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Figuras Miticas: Bailarin II (1954) by Leonora Carrington. • The 26th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists have been announced. Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam; Gay City: Volume 5 made the LGBT Anthology list, so congratulations to editors Evan J. Peterson & Vincent Kovar, and everyone else involved. I illustrated and designed the cover of that volume […]

Before he directed his first feature, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Alain Resnais had distinguished himself with a succession of short documentary films. His half-hour history of the Holocaust, Nuit et brouillard (1955), has always been the most prominent of these, although as a history it’s since been superseded by Claude Lanzmann’s exhaustive Shoah (1985). Toute […]

An illustration by John Kettelwell for The Story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1928). • “The strain in everything I write, of not being taken with the bounteousness of humankind, was also the attitude of both my parents.” Jonathan Meades talking to James Kidd about his forthcoming memoirs. • 7 Trumps From the Tarot Cards […]

Pearl Mosque, Delhi (late 1880s). I have a recurrent fascination with the paintings of historical and academic artists simply because their work has often been neglected, disdained, and rendered unavailable for so long. When art books and the critics who write them are mainly concerned with following avant-garde trends anyone who doesn’t come up to […]

Untitled etching by Etsuko Fukaya, 2005. • “By the time Scorsese met Powell, in 1975, the British director had fallen on hard times and was largely ignored by the UK film establishment.” A London office used by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is given the Blue Plaque treatment. • Ambient reminiscences at The Quietus: Wyndham […]

Follow the Leader (London, 2011) by Isaac Cordal. • “Brutalism is the decor of dystopian films, literature and comics, just as gothic is for horror.” Jonathan Meades‘ A-Z of brutalism. • Vitaly Shevchenko on the urban explorers of the ex-USSR. Related: Photos by Vitaliy Raskalov from the top of the Shanghai Tower. • Joe Banks […]

My thanks once again to Sidney Blackmore for sending me this new publication from The Beckford Society. Conversations with Beckford reprints in facsimile Cyrus Redding’s memoirs of William Beckford, a series of essays which were published in 1844 after Beckford’s death. Of particular interest to this folly enthusiast is a chapter entitled The Tower of […]

Bum (1966) by Pauline Boty. • Eleanor Birne on Pauline Boty, “the only prominent female Pop artist among a generation of famous men”. Ken Russell’s Pop Art documentary, Pop Goes the Easel (1962), which features Boty, may be seen here. Two years later Boty was back with Ken Russell playing the part of the prostitute […]

Posters by Jay Shaw for Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England which receives a US release this month. • Alvin Baltrop’s Gay New York: “the clandestine activities taking place under New York piers between 1975 and 1986″. AnOther samples some of the work on display at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. Meanwhile, BUTT has some […]

Two items of cult fixation collide in these photos of illicit exploration (1) into the irradiated exclusion zone around Pripyat (2) in northern Ukraine. According to English Russia the crew are a group of urban explorers from St Petersburg. The English Russia pages have two sets of photos with English annotations while the explorers themselves […]

Another recommendation from Paul Rumsey (thanks, Paul!), these are from a series of lithographs dated 1842–43 by Leopold Müller based upon paintings (?) by Giovanni Battista Pian, or Giovanni Battista de Pian (1813–1857). Shades again of (Giovanni Battista) Piranesi in the name, although the pictures are a lot less Piranesian than Antonio Basoli’s; the only […]

My thanks to Paul Rumsey for reminding me of the Alfabeto pittorico (1839) by Antonio Basoli (1774–1848). This is the same idea as yesterday’s pictorial alphabet but with an architectural theme. Basoli’s series of prints depicts each letter in an architectural style which matches the initial: A is for Arabia but also for aranciera (orangery). […]

Untitled glass sculpture by Richard Roberts. • Lord Horror: Reverbstorm, my collaboration with David Britton, makes The Quietus list of Literary Highlights of 2013. At the same site there’s Russell Cuzner talking to English Heretic. “His methodology takes in magick, psychogeography and horror film geekdom, along with firm roots in Britain’s industrial music culture of […]

MR James is remembered today for his ghost stories but the four collections published during his lifetime represent a small percentage of his written work. His scholarly studies inform his stories, of course, but they also contribute to a pair of popular non-fiction books which have peripheral associations with the ghost collections: Suffolk and Norfolk: […]

“Chloromgonfus detectis, a dragonfly that can detect volatile pollutants.” A speculative insect by artist Vincent Fournier. • “…a modern taxonomist straddling a Wellsian time machine with the purpose of exploring the Cenozoic era…” Butterflies tied together Vladimir Nabokov’s home, science, and writing, says Mary Ellen Hannibal. • More ghosts: Kira Cochrane on the Victorian tradition of […]

Two cover designs from Eliash Strongowski’s 30 Days—30 Covers project. My thanks once again to Dennis Cooper for placing this blog on his end-of-year lists. Meanwhile. one of the albums I designed earlier this year, Cold Mission by Logos, made the 30 Best Album Covers of 2013 list at FACT. • “Many of their more […]

December brings a new chapbook story from Supervert: Empire Creep Joint, a tale of the Empire State Building being transformed into “102 Floors of Sodom”. Or so the citizens of New York believe… Rather a Ballardian idea, if there’s any currency left in that over-used label. To find out more you’ll need to acquire a […]

Gare d’Orsay, coupe transversale (1898). Plan de Victor Laloux. The Google Art Project is currently featuring a slideshow history of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, showing the museum’s evolution from the world’s first all-electric rail terminal to its current status as a major repository of 19th-century art. The Gare d’Orsay was built to bring visitors […]

The Outsider (1956), 1963 edition; The Occult (1971), 1973 edition. The cover of the 1973 UK paperback of Colin Wilson‘s mammoth overview of occultism can still be offered as a pinnacle of hyperbole. The book itself is a very serious and informative study but its success set Wilson on a path as a writer about […]

50 Rue de Rennes (1900) by Eugène Atget. I live in the Court of the Dragon, a narrow passage that leads from the Rue de Rennes to the Rue du Dragon. It is an “impasse”; traversable only for foot passengers. Over the entrance on the Rue de Rennes is a balcony, supported by an iron […]