{ feuilleton }

Avatar

• • • Being a journal by artist and designer John Coulthart, cataloguing interests, obsessions and passing enthusiasms.

Archive for the ‘Arthur Machen’ tag

 

Hodgsonian vibrations

utpatel.jpg

Illustration by Frank Utpatel from the 1947 Arkham House edition of Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder. “Presently I got hold of myself a bit, and marked out a pentacle hurriedly with chalk on the polished floor; and there I sat in it almost until dawn. And all the time, away up the corridor, the door of the [...]

Posted in {books}, {electronica}, {horror}, {music}, {occult} | 5 comments »

 


Abrahadabra

abrahadabra01.jpg

01 First (1985). I’ve linked to so many publications at the Internet Archive I’m a little surprised it’s taken me this long to find something featuring my own work. Abrahadabra was a Dutch periodical covering subjects familiar to readers of the esoteric magazines of the 1980s (RE/Search, Rapid Eye, etc): Industrial music of the TG/Psychic [...]

Posted in {magazines}, {music}, {occult}, {work} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 130

teraoka.jpg

Sarah and Writhing Octopus (New Wave Series, 1992) by Masami Teraoka. Strange Flowers continues to push all my buttons. For a while now I’d been intent on writing something about the strange (unbuilt) temples designed by German artist/obsessive naturist Fidus (Hugo Höppener) but I reckon James has done a better job than I would have [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {comics}, {cormac}, {electronica}, {film}, {horror}, {illustrators}, {magazines}, {music}, {painting}, {science fiction}, {theatre}, {work} | 3 comments »

 


Rex Ingram’s The Magician

magician1.jpg

The Magician (1926), Rex Ingram’s curious occult horror film, receives a rare screening with live music accompaniment at the Brighton Fringe Festival on Tuesday, 22nd May. The film is notable for being based on the 1908 Somerset Maugham novel of the same name whose modern-day magus character, Oliver Haddo, was modelled on Aleister Crowley. The [...]

Posted in {books}, {film}, {horror}, {occult} | 10 comments »

 


The Beckford Journal

beckford.jpg

‘Reason’ and ‘Fancy’ are my Sun and Moon. The first dispels vapours and clears up the face of things, the other throws over Nature a dim haze and may be styled the Queen of Delusions. William Beckford My thanks to Sidney Blackmore, Secretary of the Beckford Society, who posted me a copy of the latest [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {books}, {fantasy} | Comments Off

 


Weekend links 91

santosh.jpg

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 [...]

Posted in {animation}, {art}, {books}, {comics}, {design}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {fantasy}, {film}, {gay}, {horror}, {music}, {painting}, {photography} | Comments Off

 


Weekend links 89

gnoli.jpg

A drawing from Bestiario Moderno by Domenico Gnoli (1933–1970). RIP Russell Hoban. Nina Allan celebrates a favourite writer while David Mitchell, writing in 2005, pays tribute to Riddley Walker. For me the gulf between Hoban and many of his contemporaries could be measured by his entry in the Writer’s Rooms feature the Guardian Review was [...]

Posted in {animation}, {art}, {books}, {burroughs}, {design}, {electronica}, {fantasy}, {film}, {horror}, {music}, {politics} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 58

delpozo1.jpg

Oya by Alberto del Pozo (1945–1992). Also known as Yansa, Oya is Changó’s third wife. She is the goddess of the winds and of lightning and is mistress of the cemetery gates. Passionate and brave she fights by her husband’s side if needed. Her favorite offerings are papaya, eggplant and geraniums. From Santeria at BibliOdyssey. [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {magazines}, {music}, {occult}, {painting}, {photography}, {religion}, {science} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 49

ceranic1.jpg

Star City by Tomislav Ceranic. • Noted in the blogosphere this week: A Journey Round My Skull underwent a transmutation into 50 Watts; a blog devoted to artist, designer & illustrator Jessie M King; “The arts and musicks of the supranatural” at Secret Lexicon; From the Farm, Railroads, Sewing Machines & Beyond, lengthy reminiscences from [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {beardsley}, {books}, {borges}, {cities}, {design}, {electronica}, {fantasy}, {film}, {illustrators}, {lovecraft}, {music}, {photography}, {technology} | 8 comments »

 


Weekend links 45

sa4.jpg

That essential journal of esoteric culture, Strange Attractor, announced a fourth number this week sporting a psychedelic cover which may be the work of Julian House (no credit is given on the SA site). As to the contents: From Haiti and Hong Kong to the fourth dimension and beyond: discover the secrets of madness in [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {burroughs}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {horror}, {music}, {occult}, {science} | 2 comments »

 


A playlist for Halloween: Drones and atmospheres

zeit.jpg

Cover painting by Edgar Froese. I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, Without knowledge or lustre or name. HP Lovecraft, The Haunter of the Dark, 1935. It’s become traditional to do this each Halloween so here we go again with another [...]

Posted in {electronica}, {film}, {horror}, {music}, {occult} | 14 comments »

 


The King in Yellow

king_ace.jpg

Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink beneath the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. The King in Yellow, Act i, Scene 2. Rearranging the bookshelves this week had me [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {fantasy}, {horror}, {illustrators}, {lovecraft}, {science fiction} | 4 comments »

 


The Great God Pan

pan_daphnis.jpg

Pan teaching Daphnis to play the panpipes; Roman copy of a Greek original from the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE by Heliodoros. “The worship of Pan never has died out,” said Mortimer. “Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last. [...]

Posted in {art nouveau}, {art}, {beardsley}, {books}, {burroughs}, {design}, {film}, {gay}, {horror}, {illustrators}, {magazines}, {music}, {occult}, {religion}, {sculpture}, {symbolists} | 13 comments »

 


The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

willows.jpg

Light play on the river Thame by net_efekt. …the major products of Mr. Blackwood attain a genuinely classic level, and evoke as does nothing else in literature an awed convinced sense of the imminence of strange spiritual spheres of entities. The well-nigh endless array of Mr. Blackwood’s fiction includes both novels and shorter tales, the [...]

Posted in {books}, {electronica}, {horror}, {lovecraft}, {music} | 6 comments »

 


Arthur Machen book covers

machen1.jpg

The House of Souls (1923).  Well, a handful anyway. The late RT Gault put a page of Machen cover scans on his book site which also included the excellent Absolute Elsewhere catalogue of “Fantastic, Visionary, and Esoteric Literature in the 1960s and 1970s”. The cover for The House of Souls is a very odd piece [...]

Posted in {art}, {beardsley}, {books}, {dance}, {horror}, {illustrators} | 6 comments »

 


The book covers archive

clockwork_cover.jpg

Previous posts about book covers or cover design. • Alembic and Ligier Richier • Covering Joyce • The Eighth Court • On self-imitation • In the Key of Blue by John Addington Symonds • Design as virus #15: David Pelham’s Clockwork Orange • Tentacles #1: The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ • Chute libre science [...]

Posted in | 3 comments »

 


February sunset

sunset.jpg

Today at 17:21. This kind of view always reminds me of the opening line from The Hill of Dreams (1907) by Arthur Machen: “There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened.”

Posted in {photography} | Comments Off

 


The art of Hubert Stowitts, 1892–1953

stowitts1.jpg

Left: Stowitts photgraphed by Nickolas Muray, 1922. Hubert Julian Stowitts had a number of careers, including dancer, film actor, painter, designer and metaphysician. As a dancer he worked with Anna Pavlova, who discovered him in California in 1915 and took him on tour around the world. His statuesque figure was used by Rex Ingram for [...]

Posted in {art}, {dance}, {film}, {gay}, {occult}, {painting} | 4 comments »

 


The art of John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1836–1893

grimshaw1.jpg

Spirit of the Night (1879). Few people recognise the name of John Atkinson Grimshaw today but anyone who’s bought a birthday or greeting card in Britain will have seen his Spirit of the Night fairy painting, one of a generic series he produced in the 1870s that remains very popular despite the painter’s obscurity. Grimshaw [...]

Posted in {art}, {fantasy}, {painting} | Comments Off

 


A playlist for Halloween

rethel.jpg

Der Tod als Erwürger (1851) by Alfred Rethel. It’s a fact (sad or otherwise) that a substantial percentage of my music collection would make good Halloween listening but in that percentage a number of works are prominent as spooky favourites. So here’s another list to add to those already clogging the world’s servers, in no [...]

Posted in {electronica}, {horror}, {lovecraft}, {music} | 4 comments »

 


 




 

tracker

 


 

“feed your head”