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Respect for religion now makes censorship the norm

A juxtaposition of old and new theatre posters in the New York Times caught my eye this week, part of a feature about the current Broadway run of Peter Shaffer’s play. The news there, of course, has been Daniel Radcliffe’s on-stage nudity; understandable, perhaps, but celebrity trivia has overshadowed appraisal of Shaffer’s work as a [...]

Venom (2003). The work of Angelo Filomeno, an Italian artist based in New York, is just the kind of thing I like to see: insects, skulls and bones in a luscious presentation. The sculpture below is made of glass while the flat works are silk embroidery with crystals as part of the decoration. There’s a [...]

Paul Newman often said that his best films began with the letter H, among them The Hustler (1961) and Hud (1963). Two of the H films were directed by Martin Ritt, including my favourite, Hombre (1967), a tough and unsentimental western based on a novel by the tough and unsentimental Elmore Leonard. Hombre is one [...]

Yes, it’s that film again. The feature-length documentary by DeZ Vylenz about the Northampton Magus receives its official US release through Disinformation on September 30th. I designed the packaging (the original EU inlay is shown above) and the DVD menus. As I’ve said before, this is a great film—shot on film, not video—a revealing insight [...]

Kiss of Death (2007). From a series of marvellous homoerotic ink drawings by Kenya Shimizu. The artist seems to have no web presence at all, unfortunately, aside from three pages of work for sale at London’s Adonis Art Gallery. Most of the pictures there are hardcore images so if you don’t want to see any [...]

Frank H Woodward’s excellent documentary about the life and work of HP Lovecraft receives a screening in Los Angeles at Shriekfest 2008 on October 4th. As mentioned earlier, this is easily the best film to date about HPL and features several illustrations of mine. Wyrd is proud to announce the L.A. Premiere of the documentary [...]

The Library of Babel (no date). Another French artist who specialised in fantastic architecture, Pierre Clayette’s work came to my attention via the picture above which illustrates a Borges story. This leads me to wonder once again what it is about French and Belgian artists which attracts them more than others to this type of [...]

In addition to insects, Kelly McCallum also has birds filled with clockwork mechanisms, stuffed animals being eaten by gilded grubs, jewellery carved from human bones, and more. Plus a quote from the Prince of Quotation, Walter Benjamin: “The grey film of dust covering things has become their best part.” Via 3quarksdaily. Previously on { feuilleton [...]

50 greatest villains in literature | Lord Horror doesn’t make the Telegraph‘s list but Cthulhu does.

The Tugra, or imperial monogram, of Suleiman the Magnificent, c. 1550–65. From the calligraphy section of the Islamic art collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Previously on { feuilleton } • Ottoman calligraphy and Arabic typography • Flourishes • Ghubar • Calligraphy by Mouneer Al-Shaárani • The Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy • [...]

New York magazine, April 8, 1968. Design by Milton Glaser. Part of an occasional series. It’s probably only coincidence that the sleeve of the second High Llamas album resembles the cover of the first (?) issue of New York magazine. But many of the other High Llamas albums feature design elements borrowed from the Sixties [...]

Sorcerers of sound | Simon Reynolds on the 50th anniversary of the Radiophonic Workshop.

Matthew photographed by Nodeth Vang. A smart blog with one of the best About descriptions ever: “Cock Culture”. Oh, and sights like this…

Sentenced to a lifetime of stress | Lindsay Anderson.

This splendid clock is unveiled by Professor Stephen Hawking later today at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. If it hadn’t cost a million pounds to develop I’d probably be demanding that someone find me one for Christmas. The mechanical monster perched at the top is explained by its creator: “It is terrifying, it is meant [...]

“I would like to explain the Tomba Brion…I consider this work, if you permit me, to be rather good and which will get better over time. I have tried to put some poetic imagination into it, though not in order to create poetic architecture but to make a certain kind of architecture that could emanate [...]

Rick Wright in 1971. As has been noted nearly everywhere by now, Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright went to the Great Gig in the Sky earlier this week, and I’m sure the inevitability of using the title of his most famous composition in this way wouldn’t have surprised him. I may as well note here [...]

Lilliput issue no. 150, December 1949. A nice selection of Ronald Searle book covers and illustrations turns up at Caustic Cover Critic. The Lilliput cover above isn’t among them, I just happened to have it lying around as a result of putting together a new edition of Maurice Richardson’s The Exploits of Engelbrecht earlier this [...]

Continuing from yesterday’s post, Berni Wrightson appears in this 2003 documentary about the great fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. (And Frazetta is another artist who acknowledges a debt to Roy G Krenkel.) I saw this when it first appeared on video and it’s essential viewing for anyone interested in Frazetta’s work. Stephanie Bruder wrote this week [...]

A recent conversation with Evan J Peterson touched on the subject of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Evan is currently working on something based on the novel and—in the interests of disclosure—he wrote a very flattering piece about these pages recently. In addition to this, Peter Ackroyd’s latest book works his familiar intertextual games with the same [...]

Day of the Dead | Robert Hughes excoriates Damien Hirst.

Irradación from Microescenarios. Triumbirato from Microescenarios. Two of many striking digital works by Mexican artist Cuauhtémoc Rodríguez. The use of chiaroscuro always gets my attention and there’s plenty of that at work here, as in the example above. Via Bajo el Signo de Libra. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The gay artists archive Previously [...]

Back to the pre-Human Future | Richard X on the Human League and the Future …

David Lynch: ‘They murdered my first movie’

Textorizer takes a raster image in a format such as png, jpeg or gif, detects edges using a Sobel convolution filter and replaces them with supplied lines of text. In a similar vein, you can Textorize a picture using a downloadable application. Flickr has a pool of examples. Previously on { feuilleton } • Word [...]

It’s perhaps fitting that in the same week (almost the same day) that the Large Hadron Collider was finally switched on, Apple should release iTunes v. 8.0. The improved Visualizer for this application generates patterns not so far removed from the graphics created to explain quantum interactions or cosmic motion. (And while we’re discussing quantum [...]

Planet by Marc Quinn. Photo by Christopher Furlong. Marc Quinn’s remarkable sculpture is one of several pieces by different artists (including Salvador Dalí) being displayed in the gardens of Chatsworth House until November 2, 2008. I much prefer this to Quinn’s recent works which have gained attention almost solely for having Kate Moss as their [...]

Painted screams | Adrian Searle on the Bacon retrospective.

Dilettantes by You Am I (2008). Illustration and design by Ken Taylor. Dilettantes is the eighth studio album from Australian band You Am I which is released this week sporting a very creditable Beardsley pastiche by illustrator Ken Taylor. Sleevage has more details about the creation of the CD package, including preliminary sketches. Those familiar [...]

Far from Gormenghast | Mervyn Peake’s Collected Poems.

Matthijs Kool, middeleeuws zwaardvechten. Yes, the web breeds fetishes you weren’t even aware of once…. I blame Frank Frazetta for my interest in naked men with swords. This photo of Matthijs Kool is one of a series by Ewoud Broeksma who specialises in portraits of athletes and sports people. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • [...]

Parsifal by Jean Delville (1890). Continuing the occasional series of posts examining the evolution of a particular design or image, this one begins with a mystical charcoal drawing by Belgian Symbolist, Jean Delville (1867–1953), our object of concern being that entranced or dreaming face. My first encounter with Delville’s image wasn’t via the original but [...]

A mind on fire | Jonathan Jones on Francis Bacon.

A set of playing cards created in 1986 by artist Rosita Fanto in association with Wilde biographer Richard Ellmann. Out of print now as these things usually are but this card trading site has more views of the cards, as does this page. Fanto and Ellmann also created a card set based on James Joyce’s [...]

A visitor examining Seizure. Photograph by Sarah Lee. I’d love to see this installation work which opened on Wednesday at 157 Harper Road, Southwark, London. British artist Roger Hiorns has transformed a flat awaiting demolition by growing thick mats of copper sulphate crystals on all the interior surfaces, a work he calls Seizure. Copper sulphate [...]

Four Hawkwind badges and a Nik Turner badge based on designs by Barney Bubbles. From the Coulthart archives. Readers who’ve been waiting for Reasons To Be Cheerful, Paul Gorman‘s landmark study of the life and work of artist and designer Barney Bubbles, may like to know that Paul was in touch today with the suggestion [...]

Huite rectangles (2007). Amazing architectural redecoration by Swiss artist Felice Varini. Previously on { feuilleton } • Abelardo Morell’s camera obscura

Dorian (Richard Winsor) photographed by Bill Cooper. Matthew Bourne‘s new dance version of Dorian Gray opens today at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, and I’d have been interested in this production even without visions like the ones above and below; the eye candy merely adds an additional frisson and, let’s face it, there’s always been [...]

Apologies (again!) for last night’s outage. This time my webhost neglected to tell me the database was being moved which means WordPress ground to a halt. I haven’t checked but I think a couple of recent comments may have been lost in the confusion. Very aggravating in a “What am I paying more money for?” [...]