Yesterday, an obituary for Jeremy Blake (see previous coverage here and here) appeared in the New York Times, alerting many to the story of his disappearance and his girlfriend Theresa Duncan’s death for the first time. Coming right on the tail of the deaths of Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, some suggested that the death-in-threes cliche was now complete.

On a comment on a post at The House Next Door, I wrote that I thought that Blake’s actual death occurred “too long ago to fit into this trifecta.” But then again … it might just be that no other moving image artist has died yet this week, but on further reflection I do feel as though Blake, though obviously not as accomplished or as well-known as the late European vanguards, can comfortably be spoken of in the same breath. At the very least, as someone known for producing a kind of moving painting (see his video for Beck’s “Round the Bend” above), he’s definitely got a kinship with Antonioni, a filmmaker who thought of himself as a painter and who literally painted props and locations in order to get his desired color effects.

I’ve rounded up a few odds and ends relating to all three deaths:

• Kate Coe has a long, investigative report on Duncan in the LA Weekly. The tenor of the piece can be gleaned pretty accurately from the subtitle: “A writer–game designer and her boyfriend commit suicide, and a façade falls away.” Duncan’s alleged first feature-in-progress was apparently part of the façade. Many, many additional details at the link.
• The Bergman Obit Master List has been updated to include comments from Woody Allen and Roger Ebert. If you know of a Bergman tribute that I’ve missed, please paste a link in the comments to that post.
• The Playlist offers an, um, playlist of songs from Antonioni movies.
• Jon Swift takes the opportunity of Bergman and Antonioni’s passings to coin the name of a new movement in critical theory: Derrièrism, inspired by Jack Warner’s habit of judging pictures “by whether his ass shifted in the seat while he was watching them.” Says Swift: “The deaths of Bergman and Antonioni have given Derrièrism is a shot in the arm, or a shot somewhere anyway.”
• Roger Ebert has compiled a number of celebrity tributes to Bergman, including testimonials from Studs Terkel, Guy Maddin and Richard Linklater. Says Maddin: “I subconsciously thought that guy would live for ever. Even though he’s dead now he must still be perceptibly animated somehow by his unkillable Swedish lust and dread.”