The Time Machine (1960). The turning over of the calendar from one year to the next makes this day the ideal moment to write something about HG Wells’ celebrated story. Having re-read The Magic Shop before Christmas I decided to refresh my reading habit—lapsed these past months due to pressure of work—by revisiting more of [...]
La Hora del Fantasma (no date) by Joaquim Pla Janini. • Many of the art links featured here are tips from Thom Ayres, so it’s only right to point to his new album project which he’s funding through Kickstarter and embellishing with his own nature photography. • Anne Billson is another writer beguiled by Philippe [...]
…the growths of that garden were such as no terrestrial sun could have fostered, and Dwerulas said that their seed was of like origin with the globe. There were pale, bifurcated trunks that strained upwards as if to disroot themselves from the ground, unfolding immense leaves like the dark and ribbed wings of dragons. There [...]
Title spread for The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (2011) edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. I was surprised this week to find myself nominated as Best Artist in the World Fantasy Awards. The results will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention in November. Among the books nominated for Best Anthology is the Thackery [...]
The post title sounds like a psychedelic album but the illustrations are from The Garden of Kama (1901), allegedly a collection of Indian love poems “translated by Laurence Hope”. The translator’s real name was Adela Florence Nicolson who no doubt wished to do for India what Edward Fitzgerald had done for Persia but rather than [...]
Kraken from Ernie Cabat’s Magical World Of Monsters (1992) at Monster Brains. “I think for a lot of people who don’t read pulp growing up, there’s a real surprise that the particular kind of Pulp Modernism of a certain kind of lush purple prose isn’t necessarily a failure or a mistake, but is part of [...]
Regeneration (2011) by Toshiyuki Enoki. Via. • HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the art exhibition that caused such a fuss last year at the Smithsonian Institution, opens at the Brooklyn Museum, NYC, on November 18th. Among the events associated with the show is a screening of James Bidgood’s lusciously erotic Pink Narcissus. David [...]
At the Mountains of Madness (1979) from Halloween in Arkham by Harry O. Morris. • Golden Age Comic Book Stories always pulls out the stops in the run up to Halloween. In addition to a wonderful collection of Harry O. Morris collages, Mr Door Tree has also been posting Virgil Finlay’s illustrations for Edgar Allan [...]
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 [...]
Faustine (1928) by Harry Clarke. • This week’s Harry Clarke fix: 50 Watts reposts the Faust illustrations while Golden Age Comic Book Stories has the illustrated Swinburne. • What Goes Steam in the Night is an evening with contributors to The Steampunk Bible hosted in London by The Last Tuesday Society on September 6th: Co-author [...]
Yesterday’s Lily (1980), a collection of painting and illustration work published by Dragon’s Dream. Artist Jeffrey Jones, whose death was announced this week, transitioned to Jeffrey Catherine Jones in the late 1990s so we’ll honour that here and won’t insist on referring to her as “he” as I’ve been seeing on some other websites. Jones’ [...]
Ancient Egyptian capitals from The Grammar of Ornament (1856) by Owen Jones at Egyptian Revival. • Golden Age Comic Book Stories has been pulling out all the stops recently with entries for Will Bradley, Alphonse Mucha’s Documents Decoratifs (a companion volume to Combinaisons Ornementales), and pages from My Name is Paris (1987) illustrated by Michael [...]
DG-2499 (1975) by the fantastic (in every sense of the word) Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929–2005). See the Dmochowski Gallery for a comprehensive collection of the artist’s work. Thanks to BibliOdyssey for the tip. • More ICA events: From Animism to Zos: Strange Attractor Salon will be “a series of weekly events, consisting of a talk and [...]
Blasphemous Rumours (2009/2010) by Ryan Martin. The artist now has a dedicated site for his paintings. • The Museum of Censored Art, a mobile gallery, will be showing the withdrawn David Wojnarowicz film outside the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, until their contentious gay art exhibition closes next month. Related: Bishop of Mallorca criticises calendar—which [...]
Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom is fifty-years old this year, an occasion celebrated with a limited UK cinema run and a reissue on Blu-ray and regular DVD. This was the film which famously ended Powell’s career as a director in Britain for reasons which have never been quite clear. Was the film’s critical vilification the culmination [...]
Goddem with Attendants (1924) by Harry Clarke. • Some of Harry Clarke’s extraordinary illustrations from Goethe’s Faust can be seen at A Journey Round My Skull. And a reminder for anyone who missed them, Clarke’s Poe illustrations at Golden Age Comic Book Stories. • HP Lovecraft – Audio Books, Radio Plays, & Audio Documentaries. Out-of-print [...]
The Conqueror Worm (c. 1900) by František Kupka. Poe’s illustrators are legion, you could easily devote an entire blog to nothing but depictions of his stories and poems. By way of rounding off this week of posts I thought I’d point to some of the works which have caught my attention over the years, several [...]
And so to the master. Harry Clarke’s illustrated edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination was published by Harrap in 1919, with a new edition following in 1923 that featured an additional series of colour plates. I can’t imagine anyone ever producing a better illustrated version of Poe than Clarke managed, the morbid quality which [...]
The Raven. Some of these drawings have been featured here before but they’re always worth seeing again. One of the problems for the early illustrators of Poe was a lack of sympathy among many of them for the author’s doom-laden Romanticism. It’s a shame that Aubrey Beardsley didn’t try illustrating some of the poems, as [...]
Colour me Mr Popular as I’m interviewed once again, the venue on this occasion being Coilhouse which is a fine place to be featured. My thanks to S. Elizabeth for the indulgence. In the course of our discussion I mentioned The Peacock Obsession, and by coincidence these pages have been receiving links recently from Peacock’s [...]
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