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One of A Pair of Peacocks (2012) by Feanne. • Jonathan Barnbrook reveals his package design for the new David Bowie CD. The Barnbrook studio has also designed the catalogue for the forthcoming V&A Bowie exhibition. And there’s more (don’t worry, it’ll be over soon): Jon Savage on When Bowie met Burroughs. • “Witches have [...]

This was a surprise. My first thought on seeing the cover for Ethel Archer’s “book of verse”, The Whirlpool, was that its swirling waters were borrowed from Harry Clarke’s typically astonishing illustration for A Descent into the Maelström by Edgar Allan Poe. The problem there is that the Ethel Archer book was published in 1911 [...]

Quantum Entanglement by Duda Lanna. • An hour-long electronica mix (with the Düül rocking out at the end) by Chris Carter for Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel Radio Show. • “…a clothes-optional Rosicrucian jamboree.”: Strange Flowers on the paintings of Elisàr von Kupffer. • A Paste review of volume 2 of The Graphic Canon has some [...]

The ideal follow-up to yesterday’s post would have been David Wheatley’s 1979 film for the BBC’s Omnibus series dramatising the life and works of the Brothers Grimm. This week was the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales; I’ve never seen Wheatley’s Grimm film which—for the moment—remains unavailable. There [...]

Heartsick (2011) by Kelly Durette. • Now that Scott Walker’s Bish Bosch album is out and causing the usual consternation, the spotlight-shy singer/composer has been doing a surprising amount of promotional interviews. Simon Hattenstone talked to him for the Guardian at the end of last month; this week it was John Doran’s turn at The [...]

Tjur och Matador III (Bull and Matador III) (1926). My thanks again to Will at 50 Watts for generously sending me this selection of paintings by Swedish artist Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, or GAN as he was known. These pictures alone show him to have been a very versatile artist, ranging from the late Symbolism of his [...]

Predicadors del be i del mal (c. 1928–1930). My thanks to Will at 50 Watts for sending these experimental photos by Spanish artists Eduardo Chicharro (1873–1949) and Gregorio Prieto, neither of whose work I’d looked at before. Prieto is of most interest here (that’s him in photo five with the metalwork wrapped around his head) [...]

“Venus moves across the Sun in this image captured by Japan’s satellite Hinode, on June 6, 2012.” Via. The imagery in Ah Pook covered a wide range of ideas. A train full of Mayan Gods for instance travelled through various time zones to end up alongside a carnival in a red brick town outside St [...]

Til Eulenspiegel by Urban Janke. From Twenty Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte at 50 Watts. • Rorschach Audio by Joe Banks is “essential reading for everyone interested in air-traffic control, anechoic chambers, artificial oxygen carriers, audio art, bell-ringing, cocktail parties, cognitive science, communications interference, compost, the death penalty, Electronic Voice Phenomena, evangelism, evolutionary biology, experimental music, [...]

Le Faune (1923) by Carlos Schwabe. • “When I recently attended a conference in China, many of the presenters left their papers on the cloud—Google Docs, to be specific. You know how this story ends: they got to China and there was no Google. Shit out of luck. Their cloud-based Gmail was also unavailable, as [...]

The Martyrdom of St Denis (1885). Léon Bonnat’s depiction of St Denis reaching for his detached head might be included with St Lucy (always shown with her dish of eyeballs) and St Peter of Verona (seldom without an axe stuck in his skull) in a facetious list of Saints Do The Funniest Things. Bonnat’s gory [...]

HJ Ford (1894). “Do you see that great tree!” quoth the witch; and she pointed to a tree which stood beside them. “It’s quite hollow inside. You must climb to the top, and then you’ll see a hole, through which you can let yourself down and get deep into the tree. I’ll tie a rope [...]

The Opium Den (1881) by William Lamb Picknell. The romantic side of the addiction business. Needless to say, there’s a lot more of this kind of thing. The ultimate opium-related pictorial art is still Attila Sassy’s remarkable Opium Dreams from 1909, a series of drawings which can be seen at 50 Watts in high-quality scans. [...]

Untitled (1978) by GR Santosh at 50 Watts. • Evertype Publishing produces a range of Lewis Carroll special editions including Ailice’s Àventurs in Wunnerland (a translation in Scots), Alicia in Terra Mirabili (a Latin version), and an edition printed in the Nyctographic Square Alphabet devised by Carroll. • This week’s bookshop animations: Type Books, Toronto [...]

Flower Me Gently (2010) by Linn Olofsdotter. Yes, this is one of those lazy end-of-year retrospectives, a look back at all the artists whose work was highlighted in the weekend posts for 2011. Thanks to BibliOdyssey, Form is Void and 50 Watts for so often pointing the way. Blasphemous Rumours (2009/2010) by Ryan Martin. The [...]

Typographic Composition (1924) by Teresa Zarnowerówna from a post about Polish graphic design at 50 Watts. • “Direct action is a matter of acting as if you were already free… [...] …the link between military and money systems remains the dirty secret of capitalism.” A lengthy and essential interview with “anarchist anthropologist” David Graeber, author [...]

Salammbô by Alastair (Hans Henning Voight) from Harry Crosby‘s Red Skeletons (1927). Dover published a new collection of Alastair’s drawings in September. “A Taste of Honey showed working-class women from a working-class woman’s point of view, had a gay man as a central and sympathetic figure, and a black character who was neither idealised nor [...]

Der Tod als Erwürger (1851) by Alfred Rethel. The Danse Macabre seems to be a theme of the month given recent postings at BibliOdyssey, Wurzletod and 50 Watts. In addition to posting examples, BibliOdyssey points the way to some original sources at Düsseldorf, four of them books that feature engravings by German artist Alfred Rethel [...]

Black Cat on a Chair (1850–1860) by Andrew L Von Wittkamp. • “A little bit of acid, lots of weed, and too much Castaneda and I was ready to move from the magical realm of Middle Earth into a world that was much stranger than any involving hairy dwarves and white wizards…” Too Much to [...]

Art by Tessa Farmer. • An exhibition of Tessa Farmer’s art is running at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London, until October 30th. On Saturday, October 1st, Strange Attractor hosts Good Neighbours: Faeries, Folklore and the Art of Tessa Farmer also at Viktor Wynd. • Unearthing The Psychedelic Harp: “David Moats talks to harpist and songwriter [...]