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Lee Miller’s Man and tar (c.1929-1931)
recent art photo dump w/ Paul Thek, Mike Kelley, Lee Seung Jio, Sophie Calle
October 9, 2025 at 1:43 AM
recent art photo dump w/ Paul Thek, Mike Kelley, Lee Seung Jio, Sophie Calle
Some close ups of Ambera Wellmann’s Death Masks Eternity (2025)
October 7, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Some close ups of Ambera Wellmann’s Death Masks Eternity (2025)
Leigh Bowery at home in his London council flat (c 1980s) w/ Star Trek wallpaper, latex glue pour hair, kitsch Elvis Presley toy, psychedelic Dreamachine-style lamp, polyfoam shoulders, flowers, tele, etc.
August 14, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Leigh Bowery at home in his London council flat (c 1980s) w/ Star Trek wallpaper, latex glue pour hair, kitsch Elvis Presley toy, psychedelic Dreamachine-style lamp, polyfoam shoulders, flowers, tele, etc.
“Leap over silent forms”
- “Snow Line” (c 1928-1935) from Chika Sagawa’s Collected Poems
- “Snow Line” (c 1928-1935) from Chika Sagawa’s Collected Poems
August 4, 2025 at 8:59 PM
“Leap over silent forms”
- “Snow Line” (c 1928-1935) from Chika Sagawa’s Collected Poems
- “Snow Line” (c 1928-1935) from Chika Sagawa’s Collected Poems
Publication day for my first book! Thank you @edinburghup.bsky.social & everyone that has helped over the years.
The book cover image is 'The Metaphysics of Mr Lucky' by the wonderful Jonathan Lasker.
Please consider reviewing and/or ordering for your university libraries! (link: bit.ly/4lp8yxj)
The book cover image is 'The Metaphysics of Mr Lucky' by the wonderful Jonathan Lasker.
Please consider reviewing and/or ordering for your university libraries! (link: bit.ly/4lp8yxj)
July 31, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Publication day for my first book! Thank you @edinburghup.bsky.social & everyone that has helped over the years.
The book cover image is 'The Metaphysics of Mr Lucky' by the wonderful Jonathan Lasker.
Please consider reviewing and/or ordering for your university libraries! (link: bit.ly/4lp8yxj)
The book cover image is 'The Metaphysics of Mr Lucky' by the wonderful Jonathan Lasker.
Please consider reviewing and/or ordering for your university libraries! (link: bit.ly/4lp8yxj)
My first book ANEXACT FORM & MODERNIST CULTURE is published July 2025! I'm very excited for this to be out in the world + feeling grateful to everyone at Edinburgh University Press - especially series editors Georgina Colby & Eric White!!
🎉 ꩜
@edinburghup.bsky.social /// tinyurl.com/3sf7yj8d
🎉 ꩜
@edinburghup.bsky.social /// tinyurl.com/3sf7yj8d
June 26, 2025 at 12:30 PM
My first book ANEXACT FORM & MODERNIST CULTURE is published July 2025! I'm very excited for this to be out in the world + feeling grateful to everyone at Edinburgh University Press - especially series editors Georgina Colby & Eric White!!
🎉 ꩜
@edinburghup.bsky.social /// tinyurl.com/3sf7yj8d
🎉 ꩜
@edinburghup.bsky.social /// tinyurl.com/3sf7yj8d
“drawings clean, clear but crazy like machines” Eva Hesse to Sol Le Witt (from Abstract Erotic at the Courtauld)
June 23, 2025 at 2:07 PM
“drawings clean, clear but crazy like machines” Eva Hesse to Sol Le Witt (from Abstract Erotic at the Courtauld)
The Carpenter greets a classical sculpture bottoms up in Chaplin's film His New Job (1915). Chaplin repeatedly uses classical sculptures as comedic props & the Tramp often finds strange affinities with such (kitsch, fake, mass-produced) visions of ideal form.
May 29, 2025 at 3:49 PM
The Carpenter greets a classical sculpture bottoms up in Chaplin's film His New Job (1915). Chaplin repeatedly uses classical sculptures as comedic props & the Tramp often finds strange affinities with such (kitsch, fake, mass-produced) visions of ideal form.
I'm giving a talk!
"The Flit Gun Gag" [ 1-2pm, 19/03/25, CCEH @ Exeter Uni ]
ft. Harpo Marx on kerosene, Betty Boop War Machines, Harlem Renaissance vaudevilles, the Cowardly Lion, & drunken barroom shootouts in Madrid circa 1938
Eventbrite: shorturl.at/spbCr
"The Flit Gun Gag" [ 1-2pm, 19/03/25, CCEH @ Exeter Uni ]
ft. Harpo Marx on kerosene, Betty Boop War Machines, Harlem Renaissance vaudevilles, the Cowardly Lion, & drunken barroom shootouts in Madrid circa 1938
Eventbrite: shorturl.at/spbCr
February 23, 2025 at 10:44 PM
I'm giving a talk!
"The Flit Gun Gag" [ 1-2pm, 19/03/25, CCEH @ Exeter Uni ]
ft. Harpo Marx on kerosene, Betty Boop War Machines, Harlem Renaissance vaudevilles, the Cowardly Lion, & drunken barroom shootouts in Madrid circa 1938
Eventbrite: shorturl.at/spbCr
"The Flit Gun Gag" [ 1-2pm, 19/03/25, CCEH @ Exeter Uni ]
ft. Harpo Marx on kerosene, Betty Boop War Machines, Harlem Renaissance vaudevilles, the Cowardly Lion, & drunken barroom shootouts in Madrid circa 1938
Eventbrite: shorturl.at/spbCr
from this morning circling the Sella Group in the Dolomites 🏔️ ⛷️
January 20, 2025 at 5:09 PM
from this morning circling the Sella Group in the Dolomites 🏔️ ⛷️
the evil supernatural industrialist Hank morphs The Detective in Lynch’s great unfinished early work Ronnie Rocket: The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence (c 1978):
January 18, 2025 at 11:57 AM
the evil supernatural industrialist Hank morphs The Detective in Lynch’s great unfinished early work Ronnie Rocket: The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence (c 1978):
“The Groovy: An Everyday Aesthetic of the Sixties” was amongst Textual Practice's most read articles in 2024 🎉
It's about how a black 1940s colloquialism—“groovy”—morphs into an aesthetic indexing trippy post-capitalist desire's dissolution into gimmicky thermoplastic irony
tinyurl.com/yczcz4n6
It's about how a black 1940s colloquialism—“groovy”—morphs into an aesthetic indexing trippy post-capitalist desire's dissolution into gimmicky thermoplastic irony
tinyurl.com/yczcz4n6
January 2, 2025 at 1:42 PM
“The Groovy: An Everyday Aesthetic of the Sixties” was amongst Textual Practice's most read articles in 2024 🎉
It's about how a black 1940s colloquialism—“groovy”—morphs into an aesthetic indexing trippy post-capitalist desire's dissolution into gimmicky thermoplastic irony
tinyurl.com/yczcz4n6
It's about how a black 1940s colloquialism—“groovy”—morphs into an aesthetic indexing trippy post-capitalist desire's dissolution into gimmicky thermoplastic irony
tinyurl.com/yczcz4n6
I spent New Year’s Day with Phyllida Barlow’s clumsy monuments in Somerset.
Everything’s leaky &on the brink here, duct-taped at catastrophe’s cusp. Promising grandeur, heft, purpose yet effusing a patchwork comedy of cartoon boulders, intestinal mazes of mottled tubes, & bunnies scaling scaffolds
Everything’s leaky &on the brink here, duct-taped at catastrophe’s cusp. Promising grandeur, heft, purpose yet effusing a patchwork comedy of cartoon boulders, intestinal mazes of mottled tubes, & bunnies scaling scaffolds
January 1, 2025 at 5:27 PM
I spent New Year’s Day with Phyllida Barlow’s clumsy monuments in Somerset.
Everything’s leaky &on the brink here, duct-taped at catastrophe’s cusp. Promising grandeur, heft, purpose yet effusing a patchwork comedy of cartoon boulders, intestinal mazes of mottled tubes, & bunnies scaling scaffolds
Everything’s leaky &on the brink here, duct-taped at catastrophe’s cusp. Promising grandeur, heft, purpose yet effusing a patchwork comedy of cartoon boulders, intestinal mazes of mottled tubes, & bunnies scaling scaffolds
I watched Andrea Arnold’s Bird today and found it mesmerising: it has an ethereal mood that seems rare for a British film about the working class… And the delicate mood levels all these shifts between kitchen sink realism, more-than-human ecology, folk magic, gang violence etc. 🐦 🦊 🐸 It’s inspiring!
December 26, 2024 at 9:10 PM
I watched Andrea Arnold’s Bird today and found it mesmerising: it has an ethereal mood that seems rare for a British film about the working class… And the delicate mood levels all these shifts between kitchen sink realism, more-than-human ecology, folk magic, gang violence etc. 🐦 🦊 🐸 It’s inspiring!
crazy 20-25 ft waves expected at Putsborough/Croyde/Saunton tomorrow 🤯
December 6, 2024 at 8:20 PM
crazy 20-25 ft waves expected at Putsborough/Croyde/Saunton tomorrow 🤯
reading Dambudzo Marechera's House of Hunger (1978) for the first time and getting shades of Guyotat's "written matter", or what Barthes calls the "sentence-substance" of Eden, Eden, Eden (1970)
November 21, 2024 at 9:15 PM
reading Dambudzo Marechera's House of Hunger (1978) for the first time and getting shades of Guyotat's "written matter", or what Barthes calls the "sentence-substance" of Eden, Eden, Eden (1970)
I love essays that begin—in a kind of post-Space Age social realist salvo—by turning to the extraterrestrial. Thinking of the aliens and cosmonauts opening Jameson’s “The Aesthetics of Singularity” (2015) and the harlequin emperor of the moon in Serres's The Troubadour of Knowledge (1991)...
November 19, 2024 at 1:03 PM
I love essays that begin—in a kind of post-Space Age social realist salvo—by turning to the extraterrestrial. Thinking of the aliens and cosmonauts opening Jameson’s “The Aesthetics of Singularity” (2015) and the harlequin emperor of the moon in Serres's The Troubadour of Knowledge (1991)...
Striking how closely this Charlotte Posenenske Sprayed Picture (1964) parallels John Latham's experimental spray paintings from the same period (like Roller Blind Painting (1965) below)
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November 18, 2024 at 1:26 PM
Striking how closely this Charlotte Posenenske Sprayed Picture (1964) parallels John Latham's experimental spray paintings from the same period (like Roller Blind Painting (1965) below)
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