{ feuilleton }

A collection of skeletal carvings from the 17th and 18th century at LUNA Commons. Update: Well they were there but the database seems to have been rearranged and these photos removed. Previously on { feuilleton } • Skull cameras • Walmor Corrêa’s Memento Mori • The skull beneath the skin • Vanitas paintings • Very [...]

Seed (2007). It was my intention to post something about Peter Randall-Page’s sculptures earlier this year but never got round to it, so the opening of an exhibition of his work at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park this month provides the perfect opportunity. The park’s website has details of the works on view while the artist’s [...]

It was forty years ago, on the night of the 27th and morning of the 28th of June, 1969, that patrons of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village rioted after one police raid too many. You can read about it in detail on an unusually thorough (caveat lector) Wikipedia page. Violence, harassment and suspicion is [...]

Extending the recent pagan theme, Ubuweb posts Derek Jarman’s determinedly occult and oneiric film, In the Shadow of the Sun (1980), notable for its soundtrack by Throbbing Gristle. This was the longest of Jarman’s films derived from Super-8 which he made throughout the 1970s between work as a production designer and his feature films. He [...]

Hommage à KS. The web isn’t the best place to see works by this extraordinary German artist, most of what’s available tends to be tiny thumbnails which give no impression of the detail in her drawings and paintings. Ruppert is another artist who’s been brave enough to try illustrating Lautréamont’s Maldoror but I’ve yet to [...]

Another fine reader recommendation (thanks Thom!). No provenance for this so as usual if anyone knows the source, please leave a comment. Previously on { feuilleton } • Winged things • Dimitris Yeros

Following yesterday’s post, some panoramas of the standing stone complex at Callanish on the isle of Lewis in north west Scotland. The rest of Robin Wilson’s site is also worth exploring for his impressive range of views showing the beauty of Scotland in the summer months. (Apologies to anyone having trouble accessing the site over [...]

Ave Pan by the amazing J Allen St John. Via. In the spirit of basic human generosity I try not to be too anti-Christian here, especially when so many churchgoers these days feel themselves rather beleaguered; after centuries persecuting much of the world, the world has finally pushed them back and it hurts the poor [...]

Another work update and another cover for Underland Press, this being the third volume in the Best American Fantasy series. The picture is based on a description from Jeffrey Ford’s story although I don’t know how accurate this may be since I only had a précis to go on, not the story itself; I hope [...]

The ugly spirit | Naked Lunch at 50.

Another illustrated Shakespeare and another Internet Archive scan. Lucy Fitch Perkins’ adaptation dates from 1907 and while her colour work in this volume is distinctly bland, her ink drawings are styled with some tasty Art Nouveau flourishes. Puck with bat wings is an unusual touch. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The illustrators archive Previously [...]

Something for the Summer Solstice, the whole of Arthur Rackham’s Shakespeare at the Internet Archive. Rackham’s paintings are classics of the period but for me William Heath Robinson’s black and white drawings are the superior renderings of this story. Happily you can see that book as well. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The illustrators [...]

The Untied States of America | New film and theatre projects from Adam Curtis.

An illustrated book from circa 1926 at the NYPL Digital Gallery. Art by T Hasegawa, words by Lafcadio Hearn. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The illustrators archive Previously on { feuilleton } • 8 out of 10 cats prefer absinthe • Monsieur Chat

Ralf Hütter: I got a new head, and I’m fine | Rare interview with Kraftwerk’s last original Man Machine.

Thus the judgement of a reviewer examining Aubrey Beardsley’s work in The Graphic for May 23, 1896. The work in question was Beardsley’s Rape of the Lock illustrations being unveiled for the first time in the second number of The Savoy, the magazine which Beardsley co-founded with Arthur Symons and Leonard Smithers as a rival [...]

Moss Roberts photographed by James Bidgood. I missed this back in January, a great version of the Flandrin pose by James Bidgood, the justly-celebrated beefcake photographer and director of that micro-budget masterwork of gay erotica, Pink Narcissus (1971). The photo was part of a feature commissioned by Out.com which asked notable photographers to present a [...]

Extended downtime over the past few days was caused by a major server calamity at the webhost end so my apologies to regular visitors. I keep backups of everything for precisely this reason—servers of all kinds can be subject to failure—but one of the problems with an increasingly sprawling site such as this (8,000+ files, [...]

The second of my book designs for Tachyon Publications is published this month and it was good to receive a copy in the same week as getting a load of new CDs. Medicine Road is a contemporary fantasy of shape-shifting and shamanic magic set in the American South West. This job was particularly pleasurable for [...]

Murder most stylish | David Thomson on directorial style. Great piece.

A visit to Baked Goods distribution this week brought me a haul of new releases, all items I’ve either designed or overseen the production of. Among the new CD designs I’ve already mentioned the Tectonic Plates compilation, a really excellent collection of dubstep singles with a bonus disc of mixes by Pinch. Related to Tectonic’s [...]

Another item brought to light during the Great Shelf Re-ordering and Spring Clean is this 1950 Lancer paperback of The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, a slim collection of six short connected stories, and another favourite book. Despite the sf label this is far more a work of fantasy (science fantasy, if you must), being [...]

Sturminster Newton, South aisle window (detail). More from one of Ireland’s great artists. Harry Clarke’s book illustration is oft-reproduced but his stained glass work remains little seen unless you visit the churches where the windows are installed or find a copy of Nicola Gordon Bowe’s out-of-print monograph. Happily there’s a Flickr group who’ve done a [...]

Foiled again… Model Mathias Lauridsen photographed by Kacper Kasprzyk. Thanks to Thom for the tip! Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The men with swords archive

Las Meninas (1656) by Diego Velázquez. The sight of one of Picasso’s many versions of Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour) by Velázquez earlier this week prompts this post. An endlessly fascinating painting whose influence runs through three hundred years of art history. That influence isn’t so surprising if you consider this as a painter’s [...]

Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink beneath the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. The King in Yellow, Act i, Scene 2. Rearranging the bookshelves this week had me [...]

TS Eliot: Guru-in-chief | The poet as editor and businessman.

One of the drawbacks with recommending Paul Schütze‘s music lately has been a lack of availability, with most of his CDs being out of print. That changes this month with his back catalogue returning via iTunes sporting a range of impressive new artwork (above) created by Mr Schütze himself. Schütze’s electronic music stood out for [...]

Satan (1833). I always enjoy it when a search for a piece of information about an artist leads to works you hadn’t come across before. Today it was a quest for the identity of the Satan statue above, created, as it turns out, by French sculptor Jean-Jacques Feuchère (1807–1852). The Louvre site has another view [...]

More sex please, you’re artists | Or less North, more South as Jon Hassell would say.

Returning to the golden boy again this week with an illustrated edition of Wilde’s novel from 1925. The publisher was Aubrey Beardsley’s old employer, John Lane, and the illustrator was Henry Keen, an artist of singular and dismaying obscurity. Perhaps some of my knowledgeable commenters can provide more information. Keen’s 12 plates look like lithographs [...]

Brett Reeves photographed by Peter Tamlin. Yeah, I like the fetish look but all too often it’s been spoiled by ridiculous Tom of Finland-style moustaches. Brett Reeves, on the other hand….damn. Love the black nail polish and the tats; some of the clothes are pretty good too. This was from I Want to Do Bad [...]

Well, two of them anyway… Discussion with commenter Noel in one of my old (and rather scant) posts about Albert Lewin’s 1945 film of The Picture of Dorian Gray touched on the fate of the original version of Dorian’s portrait (above). For some reason I’d always assumed this to have been produced by MGM’s art [...]

L’Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini from A Edgar Poe (1882). Another decently thorough Symbolist website covers the life and work of Odilon Redon (1840–1916), an artist whose pastels and prints were strange even by the standards of his contemporaries. His giant eyeballs and other floating figures are always startling and point [...]