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Fantazius Mallare by Wallace Smith (1922).
Ben Hecht (1894–1964) is remembered today as a notable Hollywood screenwriter. He won the first screenplay Oscar for Underworld in 1927, wrote the great screwball comedies Nothing Sacred and His Girl Friday (based on his play with Charles MacArthur, The Front Page), and worked with directors such as Howard Hawks […]

HP Lovecraft by Virgil Finlay, 1937.

Photography by Justin Monroe.

Left: Ondina (2005). Right: Pinguish (2003).
Artworks by Walmor Corrêa.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Insect Lab
• The art of Jessica Joslin
• The Museum of Fantastic Specimens

John Ireland and Marsha Hunt in Raw Deal (1948).
Yes, there was another decade besides the ’70s when Hollywood made films with downbeat endings. The NYT manages to write about Raw Deal without mentioning its director, the great Anthony Mann. Never mind, at least they credited John Alton.
Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, Nights […]

Continuing the George Barbier theme from the Nijinsky post, his work reminded me I’d had Artdecoblog bookmarked for some time. Searching there turned up some more of his pictures including this mythological scene done in his post-Beardsley style. The men in the picture below are hilariously effete for rugby players, they look more like a […]

Things are in a state of flux here while I upgrade the WordPress software. Updating to the latest version went fine, it’s been running for the past couple of days, but upgrading the theme is proving less than satisfactory since I’d been using an old version of the K2 theme that I’d hand-modified.
I’ve also been […]

La Place Désertée (1979).
Yet another French artist specialising in etchings with a focus on imaginary architecture. No dedicated website, unfortunately, so I’ve posted more images than usual. Of note is Desmazières’ illustrated edition (now out of print) of the Borges’ ficcione, The Library of Babel, published by Les Amis du Livre Contemporain in France and […]

Semina, #1–9.
A Return Trip to a Faraway Place Called Underground
By HOLLAND COTTER
New York Times, January 26, 2007
Time is forever. Love is the goal. Art is what you are, not what you do. Many young artists and poets in California in the 1950s and ’60s felt and lived this way. And a traveling band of […]

I have an abiding fascination with the Ballet Russes, Sergei Diaghilev’s company which electrified the art world from 1909 up to the impressario’s death in 1929. One of the reasons for this—aside from the obvious gay dimension and the extraordinary roster of talent involved—is probably Diaghilev’s success in carrying the Symbolist impulses of the fin […]