A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Continuing the delve into back issues of Jugend magazine, the German fin de siècle periodical of “art and life”, this post covers the year 1898. As before, Jugend was so copiously illustrated that the selection here can only scratch the surface. Anyone wanting to see more of these graphics is advised to explore the bound volumes at the Heidelberg University archive. The two books for 1898 can be found here and here.
La Roux: ‘Of course Lady Gaga’s not my thing’ | Elly Jackson on pop life, androgyny and related matters.
L’Androgyne by Alexandre Séon (1890).
Related to yesterday’s post, I’ve been re-reading various books this week for details of the most curious character associated with the French Symbolist movement, novelist and occultist Joséphin Péladan (1859–1918), also known as Sâr Peladan, a Babylonian title he bestowed upon himself as more befitting his adopted role as Rosicrucian mystic. Péladan’s writings and occult art theories spurred many of the painters who banded together as part of his Salon de la Rose+Croix, a kind of anti-salon intended to stand in opposition to what the Sâr saw as the drab realism of the Impressionists and the staid historicism of academic painters. One gets the impression reading about Péladan that he was probably a rather preposterous figure—his obsession with androgyny caused him to change his forename from Joseph to Joséphin yet he kept his length of bristling beard. But, like Oscar Wilde in London, his presence in the pool of fin de siècle art creates considerable ripples. Alexandre Séon, whose frontispiece above was created for Péladan’s semi-autobiographical essay, L’Androgyne, was particularly devoted to him, as was Carlos Schwabe. Séon’s picture depicts “the androgyne Samas, stupefied by the sexual enigma”, a character with whom Péladan fully identified as he describes his youth and its apparent state of androgynous grace.
One doesn’t need a Rosicrucian salon today for examples of creative androgyny, of course, all you have to do is go to Flickr where you’ll find creatures such as the boy above from Roman Mitchenko’s photostream. The photos there are at the fashion end of the spectrum; for more of an amateur or semi-professional perspective there are groups like the Androgyny pool, and the Mommy, I want to be androgynous! pool, the latter featuring many striking boyish girls and girlish boys.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Arthur Tress’s Hermaphrodite
• Carlos Schwabe’s Fleurs du Mal
• Czanara’s Hermaphrodite Angel
Hermaphrodite behind Venus and Mercury (1973).
We had Austin Spare and absinthe yesterday. Looking at some of Arthur Tress‘s photographs today I was reminded me of one of Spare’s hermaphrodite studies (below). The photo is from a series, Theater of the Mind, which Tress created during the 1970s.
Gynander: Mutation by Besz-Mass (1955).
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Czanara’s Hermaphrodite Angel
Coincidence abounds: on Wednesday I was following a few referral URLs to see who’d been linking here and was led to a Lexic.us page about hermaphrodites which in turn had me looking again at the wonderful Borghese Hermaphroditus in the Louvre. Thursday’s postal delivery brought issue 1 of The Gnostic which prominently features the Louvre sculpture on its cover. Inside there’s my portrait of William Burroughs illustrating a piece about Burroughs’s Gnostic identification by Sven Davisson. (I linked to another essay on the same theme in 2007.) The Gnostic is an excellent publication which, the Alan Moore interview aside, I’ve only skimmed through so far. Alan’s piece is very enlightening since the discussion stays fixed around religion, science and the occult and includes the most thorough extrapolation I’ve seen to date of his long work in progress, Jerusalem. There’s also a transcript of part of his William Blake piece from 2001, Angel Passage. If you want to know more I suggest you order a copy ($12 / £8 / €9) from Bardic Press.
Coincidence further abounds as this arrived just as Pádraig Ó Méalóid publicly announced his discovery of the long-lost and unpublished third issue of Alan Moore’s Big Numbers. This was Alan’s self-published “real life” comic series from 1989 which got off to a great start then fatally collapsed when artist Bill Sienkiewicz, then his replacement, Al Columbia, both dropped out of the project. It’s one of the great lost projects of contemporary comics and seeing the third issue sustaining the quality of the first two is deeply frustrating.
The last piece of Moore news concerns The Mindscape of Alan Moore once again which is now available to buy through iTunes. $9.99 will only get you the feature-length documentary, however. If you buy the double-disc DVD you also get my groovy interface design and an extra disc of interviews with major comic artists.
Update: Alan Moore has certainly ruled the week in this household with the delivery on Friday of The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, a new edition of George Khoury’s book-length autobiographical interview with Alan, and an essential purchase for anyone with more than a cursory interest in Alan’s life and work. The book features copious artwork examples by many Moore collaborators including my CD designs and the cover for the forthcoming Moon & Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• William Burroughs: Gnostic visionary