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Deva-loka (2007).
Big new paintings by one of my favourite Japanese artists at Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin, until February 29, 2008. The wild details in Deva-loka are completely lost at this size but there’s a larger version on Amano’s site.

Creation (2007).
These works are being sold as fine art but Amano’s reputation rests upon his commercial [...]

Medicine Ball (2000).
One of Luke Smalley’s faux-vintage photographs from his Gymnasium series. A new series with a more contemporary perspective, Exercise at Home, was in exhibition recently at Wessel + O’Connor Fine Art, NYC.

Today’s book purchase was an edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray published in 1945 by the Unicorn Press, London. It’s rather battered and the spine is stained by some unknown brown fluid that may be blood (which would suit a sanguinary tale such as this) but which is most likely something less dramatic.
The cover [...]

Avatar #1 (2006).
Prints of digital renderings by Thomas Briggs.

Veils #73 (2006).

Art attack
| 13 unlucky works of art.

Via Ballardian:
In 1984 J.G. Ballard called for a ‘Festival of Home Movies’ and 24 years on we’re happy to oblige: announcing our latest competition, to promote JGB’s forthcoming autobiography, Miracles of Life. Presented by ballardian.com and HarperCollins UK, the competition will utilise ‘modern electronics’ as specified above, of an especial type that Ballard with [...]

Europe: A Prophecy by William Blake (1794).
Two exhibitions based around the work of William Blake open today at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery, Mind-Forg’d Manacles, “organised to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Blake’s birth as well as the 200th anniversary of the Parliamentary abolition of the transatlantic slave trade” and Blake’s Shadow: William Blake [...]

The Prophecy is a Michelangelo-esque collaboration between BeautifulMag and digital artist Aymeric Giraudel which you can download at high resolution here and here. (If you want a single picture you’ll have to stitch them together yourself.) Among the models for this are Les Farfadais whose work was mentioned here last June.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• [...]

The Mindscape of Alan Moore; film poster by John Coulthart (2003).

Alan Moore: An Extraordinary Gentleman;
event poster by unknown designer (2008).
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Design as virus #2: album covers
• Design as virus #1: Victorian borders

Contrasts in Hi-Fi by Bob Sharples.
A Tribute to Alex Steinweiss
The Creator of the Album Cover
Robert Berman Gallery announces an exhibition of Alex Steinwiss. Original album covers, paintings, and collages by Steinweiss, and special tribute by selected artists. Co-curated by Kevin Reagan and Greg Escalante.
In 1939, a 23 year-old graphic designer revolutionized [...]

Electric Funk by Jimmy McGriff (1969).
Okay, so the graphical similarity between Jimmy McGriff’s album sleeve and Nick Drake’s, which appeared a year later, is probably coincidence but I couldn’t help noting it. Electric Funk was released on the Blue Note Records label which was highly regarded for its sleeve design so it wouldn’t be [...]

Son hints he will burn Nabokov’s last work
| Ardour or nada?

This month I’ve been redesigning the Savoy Books edition of The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson, in preparation for a reprint. This has involved scanning the covers of the issues of Lilliput, the magazine where Richardson’s tales of the dwarf surrealist sportsman first appeared, and one number of these, from May 1950, also [...]

So the first book purchase of the year turns out to be the original Dover edition of Beardsley and Wilde’s Salomé. This appeared in 1967, a year after the major V&A exhibition which introduced Beardsley’s work to a new generation and commenced the Beardsley craze that lasted into the Seventies. Not that I’m in desperate [...]

left: Bent Fork (The Beginning of Hunger) (2007).
right: Strange Attractor IV: Zygomorph (2006).
“My core interest in making art lies in blurring the boundaries between art, science, literature and psychology,” says Laurie Hassold, and seeing that this is the week the monstrosities of Cloverfield are unleased upon America, it’s perhaps appropriate that some organic weirdness [...]

Portrait of Georges Rodenbach by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1895).
Georges Rodenbach’s short, atmospheric novel is one of the key texts of Symbolism, not only for its themes but also for the art it either inspired or complemented. Bruges-la-Morte was first published in 1892 and the recent Dedalus Books edition, edited by Alan Hollinghurst and with a new [...]

Whitman 2 (2005).
One of Anthony Gayton’s Caravaggio-styled photographs from his exhibition, The Fall, at the Galería Mito, Barcelona, until January 26, 2008.
Via Bajo el Signo de Libra.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

YouTube keeps turning up the abstract cinema goods with this great seven-minute John Whitney showreel from 1961. And recent additions include a better copy of Whitney’s Arabesque as well as Permutations from 1966.
Update: Two masterpieces by John Whitney’s brother, James, Yantra and Lapis, are now on YouTube at last!
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Arabesque by [...]

I hadn’t looked at Eldritch Dark, the premier Clark Ashton Smith site, for a while so it’s good to see they now have a substantial collection of CAS covers from books, magazines and fanzines. The ones shown here are further examples of my Panther Books fetishism and were the first CAS titles I came across [...]

The cover of The Evanescent City shows a night view of Bernard Maybeck’s Palace of Fine Arts, one of the few remaining structures from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition that was held in San Francisco in 1915. After earlier posts about ephemeral architecture and the futuristic visions of Hugh Ferriss, I stumbled across the Books about [...]

Sidewinder (2007).

Promised Land (2007).

Unity mural (2002).
• Official site
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Paisley patterns
• Flowers of Love

A shot rang out…
| Cormac McCarthy is “simply the greatest living novelist writing in English” says Jason Cowley. Absolutely.

Hadrian: Empire and Conflict is an exhibition based around the life of the Roman emperor which opens at the British Museum on 24 July and runs until 26 October, 2008.
This special exhibition will explore the life, love and legacy of Rome’s most enigmatic emperor, Hadrian (reigned AD 117–138).
Ruling an empire that comprised much of Europe, [...]

Albert Hofmann by Alex Grey.
Albert Hofmann, discoverer of LSD, 102 years old today. Last month Scientific American reported that hallucinogenic drugs are once again being considered as a way to treat psychiatric disorders.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of LSD
• The trip goes on
• Albert Hofmann
• Hep cats

Anxious purchasers of the lavish Lovecraft art book from Centipede Press may like to know that the European signing sheets have arrived here safely ready to be scrawled upon by yours truly. I was surprised to find that these are big pages which means this book is going to be a real monster in all [...]

Exploiting Sound, Exploring Silence
| Sound design for the Coen Brothers.

The paranoiac-critical gaze: Dirty Dalí.
I finally managed to see this fascinating documentary this week. Since my TV broke down some time ago I refused to waste money buying another, partly for the reason that films such as this are increasingly rare and most of them have been shunted to minority channel BBC 4 which [...]

Arthur writer jailed on bullshit charge

Another European artist who enjoys invented and ruined architecture. There seems to be little information about him or his work online, however, aside from the links below.

• Interview at ArtsLivre (in French)
• A gallery page
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Michael Moorcock: His own private multiverse
| Andrew McKie reviews The Metatemporal Detective.

After writing about Abelardo Morell’s remarkable camera obscura photographs last month, filmmaker Allie Humenuk left a comment about her documentary which explores Morell’s work and working methods.
Shadow of the House is about looking closely. Filmed over seven years, it is an intimate portrait of photographer Abelardo Morell, revealing the mystery and method of his artistic [...]

It wouldn’t surprise me if there are more examples of the fashion world borrowing the Flandrin pose but this is the only one I’ve seen so far, part of a 1998 art-inspired photo series by Mario Sorrenti for Yves Saint-Laurent. There don’t seem to be any larger copies available, unfortunately.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The [...]

left: tits t-shirt by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren.
right: the Hipp Chronoscope via io9.
A new year brings new blogs which is perhaps just as well seeing as the old year drew a line under some regular reads.
The Look, “Adventures in pop and rock fashion”, began posting a couple of weeks ago, spinning off from Paul [...]

Yoga with Stanley
| Miriam Karlin on how she became Kubrick’s cat lady.

The Royal Arch, Dundee, photographed by Edwin Smith.
It’s an odd thing to discover that a structure you’ve known about for years has been demolished for almost as long as you’ve been alive. It took a review of Britain’s Lost Cities by Gavin Stamp to inform me that the curious Royal Arch in Dundee, Scotland, [...]

I’ve mentioned before that Robert Henke, aka Monolake, is one of my favourite electronic musicians, and it was great last year when he reinstated his habit of offering a free download each month. Unlike the short fragments or scraps that many artists throw to their fans there’s been some substantial work on offer, such [...]

Joe Orton by John Haynes.
Last April I wrote that pioneering gay playwright Joe Orton was poorly represented on the web, unaware at the time that an official Orton site was being planned. Now web designer Alison Forsythe has written to say that the site was launched yesterday on what would have been Orton’s 75th birthday.
Joe [...]

Fortune cover by Antonio Petrucelli, January 1938.
Happy new year everyone. 02008? Read this.
My Best Things of 2007 list is over at Arthur.