Magazineart.org has a great selection of covers from the golden age of illustrated American magazines. Not complete by any means but there’s some great art and design there, and the covers of Science and Invention are especially fun. Interesting to see that the technique of having a figure or object partly obscure the magazine title [...]
Oscar Wilde’s novel was filmed by Albert Lewin in 1945, a great adaptation with Hurd Hatfield playing Dorian, George Sanders as the aphoristic Lord Henry and Angela Lansbury as Sybil Vane. Lewin made a number of respectably arty films during the Forties and Fifties but Dorian Gray has always seemed the best to me, even [...]
The original magazine publication, 1890. Title page of the first edition, 1891. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The Oscar Wilde archive
The BBC’s Great British Design Quest has reached a shortlist of ten: 1) Catseyes. Hmm, more of an invention to me but the brief here seems to be pretty broad. 2) Concorde. Can’t imagine this winning seeing as it’s generally regarded as a costly failure. In design terms though, it was a great-looking plane. 3) [...]
Charles Méryon (1821–1868) made his name producing etchings of the city of Paris, and became as accomplished at rendering the solidity of architecture as Piranesi. Méryon manages to do for the City of Light what Piranesi did for the Eternal City with his famous Vedute di Roma, celebrating the buildings whilst paying careful attention to [...]
Something I’ll definitely be going to see, especially given the emphasis on Georges Bataille. Above: André Masson’s cover design for the first issue of Bataille’s Acéphale (1937). UNDERCOVER SURREALISM: Picasso, Miró, Masson and the vision of Georges Bataille. The Hayward Gallery, London, 11 May–31 Jul 2006. This major Surrealist show, curated by Surrealism specialist Dawn [...]
The first six covers. See all of them here, and browse scans of the mags here. Former editor Richard Neville is blogging sporadically.
Gay on the Range (very apt name in the year of Brokeback Mountain) has a great selection of gay paperback covers from the 1950s and 60s. The one above is one of the more psychedelic examples (I was 7 years old in 1969; no one told me it was “the gay year”.) Lots of hysterical [...]
A number of people have asked this question, perhaps inevitably. Aside from liking the sound of the word and enjoying obscure words in general, there’s some vague justification in applying the term to an online journal. The 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica has this to say: FEUILLETON (a diminutive of the Fr. feuillet, the [...]
An album released on EG Records (in the UK) in 1981. Still unavailable in its original form on CD. The League of Gentlemen began rehearsing on March 19th in a 14th century lodge just outside Wimborne. The personnel were: Barry Andrews: organ Robert Fripp: guitar Sara Lee: bass guitar Johnny Toobad: drums. Our first commitment [...]
A font by Lewis Tsalis for T.26.
Another favourite painting for many years and Böcklin’s most well-known work. Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) produced several different versions of the painting. All versions depict an oarsman and a standing white-clad figure in a small boat crossing an expanse of dark water towards a rocky island. In the boat is an object usually taken to be [...]
Poster design, c. 1899. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The gay artists archive
Originally published in Strange Things Are Happening, vol. 1, no. 2, May/June 1988. Note: “Vincent Eno” was Richard Norris, later one half of dance/ambient outfit The Grid with Dave Ball. See also the Watchmen round table discussion on this site. Vincent Eno and El Csawza meet comics megastar ALAN MOORE Amidst smouldering heaps of superlatives [...]
A NOTICE TO OUR PUBLIC………… It’s now a shade over twenty years since Rolling Stone was launched, complete with a brave new broadside on its interests and purposes. So we too now announce our aims and prejudices and strive to clear a path laying bare our hopes and inspirations. Strange Things will deal from the [...]
Explosion in a Church. “Enigma” or “mystery” are the words usually associated with “Desiderio” (or even “Monsù Desiderio”), due to years of misattribution that made two obscure painters of the same period with similar styles appear to be a single artist. Until some fifty years ago, the identity of François de Nomé (ca. 1593–after 1634) [...]
I’ve seen a lot of drummers performing with various bands over the years but Chris Corsano has to be the most extraordinary and most talented, putting the often third class art of percussion centre stage and giving it status as an artform in its own right. Corsano is a young American currently resident in Manchester. [...]
Jean Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864) was a Neo-Classical painter whose work tends to lack the sensuality of his master, Ingres, yet who managed to produce one picture at least which has been an inspiration to subsequent artists and photographers. Jeune Homme Assis au Bord de la Mer (Young Man Sitting by the Seashore) was painted in [...]
The great post-Fahey guitarist Jack Rose plays the Unitarian Chapel tomorrow with support by incredible improv drummer Chris Corsano. I designed the posters and flyers for the event.
Still-life with a skull (vanitas) by Philippe de Champaigne. vanitas think of the scene from shakespeare’s hamlet where the prince holds a skull of yorick, a former servant, bemoaning the pointlessness and temporary nature of worldly matters. certain themes characteristic of a specific philosophy have been commonly represented during an era, and an iconography has [...]
Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The men with swords archive
Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The etching and engraving archive
Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The fantastic art archive
Vampyr, Der Traum des Allan Gray (1932) is one of the founding and defining works of psychological horror cinema, adapted from Gothic stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, a disturbing narrative of vampirism, obsession and posession of the soul. But it is also a film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, the revered and legendary Danish director [...]
Listening to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers recently had me musing about the great cover design by Andy Warhol, probably his most well-known after the first Velvet Underground album. The music may sound better than it ever did in the Seventies but CD reissues can’t reproduce the brilliant sleeve which included a real metal zipper [...]
Robert Hughes writing in The Guardian about Rembrandt this weekend had this to say about one of the painter’s later works: He had done pictures of himself that fairly radiate a gloating success, but the deepest was saved for the last decade of his life, when he painted himself as a painter at work, holding [...]
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