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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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I have an abiding fascination with the Ballets 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 [...]

President Nixon by Gerald Scarfe (1972). “Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for—but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.” Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004. Hunter S Thompson wasn’t the only Nixon critic to regret [...]

The incomparable Culture Archive presents an embarrassment of riches in scanned form; if only there were more sites as good as this. Easier for you to go and look for yourself than waste time reading a poor description of the place. Random browsing turned up pages from the Earl of Birkenhead’s study of the state [...]

The American Magazine, May 1933. An atypical piece by Wladyslaw Theodor Benda (1873–1948), a Pole who moved to the US to work for the magazines. His illustrations are rarely this splendid but he gained a later reputation as a mask-maker, a talent that would have helped with his cover depicting the Mask of Fu Manchu [...]

Philip Castle’s poster design. Castle also created the artwork for Full Metal Jacket. Searching through old magazines whilst researching the epic Barney Bubbles post turned up this, a short reaction by Anthony Burgess to the success of Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange. Burgess became increasingly ambivalent about the attention brought about by Kubrick’s adaptation, not least [...]

A decade after his death, with all his books back in print, Edward Whittemore remains pretty much off the literary radar. Whittemore was an ex-CIA agent who made the people, history and landscapes of the Middle East the subject matter of a series of remarkable novels. His books aren’t always fantasy (although they were often [...]

Ruben photographed by Jose Manchado.

Image-heavy post! Please be patient. Four designs for three bands, all by the same designer, the versatile and brilliant Barney Bubbles. A recent reference over at Ace Jet 170 to the sleeve for In Search of Space by Hawkwind made me realise that Barney Bubbles receives little posthumous attention outside the histories of his former [...]

Today’s book purchase is a secondhand copy of the first novel in Colin MacInnes’ London trilogy (Absolute Beginners and Mr Love and Justice were the others). City of Spades was first published in 1957 but this is the 1985 reissue with a cover by Neville Brody which is the main reason for my picking it [...]

Mick Jagger by Cecil Beaton (1968). Donald Cammell thought Mick Jagger to be a more provocative rock star than Elvis Presley because Jagger was willing to experiment with his masculinity. Elvis, although extraordinarily erotic to a generation of young women, never did. What this difference suggests, among other things, is that Mick Jagger’s appeal is [...]

La Rue du Tramway (1938) by Paul Delvaux. Taxandria (1994) is a feature-length fantasy film by Belgian animator Raoul Servais that’s received little attention outside his native country, possibly because it failed in the marketplace and has been deemed too weird or uncommercial to export. You only have to compare the export version of Harry [...]

Samuel photographed by Sandro Bross.

It had to happen…the entirety of Luigi Serafini’s masterpiece (US edition, 1983) scanned and Flickr-ised for your viewing pleasure. See also • The unofficial Codex site • My 2002 article about the book • Giornale Nuovo Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The fantastic art archive Previously on { feuilleton } • Tressants: the Calvino [...]

Fairy Queen (1962), ink and dyes on parchment. A rare exhibition of work by occult artist Cameron, aka Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel, can be seen at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York. Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Cameron (1922–1995), curated by Michael Duncan, George Herms, and Nicole [...]

Well they would, wouldn’t they? More great absinthe posters here. Previously on { feuilleton } • Monsieur Chat

Monument to an Unknown Soldier: Portrait of an American Patriot (detail) by Michael Petry. American artist Michael Petry has made works in the past using freshwater pearls threaded on sheets of black velvet. Viewers can admire the pearls then be disconcerted when given the additional information that the shapes they make are derived from those [...]

Who or what is the mysterious, grinning yellow cat? Wikipedia explains: M. Chat (also known as Monsieur Chat and Mr Chat) is the name of a graffiti cat that appeared in Paris and other European cities in the months and years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The graffiti appeared most frequently on chimneys, but has [...]

First Robert Anton Wilson, now Alice Coltrane, widow of John Coltrane and one of my very favourite musicians. She died on Friday but it seems the news is only now circulating. A great musician (harp and keyboards) and a great composer, she managed to carve her own creative space away from the giant shadow of [...]

Ballard-for-kids from Lion (1970). I was never a great hoarder of comics when I was a child, I usually read them then threw them away, so for years I’ve had peculiar half-memories of stories that thrilled me when I was 10-years old but whose titles I’ve invariably forgotten. The web, of course, serves to immediately [...]

Jean-Pierre, teilsolarisation, Paris (1951). Photography by Herbert Tobias, 1924–1982.

Sancta sanctorum (1999). O temps, suspends ton vol… (1992). Architectural and other fantasies at Galleria del Leone and the artist’s own site. Once again, small reproductions. Some of the same works in slightly larger size here. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The etching and engraving archive

There are few people who really change your life but Robert Anton Wilson—who died earlier today—certainly changed mine. Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy (written with Robert Shea) was my cult book when I was at school in the 1970s, a rambling, science fiction-inflected conspiracy thriller that opened the doors in my teenaged brain to (among other things) [...]

Dr Hofmann by Dean Chamberlain. Happy birthday to the discoverer of LSD, 101 today.

Ange (1981). Le réservoir (1979). Yves Doaré is well known for his paintings and drawings but better known for his haunting etchings, drypoints and wood engravings. Doaré began exhibiting his art in France in 1966 and since that time his art has been the subject of one man exhibitions at the Gallery Sumers, New York [...]

A mob on the march from Frankenstein (1931). That’s blow as in bludgeon, not, er, smoking drugs or oral sex… From the BBC: New rules outlawing businesses from discriminating against homosexuals have been upheld in the House of Lords. A challenge led by Lord Morrow of the Democratic Unionist Party failed by a majority of [...]

So it arrived. Not much of a surprise after a year of “will they? won’t they?” but the combination phone + iPod + web device is certainly more than most people expected. New Apple products always feel like a little taste of the future and this is no exception. The touch-screen interface is very impressive [...]

Burroughs by Coulthart (2001). Lengthy article examining the WSB worldview through a Gnostic lens. Via Further.

Hubble Maps the Cosmic Web of “Clumpy” Dark Matter in 3-D This three-dimensional map offers a first look at the web-like large-scale distribution of dark matter, an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe’s mass. This milestone takes astronomers from inference to direct observation of dark matter’s influence in the universe. [...]

Fritz Lang’s masterpiece via some of its posters, all from 1927. This site is a great source of information about the film. Designer: Heinz Schulz-Neudamm. As of 2005, the world’s most expensive film poster, selling for $690,000.

Astonishing QT trailers now online at Fantoma. (Make sure you wait while they load.) Large. | Small. Previously on { feuilleton } • Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally

Irony never rests in the world of religion these days. I suspect Oscar would be pleased by this attention, he had an audience with Pius IX when he was a young man and wrote a poem, Urbs Sacra Aeterna, to celebrate the occasion. As noted earlier, a recent Out.com article explored rumours that the Vatican [...]