{ feuilleton }

A film to round off a week of connected posts. Ballet Mécanique (1924) is more Dada than Surrealist if you want to get strict about the taxonomy, but the latter movement grew out of the former, and this short experiment by Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy is a pioneering piece of work however it’s labelled. [...]

Some speculative architecture that for once isn’t from Paris in 1900. Bruno Taut (1880–1938) gets labelled an Expressionist architect although it’s always a hazardous business connecting people in other disciplines to whatever art movement may be around at the time. The Glass Pavilion was a showcase structure commissioned by the German glass industry for the [...]

Raymond Taylor’s composition, A Signal from Mars (1901). This sheet music cover turned up recently as one of the pieces of science fiction-related graphics which will be on display at the British Library’s Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it exhibition when it opens on Thursday. I don’t know what [...]

Rainbow Dance (1936). Fortunate Londoners can see a BFI screening of early film shorts by Len Lye (1901–1980) this Friday at the NFT. (Details here.) Lye is one of the pioneers of abstract cinema and his work still astounds for its inventiveness and playful interaction between synchronised image and music. Many of his works were [...]

Annie Duels The Sun (2010) by Angie Wang. I’m interviewed again, this time by James at Cardboard Cutout Sundown. Covering familiar subjects for {feuilleton} readers: art history, design, Lovecraft, the genre/mainstream seesaw, etc. Related: Jeff VanderMeer previewed my design for the forthcoming Steampunk Reloaded. • Battle over legacy of father of Art Nouveau. Prague authorities [...]

left: Mame (1974); right: Excalibur (1981). Matthew Peak, son of film poster artist Bob Peak, left on a comment this week on an earlier post I made about his father’s art with news of the relaunch of the Peak site. I’m looking forward to seeing what gets posted there especially since the additions to date [...]

First Love Inferno (1968). There’s very little web information available for Aquirax Uno, a Japanese artist active in the 1960s and 1970s who really ought to have a dedicated site. Much of his work seems to be poster art for cinema or product advertising, and, as usual on the web, what there is tends to [...]

Continuing a rather psychedelic week, Eyecandy is another of those groovy web toys, this time putting you inside a kaleidoscopic sphere of coloured circles whose parameters you can change with sliding controls. Fun to mess with when the right music is playing. And while we’re on the subject, my new calendar has been selling very [...]

I’ve not seen Jack Smight’s 1966 caper movie for years, and don’t remember much about it beyond Maurice Binder’s kaleidoscopic title sequence. But I like this collage poster, a suitably frenetic piece for one of Hollywood’s many attempts throughout the 1960s to capitalise on modish fashion. I can’t find a credit for the designer so [...]

Kaleidoscopic XXXIII: Shards (2008). More kaleidoscopes, the sewn variety this time, from New York quilt maker Paula Nadelstern. Amazing work, especially in the detailed views. An exhibition, Kaleidoscope Quilts: The art of Paula Nadelstern, opens at the American Folk Art Museum, NYC, on April 21st. Via DO. Previously on { feuilleton } • Deluxe kaleidoscopes [...]

top left: Reflections of Friendship by Randy & Shelly Knapp; top right: Ostrich Egg by Frank Cascianni. bottom left: Double Marble Scope by Stan Griffith; bottom right: Heart of Fire by Jeffrey Balter. A few of the beautiful and remarkable kaleidoscope artworks at the Scherer Gallery. Most of these appear to be unique creations and [...]

The Kaleidoplex Light Organ, a kaleidoscope projector invented in the early Seventies by Marshall Yaeger to create a visual accompaniment for organ music performances. The image [the Kaleidoplex] projects can be described most accurately and scientifically as an irregularly pulsating and continuously changing octagonal star or circular rosette centered on a circular field of smaller [...]

I’ve never been all that keen on Alan Aldridge‘s brand of psychedelic art but it’s worth noting here the (London) Design Museum retrospective which runs from 10 October to 25 January, 2009. Aldridge’s work as a designer and illustrator for Penguin Books in the Sixties impresses me more than his subsequent illustrated Beatles lyrics and [...]

Previous posts about illustrators. • The art of Ted Coconis • Dream Boats and Other Stories by Dugald Stewart Walker • Joseph Southall’s Bluebeard • Ezio Anichini postcards • Julius Klinger’s Sodom • René Bull’s Rubáiyát • Rackham silhouettes • Pamela Colman Smith’s Annancy Stories • The art of Henri Caruchet • George Barbier’s Falbalas [...]

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 [...]

Vicissitudes, depth: 4.5 m. The Underwater Sculpture Gallery in Grenada, West Indies is a project started in May 2006 by sculptor Jason Taylor, with the support of the Grenadian Ministry of Tourism and Culture. This is a unique artistic enterprise, celebrating Caribbean culture and highlighting environmental processes, such as coral reef re-generation. An underwater gallery [...]

Lapis (1966). Proof of the conservative nature of cinema as an artistic medium can be found in the way its abstract practitioners don’t merit anything like the attention received by Piet Modrian or Jackson Pollock. In cinema narrative is all, and it’s ironic that when artists such as Julian Schnabel or Robert Longo turn to [...]

As mentioned earlier, I designed the jacket for this excellent biography of Donald Cammell some time ago. The book is reviewed in today’s (London) Times by Barry Miles. Quite a performance review by Barry Miles DONALD CAMMELL: A Life on the Wild Side by Rebecca and Sam Umland FAB Press, £24.95 hardback, £16.95 paperback; 304pp [...]

A NOTICE TO OUR PUBLIC………… It’s now a shade over twenty years since Rolling Stone was launched, complete with a brave new broadside on its interests and purposes. So we too now announce our aims and prejudices and strive to clear a path laying bare our hopes and inspirations. Strange Things will deal from the [...]