{ feuilleton }

Oz magazine no. 15, October 1968. The psychedelic art of Australian artist Martin Sharp has featured here on several occasions. Unlike his British and American contemporaries who maintained a single graphic style, Sharp was a versatile artist whose work could range from loose, often cartoony drawing and painting to very detailed collage designs; he was […]

Who was A. Reinheimer? That’s a good question to which I have no answer other than telling you that he or she was an illustrator for German humour periodical Fliegende Blätter circa 1900. These drawings caught my eye for being rare examples of the Art Nouveau style deployed for comedic purposes. The intent was no […]

Jackpot is a 10-minute film by Adam Baran about a gay teen in 1994 who goes looking for a stash of abandoned gay porn mags. Baran says: I really made the film because I loved teen movies and never really saw one for gay kids that both addressed their sexuality in the way that straight […]

Wyrd Daze is a new digital zine edited by Leigh Wright, the first issue of which is now available via a subscription of $5 (Canadian) or about £3. For that you receive a 66-page pdf plus access to music mixes and podcast files. The contents are the kind of thing which finds particular favour here: […]

American artist JK Potter is another photo-montagist whose work since the 1970s has been very popular as illustration for books of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Potter’s portrait of HP Lovecraft on the October 1979 issue of Heavy Metal was my first introduction to his work. The original version of that picture can be seen […]

More Aubrey Beardsley ephemera. These pages are from the bound edition of The Studio for 1894, reviews of two of Beardsley’s earliest publications: the first editions of Le Morte d’Arthur (which was published in multiple volumes), and the illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé which sealed Beardsley’s reputation as a major force in the art of […]

Cover of Eye no. 86 vol. 22, 2013, a type special. Detail from 1970s Letratone brochure, overprinted by character from the Marsh stencil alphabet. The new edition of Eye magazine includes my essay on the evolution and aesthetics of steampunk. In the same issue Rick Poynor’s feature on the prints of Eduardo Paolozzi mentions a […]

Aubrey Beardsley in the year 1893 was 21, and on the threshold of being catapulted to fame (and notoriety) via his illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. Some of Beardsley’s drawings in the distinctive style he called “Japanesque” had already appeared in The Pall Mall Magazine, and he was hard at work on some 600 illustrations […]

This week PingMag was looking at Czech film posters. This one by Bedrich Dlouhy is for the belated 1970 release of Kurosawa’s Rashomon. • In October Alison Goldfrapp curates an exhibition for The Lowry, Salford, featuring her favourite art. Examples will include work by Leonora Carrington, Lotte Reiniger and Henry Darger so I’ll definitely be […]

A new addition at the Ubuweb archives that’s catnip for anyone interested in the history of electronic music. Electronic Music Review was Reynold Weidenaar & Robert Moog’s short-lived journal devoted to the world of electronic music at a time when the field was rapidly growing away from the academic, “serious” side of musical composition and […]

The current issue of The Wire has a great appraisal by Keith Moliné of the musical history of Cabaret Voltaire, a well-timed piece given the recent announcement of forthcoming reissues from Mute Records. Having been a Cabophile from the start I’m rather biased but the Wire piece has had me listening to the early albums […]

Icarus (1974–75) by Lili Ország. • The Cabaret Voltaire albums released on the Virgin label in the 1980s have suffered the same shoddy treatment on CD as other Virgin reissues, a situation to be rectified in November with an extensive revisiting of the CV back catalogue. The long-overdue reappraisal will also include the release of […]

Untitled (Peyote Vision), 1955, Cameron (from Semina journal, no. 1). Thanks to Erik Davis for drawing my attention to a small online exhibition of Marjorie Cameron artwork and documentary material. Semina was the magazine founded by Cameron’s artist friend, Wallace Berman. The exhibition note tells us that: Wallace Berman’s only exhibition at Ferus Gallery in […]

More Beardsley ephemera, and more from the recently upgraded NYPL Digital Collections. These US ads for The Yellow Book date from late 1894 to early 1895, a couple of months before Oscar Wilde was arrested and Aubrey Beardsley had to leave the magazine despite having no connection with Wilde’s activities. What’s most interesting for me […]

A recent addition to the Internet Archive, Keramic Studio was a monthly American ceramics magazine whose first number dates from May, 1899. If you’re like I am these days, and always looking out for new sources of period design, this is a useful title for the large number of decoration templates. The examples here from […]

Nathanial Krill at the Time Node (1978) by Richard Glyn Jones and Robert Meadley. Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine resumed publication in 1978 after a hiatus of two years following the end of its New Worlds Quarterly paperback format. The issues for the years 1978 and 79 are the oddest in the entire run of […]

Ekaterina Panikanova paints on books. Back in 2009 I bought a book of Art Nouveau illustration and design which contained an intriguing drawing by an Austrian artist, Franz Wacik (1883–1938). At the time there was little of Wacik’s other work online so I was delighted by the latest post at 50 Watts which showcases a selection […]

It’s a shame that artist Edmund Lewandowski (1914–1998) didn’t do more covers for Fortune magazine as I enjoy this combination of painting and design a great deal. The cover above shows how well you can illustrate a farming theme without resort to a view of rolling fields and busy tractors; the cover for March 1948 […]

Yet more from the Fortune magazine scans at Chris Mullen’s VTS site. The covers here are all by American artist Antonio Petruccelli (1907–1994), a very versatile illustrator whose work is well-represented at VTS. In addition to his work for other magazines there’s a small selection of unused Fortune designs.

Chemicals by Ronald Searle, November 1963. More from the pages of Fortune magazine via the labour of love which is the VTS archive. A good reminder of the degree to which some magazines used to support many different kinds of illustrators and designers. The serious piece by Ronald Searle was a surprise since I thought […]