Feb 28, 2006
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 […]
Feb 28, 2006
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 […]
Feb 27, 2006
The original magazine publication, 1890.
Title page of the first edition, 1891.
Feb 27, 2006
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) Grand Theft Auto. […]
Feb 26, 2006
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 Veduti di Roma, celebrating the buildings while paying careful attention to […]
Feb 25, 2006
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 Ades, documents […]
Feb 25, 2006
The first six covers. See all of them here, and browse scans of the mags here. Former editor Richard Neville is blogging sporadically.
Feb 24, 2006
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 […]
Feb 24, 2006
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 leaf […]
Feb 22, 2006
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 to work together covered the period March 19th […]