Category: {art}

Art

Hugh Ferriss and The Metropolis of Tomorrow

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Philosophy from The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).

I’ve procrastinated for an entire year over the idea of writing something about Hugh Ferriss and now this marvellous Flickr set has forced my hand. Ferriss (1889–1962) was a highly-regarded architectural renderer in the Twenties and Thirties, chiefly employed creating large drawings to show the clients of architects how their buildings would look when completed. But he was also an architectural theorist and his 1929 book, The Metropolis of Tomorrow, which lays out his ideas for cities of the future, was a major influence on the work I produced for the Lord Horror comics during the 1990s. Ferriss’s book appeared two years after Fritz Lang’s Metropolis but bears little resemblance to Lang’s simplistic tale, despite superficial similarities. Rather than a science fiction warning, The Metropolis of Tomorrow was a serious proposal for the creation of Art Deco-styled megacities.

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Lord Horror: Hard Core Horror #5 (1990).

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George Du Maurier’s Christmas Dream

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A Little Christmas Dream (Punch Magazine, December 26th, 1868).

Mr. L. Figuier, in the Thesis which precedes his interesting work on the world before the Flood condemns the practice of awakening the youthful mind to admiration by means of fables and Fairy Tales, and recommends in lieu thereof, the study of the Natural History of the World in which we live.

Christmas would be a bit more worthwhile with a few of these things patrolling the streets. George Du Maurier (1834–1896) gave the world the character of Svengali is his novel Trilby (1894) and that character’s name lives on even if the novel goes largely unread today. He turned to writing late when his eyesight failed and he was no longer able to maintain his career as an illustrator. Post-Beardsley, those illustrations and satires of Victorian life can seem rather stilted but VTS has examples of his more imaginative work, including this piece.

{ feuilleton } will be quiet for a couple of days while I visit family but, as is the custom here, the archive feature will be enabled to throw up random samples from the past.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Exotic France in Harbin

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French Girl.

One of the snow sculptures at the 20th International Ice-Snow Sculpture Expo in Harbin, China, which opened on Thursday. Exotic France in Harbin is the theme this year although this “French Girl” looks more like the kind of heroic revolutionary sculpture favoured by Communist regimes than anything that might originate in France. More pictures here.

Update: More and better pictures here.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dead Monuments