Brion Gysin—autoportrait (1935). “A shaman to me is always a pansexual being,” says the gay Canadian filmmaker. “These guys all came out of that period where queer was really hardcore, it was part of their radical art — and of course it was illegal.” (More.) The filmmaker in question is Nik Sheehan discussing FLicKeR, his [...]
Elatus from Pandaemonium I (Centaurs) (2010) by David Trullo. One of a series of centaur portraits by Spanish artist David Trullo. Placing characters from Classical mythology in contemporary settings makes a change. The title Pandaemonium I implies further series so I’m curious to see how Trullo follows these. Battling Centaurs (1873) by Arnold Böcklin. Centaurs [...]
Hedy Lamarr strikes a pose in a peacock dress for Samson and Deliah (1949), one of Hollywood’s many tiresome Biblical epics. If the photo isn’t just a promo shot and Hedy appears wearing this it’s no doubt a highlight but it’s so long since I saw the film the only thing I remember is Victor [...]
Transfiguration (1952) by Sulamith Wülfing. • Observatory posted photos of its Lovecraft art exhibition; see if you can spot my pics. Related: Write Club has more photos. Also, A Word From Our Sponsor. • Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick. Related: Beat Memories—The Photographs [...]
2A Arthur Street. Samples from a collection of photographs by Alfred Henry Rushbrook at the National Library of Scotland’s Flickr pages showing the St Leonards area of Edinburgh. These were taken in 1929 but the age of the buildings and the curiously fogged appearance of the prints makes them seem a lot older. The City [...]
Another antique example of the Flandrin pose. Are you bored yet? Gaetano D’Agata (1883–1949) was one of the photographers who continued a tradition begun by Wilhelm von Gloeden for capturing the youth of Taormina, Sicily, in order to create tasteful prints for those who preferred their erotica to arrive with the vague excuse of Classical [...]
Darkness: half-title page. I’m still behind with site updates but here are two recent design jobs come to cast a shadow over the summer. Darkness is another fiction anthology from Tachyon, edited by Ellen Datlow and subtitled Two Decades of Modern Horror. Ann Monn’s cover design has a snake writhing through shadow so I carried [...]
Another short but sweet Internet Archive upload, The Book of Ornamental Alphabets (1914) by Freeman Delamotte. The designs are a variety of capitals and alphabets from medieval and later manuscripts. At least one page of this I recognise from a Pepin Press collection of similar ornamental types. Previously on { feuilleton } • Paul Franck’s [...]
I would have posted this for the Solstice yesterday had it not been for the Chronophage. The panorama is at a BBC page since the corporation is one of the few organisations with the weight to gain permission to photograph the stones up close. Unless you’re an archaeologist or an English Heritage official your view [...]
The Midsummer Chronophage. John C Taylor’s Corpus Chronophage—the extraordinary mechanical clock surmounted by a time-devouring monster—was featured here following news of its installation at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 2008. Two years later its creator is ready to unveil a new clock which he calls The Midsummer Chronophage. The Midsummer Chronophage pays homage to the [...]
Peafile (2006) by Shawn Smith; plywood, ink, acrylic paint. • Surreal Friends, an exhibition of work by Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK. Related: The surrealist muses who roared, Leonora Carrington and other women Surrealists profiled. • Landscapes From a Dream: How the Art of David Pelham [...]
Look what the postman delivered. Well, not the peacock feather and candle, obviously… Dodgem Logic #4 is now in print and my cover design looks as splendid as I hoped, gold ink included. The bonus item for this delirious issue is the rather wonderful poster you see in the background, a Joe Brown & Alan [...]
An untitled piece by Ben Kimura (1947–2003), a Japanese artist whose homoerotic works are all very well drawn, if occasionally a little bland. Given a choice, I prefer the aesthetics and imagination of Sadao Hasegawa or Hideki Koh but drawings such as this are certainly sexy enough. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The gay [...]
Some of the most extravagantly flourished capitals you’ll see, from another of those books with an unwieldy title, Kunstrichtige Schreibart : allerhand Versalie[n] oder AnfangsBuchstabe[n] der teütschen, lateinischen und italianischen Schrifften aus unterschiedlichen Meistern der edlen Schreibkunst zusammen getragen (1655). The authors are credited as Paul Franck, Paul Fürst and Christoph Gerhard but it’s Franck’s [...]
A page from Ulysses with amendments by James Joyce. That time of year again and for your delectation Ubuweb has tapes of the soundtrack from Joseph Strick’s semi-successful 1967 film of Ulysses featuring the voices of Milo O’Shea, Barbara Jefford and others. The film is frequently a series of illustrated voiceovers so this isn’t as [...]
One of a great series by photographer Jean-François Carly showing male and female models adorned with snakes and little else. Makes a change from the usual state of affairs where men are more commonly depicted wrestling with serpents rather than wearing them. Previously on { feuilleton } • Angelo Colarossi and son • Men with [...]
Cyclamen (1895). An exhibition close enough for me to easily visit, Hermann Obrist: Art Nouveau Sculptor is a display of work by the German artist at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Obrist (1863–1927) is featured in numerous histories of Art Nouveau for his Cyclamen wall-hanging of 1895, also known as The Whiplash on account of [...]
Rogomelec (1978) by Leonor Fini. Via. • Moving Through Old Daylight: A recording of Mark Fisher, Jim Jupp and Julian House of Ghost Box Recordings and Iain Sinclair in conversation at the Roundhouse, Camden, London, 5 June 2010. Topics under discussion included Nigel Kneale, TC Lethbridge, John Foxx, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, alchemies of sound, the [...]
The magazine isn’t out for another couple of weeks but my cover art has been posted to various websites so I can finally show this here. Alan Moore was in touch at the beginning of February asking for a wraparound cover design, the only brief being that he liked my Alice in Wonderland calendar and [...]
A pair of cover designs by the very prolific Alexandre de Riquer (1856–1920), an illustrator and designer who might be described as the Catalan equivalent of Alphonse Mucha. It’s often the case with the artists of this period that you find one or two examples of their work in books but see little else. Riquer [...]
The Silver Hero. One of a number of homoerotic works by this Russian artist, very similar in places to George Quaintance. Oh, and with swords, of course… Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The gay artists archive • The men with swords archive
Krazy Kat – Bugologist (1916). Among the films at the Library of Congress YouTube channel are a number of shorts from the early days of animation including several of the first Krazy Kat films. George Herriman apparently had nothing to do with these, they were Hearst corporation spin-offs, which perhaps explains their lack of Herriman’s [...]
Artist Alex CF makes beautifully detailed—and very authentic—cases for cryptozoological specimens. I think I’d seen examples of these before but not the Lovecraft exhibits like this collection which presents samples and studies retrieved from the Mountains of Madness. Among other Lovecraftiana there’s also a case devoted to artefacts from R’lyeh. These would have been ideal [...]
The Thorns of Love CD cover. One of the consequences of having been so productive of late is having less time to update my web pages. The CD design section is now a year out of date so I’ll be trying to amend the situation as time allows. The Thorns of Love by Antoni Maiovvi [...]
Aladdin Sane (1973). Cover photo by Brian Duffy who died this week. • Among the obituaries this week: artist Louise Bourgeois; poet and partner of Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky; film director Joseph Strick, a man who dared to film James Joyce’s Ulysses; photographer Brian Duffy. • The dustbin of art history: “Why is so much [...]
One of a number of photos of the elegantly decayed houses of early Los Angeles by ex-vaudeville artist George Mann. On Bunker Hill is a site dedicated to this vanished area of the city. These never-before-published color images of old Bunker Hill were originally displayed in 3-D viewers of Mann’s own design, which were leased [...]
Beautiful abstractions by this Russian artist at Behance. Thanks again to Thom for the tip!
How to combine two recent {feuilleton} obsessions? Ask whether Oscar Wilde had his voice recorded on an Edison machine at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, 1900. It’s a tantalising question. We know from Wilde’s letters that he visited the Exposition several times; he talked with Rodin and admired a self-portrait by his old painter friend [...]
Clark Ashton Smith’s weird fiction is reprinted more often and more widely than his poetry so it’s convenient for those curious about his verse that the Internet Archive has two volumes of early work. Odes and Sonnets is from 1918 and features embellishments by illustrator Florence Lundborg whose grape-devouring peacocks nod towards the fin de [...]
A tattooed version of the Flandrin pose—and a fine tattoo it is—from photographer Rory Desmond. There’s more from his photo set here. Thanks to Thom for the tip! Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The recurrent pose archive
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