The lady may be dead but the art here is very much alive. The second great video of the week comes via the always essential Homotography, a short piece by director Roy Raz whose film features a pair of tattooed lesbians, a tennis match involving meat (or something), boys stripping out of their underwear to [...]
left: Maria (2010); right: Dawn (2010). British artist Jessica Harrison undermines the saccharine innocence of porcelain figurines in a manner which would no doubt appeal to a Surrealist and black humorist like Jan Svankmajer. As well as these recent pieces, her website features further contemporary takes on Surrealism including a number of pencil drawings, one [...]
Proposal for Schloss Falkenstein (c. 1883). A slight return to Ludwig II. Schloss Falkenstein would have been another beetling edifice in the manner of Schloss Neuschwanstein had it ever been built, and judging by this view it might have been even more grandiose. The painting is one of the proposals by stage designer Christian Jank [...]
I did have another Ludwig post planned for today but that’s been set aside for a different kind of fabulosity following the news that Kenneth Anger has made a new film. Yes, jaws hit the floor… Italian fashion house Missoni commissioned Anger to make a short promo for their Fall/Winter collection and you can see [...]
More Ludwigiana. Schloss Linderhof was Ludwig II of Bavaria’s miniature Versailles at Oberammergau and is a key location in Visconti’s film about the King. The house itself is a riot of gilded rococo which isn’t really to my taste but you can make your own judgement by taking a tour at the palace website or [...]
This weekend’s film viewing was a DVD of Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig (1972), something I’ve seen in parts before but don’t recall ever having watched all the way through. I enjoyed it on the whole although Visconti’s “hose-piping” camera style and crash zooms are frequently annoying. Helmut Berger was very good as the tragic King of [...]
“The Go-Go wonder of Paris — That’s space girl. Transistors never wear down, they just go on and on — Even her heart is made of vinyl — It’s a marvy life — With nothing else to do but dance — Why not? – Love? — Forget it, baby — Not for her —” From [...]
A Secret Wish (1985). Design by the London Design Partnership. The dark Religions are departed & sweet Science reigns — William Blake It’s a hallmark of musical obsession when you find yourself buying the same album over and over. Propaganda’s meisterwerk from 1985, A Secret Wish, was finally released in a definitive double-CD version this [...]
top left: Gordon Ertz; top right: George M Richards. bottom left: Constance Wheeler; bottom right: Boris Artzybasheff. Covers from an American adventure story magazine which ran from 1925–1935. Very lavish designs compared to the pulps it was competing against. From the excellent selection at MagazineArt.org. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The illustrators archive Previously [...]
A couple of examples of fetish and bondage art by American artist Taylor Buck. An interesting technique is always welcome in gay art and I like the the stylised quality of these pictures. Bondage art especially lends itself to black-and-white renderings. Taylor Buck is open to commissions and also requests any photos from interested parties [...]
In a similar vein to the work of Gilles Rimbault and other erotic fantasists is Ran Akiyoshi, a Japanese artist and illustrator. Akiyoshi’s work manages to be even more obscure than the Europeans, being virtually undocumented outside Japanese websites, hence the absence of titles and dates for these examples. This is surprising given the quasi-Surrealist [...]
The relaxing of constraints in the 1960s produced a breed of artist which hardly seems to exist any more, invariably male and equally at home illustrating generic fantasy as producing delicately-rendered and frequently weird erotica. French artist Gilles Rimbault is one such, as was British underground artist Jim Leon, and another Frenchman, Raymond Bertrand. Unlike [...]
An Eruption of Vesuvius, Seen from Portici (c.1774–6) by Joseph Wright of Derby. Joseph Wright of Derby captured the eruptions of Vesuvius in several pictures of which this is one of the more spectacular examples. The painter enjoyed spectacle as he also the rendering of chiaroscuro effects so it’s no wonder he was attracted to [...]
Planet of the Apes Magazine #15 (1975), art by Bob Larkin. I never read any of Marvel Comics’ Planet of the Apes titles but the painted covers of the American editions are evidence of a distinctly lurid imagination. An excess of drugs—this was the Seventies, after all—or mere enthusiasm? You decide. Related: “The Soft Intelligence”: [...]
The Fool. I’d like this photo series by young British photographer Jak Flash even if it didn’t feature attractive men; the eye candy is icing on a thaumaturgic cake. The Major Arcana takes the Trumps of the Tarot as its inspiration and manages to reinterpret the symbolism whilst retaining the hieratic nature of the traditional [...]
Ghost Clock by Yee Ling Wan (2005). We’ve had skeleton clocks and mystery clocks this week, ghost clocks would seem the next logical step. There don’t seem to be many devices which fit the label unfortunately but this pair are interesting enough. Yee Ling Wan’s clock is relatively cheap (around £70) compared to yesterday’s antiques [...]
Yesterday’s post concerned skeleton clocks so I have to follow up with something about mystery clocks, those fascinating devices whose hands move without any apparent attachment to gears or clockwork. It’s the glass that moves, of course, and the trick is easily puzzled out in many of the pieces with circular faces. Rather more ingenious [...]
Behold the complexity of the Smith of Clerkenwell skeleton clock from 1865, one of many such intricate devices at this site devoted to the collection, restoration and construction of skeleton clocks old and new. The Clerkenwell manufacturers also made a musical version of this machine and I like this moonphase astronomical clock from 1870. Don’t [...]
This volume appears to be in print now, the Portuguese edition of The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, a unique fantasy anthology compiled in 2003 by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts. The new edition is published by Saida de Emergência and translated by Luís Rodrigues, João Seixas and Vítor Morta. [...]
Planet. American glass artist Josh Simpson takes the paperweight-as-miniature-world to its logical conclusion by creating series of hyper-detailed spheres he calls Planets. He continues the extraterrestrial theme by also creating his own version of tektite meteor glass (below) embellished with iridescent interiors. His site is worth a browse for other glass artefacts such as his [...]
A poster by Kazumasa Nagai. • Franco Maria Ricci creates the world’s largest maze. “The former publisher said he first confided his ambition to Jorge Luis Borges, who characteristically told him the world’s largest maze already existed and was called a desert.” Related: Mirror, Mask, Labyrinth, a review of two new collections of Borges’ poetry. [...]
La Menace (1994). Two paintings by Princess Marsi Paribatra, a member of the royal family of Thailand who lists Dalí, Arcimboldo and Titian among her artistic influences. If it seems surprising that a princess should not only be an accomplished painter but also be possessed of a distinctly vivid imagination we might ask why this [...]
Salomé (1909). I thought this current thread was finished yesterday but it seems not. Julius Klinger (1876–1942) was an Austrian artist and designer whose early work can be found in the first numbers of Jugend magazine. Subsequent work includes a number of erotic illustrations such as top-heavy Salomé here, a depiction which startles when you [...]
Yet another Salomé, this 1927 edition being a beautifully stylised Art Deco version by John Vassos (1898–1985), a Greek artist who moved to America in the 1920s. There aren’t many examples of these drawings online, unfortunately, I love to see a complete set of the illustrations. Salomé’s underarm hair is a detail one can’t imagine [...]
An illustration by René Bull (1872–1942) from The Russian Ballet (1913) by AE Johnson. Bull seems to be primarily known as one of the many illustrators of that Golden Age staple, The Arabian Nights, although his interpretation is a little too comical for my taste. You can judge for yourself here. Other Salomés turning up [...]
A page from Johann Theodor de Bry’s Neiw Kunstliches Alphabet (1595) which can be found in a free PDF version here, the scans being taken from a Victorian reprint. The late, lamented Giornale Nuovo featured some of these curious letter designs in 2005. Each capital is embellished with various symbolic figures—Moses appears perched on the [...]
If someone hasn’t already named these things mantlers you know it’s only a matter of time. The photo on the left is Johan by Michelle Martinoli from a series she calls Body Sculptures. On the right is Jeremy by Jamie Luca, part of a set at Homotography.
Cover design by Philip Gough. Ghosts, Spooks and Spectres (1972 reprint). Editor Charles Molin collected nineteen ghost stories by writers including Oscar Wilde (The Canterville Ghost), Charles Dickens (The Signal-Man), J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Madame Crowl’s Ghost) and HG Wells (The Inexperienced Ghost). This was one of my favourite books when I was ten-years old. [...]
Chrome Hoof photographed by Steve Bliss. How to describe London’s Chrome Hoof? A difficult proposition but that hasn’t stopped people trying. The BBC labels them a “10+ piece glam clad death disco outfit” which isn’t a bad start. Their record label offers more detail: Cathedral bassist Leo Smee started a bass and drums duo under [...]
Poster for Mademoiselle (1970) by Franciszek Starowieyski. Work has cranked into overdrive this week so posting will no doubt be minimal until some semblance of normality is restored. I can however mention two essential exhibitions which will be running through the forthcoming months. Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech [...]
Rammellzee. I consider that immortality is the only goal worth striving for: immortality in space. Man is an artefact created for space travel. William Burroughs, 1982 We have to leave this tasteless mould of a planet. Rammellzee, 2004 It’s fitting that a post about the late Rammellzee should follow one about Brion Gysin even if [...]
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