From a film adapted from Borges to a film co-written by the man himself. Invasion (1969) is not to be confused with the British science fiction film of the same name made three years earlier, this is an Argentinian production and a much stranger piece of work. Hugo Santiago is an Argentinian director who moved […]
Another collaboration between William Strang and JB Clarke, Sindbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was published in 1895. The Sindbad text is from Edward William Lane’s popular (and bowdlerised) translation of the Thousand and One Nights; Ali Baba is from the translation by Rev. Jonathan Scott. The illustrations follow the same […]
The paintings and illustrations of Scottish artist William Strang (1859–1921) were much more typical of their time than the bold drawings in this 1895 edition of Rudolf Erich Raspe’s tall tales. Not all the illustrations are Strang’s work, some are by JB Clark, and there are many more in the book as a whole. Years […]
Limbroglio (URBS V). Drypoint prints by a French artist who also has a nice line in moody renderings of European cities—Paris, Venice, Rome—which occasionally stray into architectural speculation. Outright fantasia is more evident in these mysterious views more of which may be seen at the Velly gallery. Les grandes Manoeuvres. Paysage aux mollusques. Elsewhere on […]
The Blue Girl (2013) by Sungwon. • “Meanwhile, in her parents’ room [Max] Ernst painted aardvarks eating ants and big human hands around the windows. ‘Sexual connotations, I think,’ she says shyly.” Agnès Poirier talks to Cécile Eluard about her childhood among the Surrealists. • “Thrilling and prophetic”: why film-maker Chris Marker‘s radical images influenced […]
More new work of mine has been unveiled in the past few days so I can show these here. The Buried Life and Cities and Thrones are a pair of fantasy novels by new author Carrie Patel being published by Angry Robot. I was asked to provide something in an engraved style set against a […]
Fritz Hegenbart was an Austrian artist some of whose work has appeared here before in posts about Jugend magazine. Hegenbart provided many illustrations and embellishments for Jugend and other journals circa 1900, the examples here being mostly from a feature in the collected Kunst und Handwerk for 1902/03, a magazine I was rifling through last […]
King’s Cloak (2012) by Alice Lin. • The week in Finnegans Wake: illustrations by John Vernon Lord for a new Folio Society edition; The Guardian‘s review from 1939; Christina Scholz explores Joyce’s use of the Ant and the Grasshopper fable; Sheng Yun wonders when Dai Congrong will compete the first Chinese translation of the book; […]
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 […]
Éditions Gallimard, France, 1960. Yesterday’s post proved popular so it seemed worthwhile taking another look at the book which birthed Planète magazine. The main problem The Morning of the Magicians presents for an art director is how to encapsulate such wildly diverse contents in a cover design. To judge from the examples here, most people […]
Planète was a French magazine of “Fantastic realism” which ran throughout the 1960s. I’ve never seen a copy but sight of the immediately recognisable covers has always fascinated because this was the magazine established in the wake of the huge success of The Morning of the Magicians (1960), a unique “Introduction to Fantastic Realism” by […]
The Chimera (1867) by Gustave Moreau. It’s no easy task to catalogue all the chimeras that proliferate between the numerous examples in the work of Gustave Moreau to those produced before the First World War. Consider this a sample, then, and a pointer to further research. Several of these artists—Malczewski, Ernst, Brauner—returned to theme many […]
Chimera (1923). One of the many commendable things about Dreamers of Decadence (1971) by Philippe Jullian is the use of the figure of the chimera to describe the impulse that drove the development of Symbolist art in the late 19th century. A chimera is a fabulous, hybrid creature which is also a metaphor for an […]
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 […]
My thanks once again to DR Tenge for notifying me of a new post of drawings by French artist Gilles Rimbault. More marvellous work that this time tends to the metamorphic rather than the erotic. No details as to date or provenance but considering how little there is of Rimbault’s work online it’s good to […]
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 […]
The pulp fiction of the early 20th century favoured remote or uncharted islands as locations for the bizarre and the fantastic; in isolated jungles all manner of savage and grotesque behaviour could take place out of sight of the civilised world. Islands are secure from interference; they can be visited by accident or intention, and […]
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 […]
Viriconium (Millennium/Gollancz, 2000). Painting: The Gates of the Inferno (no date). The web continues to be an incomparable treat for anyone interested in art history. One of the great advantages of the BBC’s Your Paintings site is having the opportunity to see pictures by artists whose output would rarely be deemed important enough to appear […]
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 […]
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