The art of Jacques Sultana

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Dies Irae.

Jacques Sultana is a French artist whose paintings of naked men are very well-realised—photo-realist almost—but like a lot of gay art don’t do much apart from say “here’s a naked man.” However, his site also has a small gallery of homoerotic fantasy drawings which are equally well-done and far more detailed and imaginative than one usually sees from gay artists. Some of these pictures remind me of Patrick Woodroffe’s highly-detailed and florid fantasy paintings.

Update: the site is still active but these particular drawings seem to have been removed.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
• The fantastic art archive

The art of LSD

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Not art inspired by LSD but drawings done whilst under its influence.

These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD—part of a test conducted by the US government during its dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950s. The artist was given a dose of LSD-25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him.

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Then there’s the whole world of blotter art, like this fairly recent Penguin logo example. Lots more blotter designs here and here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The trip goes on
• Albert Hofmann
• Hep cats

The Dawn of the Autochrome

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Young couple with motor car, c.1910. Photographer unknown.

An exhibition of extraordinary Edwardian colour photographs opens today at the National Media Museum, London Bradford.

This exhibition will open on the 25th May. Marking one hundred years of the first practical process for colour photography—the Autochrome, invented by the Lumiere brothers—the National Media Museum presents a major summer show on what has been described as “perhaps the most beautiful of all the photographic processes”.

Today, we take colour photography for granted. Yet, for many years colour photographs remained an elusive dream. One hundred years ago, the dream became a reality when the first fully practical method of colour photography appeared—the Autochrome process.

The Dawn of Colour celebrates centenary of the Autochrome and the birth of colour photography. It reveals the Edwardian world as you have probably never seen it before—in full, vibrant colour. The past isn’t always in black and white.

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The photographer’s daughter Christina at Lulworth cove,
Dorset in 1913 by Mervyn O’Gorman.

• Guardian autochrome gallery

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Fred Holland Day
• The Door in the Wall
• Edward Steichen
• Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla