The Wilde Years (2000), a poster by Jonathan Barnbrook for an exhibition at the Barbican Centre, London. Continuing an occasional series. Recent (and not-so-recent) Wildean links. • Sander Bink writes that Beardsley-esque artist Carel de Nerée tot Babberich was in Paris in the summer of 1900, the summer of the Exposition Universelle which has been […]
This is a strange and beautiful book, a loving paean to a dead boy-poet from another poet, Stefan George (1868–1933), published in 1907. The “Maximin” of the title was Maximilian Kronberger (1888–1904) who was around 14 when he met George; the older man was 34 at the time. George was apparently smitten by the boy, […]
One of Derek Jarman’s many unfilmed projects was PPP in the Garden of Earthly Delights, a study of the last days in the life of director Pier Paolo Pasolini seen through a prism of references to the director’s cinematic work, and also the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Jarman’s proposal exists as a synopsis rather than […]
This isn’t the first font that’s been named after Salomé but Salome (without accent) by Rebecca Alaccari and Patrick Griffin was a revival of an earlier design, Cantini, from 1972, whereas Salomé is an original creation by Spanish design studio Atipo. The Atipo design itself owes something to the 1970s being reminiscent of François Boltana’s Stilla […]
The Happy Prince And Other Tales (1888). Continuing an occasional series. Recent Wildean links. • Jeanette Winterson makes a persuasive case for the importance of Wilde’s stories for children: “Wilde had a streak of prophecy in him. The children’s stories can be read as notes from the future about Wilde’s fate. It is as though […]
More Aubrey Beardsley ephemera. These pages are from the bound edition of The Studio for 1894, reviews of two of Beardsley’s earliest publications: the first editions of Le Morte d’Arthur (which was published in multiple volumes), and the illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé which sealed Beardsley’s reputation as a major force in the art of […]
Aubrey Beardsley in the year 1893 was 21, and on the threshold of being catapulted to fame (and notoriety) via his illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. Some of Beardsley’s drawings in the distinctive style he called “Japanesque” had already appeared in The Pall Mall Magazine, and he was hard at work on some 600 illustrations […]
Illustration from The House of Pomegranates (1914) by Jessie M. King. Continuing an occasional series. Recent Wildean links. • It’s a measure of a writer’s success if the characters or stories they create resonate sufficiently with future generations to be subject to new interpretations. Among Oscar Wilde’s contemporaries this has happened to Arthur Conan Doyle […]
Dress (2012) by Nao Ikuma. • Two of my Cthulhu artworks can currently be seen in the Ars Necronomica exhibition at the Cohen Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI. The exhibition is part of NecronomiCon, and runs to September 13th. In related news, my steampunk illustration has been nominated in the Visual category of this year’s […]
More Beardsley ephemera, and more from the recently upgraded NYPL Digital Collections. These US ads for The Yellow Book date from late 1894 to early 1895, a couple of months before Oscar Wilde was arrested and Aubrey Beardsley had to leave the magazine despite having no connection with Wilde’s activities. What’s most interesting for me […]
Un coin, rue de Seine (1924). Photographer Eugène Atget had a thing for the architectural promontory, as do I for that matter, and this photo of a street corner in the rue de Seine, Paris, has always been a favourite. Atget liked the location enough to photograph it at least twice from different angles. The […]
Cover of Salome by Oscar Wilde (1903) by Modest Alexandrovich Durnov. Gathering a few more Salomé renderings which have caught my attention recently. The biggest surprise is the one from Picabia since he’s an artist who these days is almost always associated with the Cubists and Dadaists. In the 1920s he returned to figurative painting […]
An oddity from the career of František Kupka, Le Cantique des Cantiques (1905) in this version is a stage presentation of the Song of Solomon by Jean de Bonnefon. Kupka provided a series of illustrations in a style similar to his Symbolist paintings which in the original printing are decorated with coloured borders. The copies […]
Collage by Chloé Poizat. • Xenis Emputae Travelling Band plays the Music of John Dee, and free at Bandcamp: Victorian Machine Music by Plinth, the “creaking, winding, piping, chiming and wood-knocking of Victorian parlour music machines”. • Jeremy Willard on Mikhail Kuzmin, “the Oscar Wilde of Russia”. Related: Conner Habib on the Disinfo podcast discussing […]
Dorian Gray (1968) by Jim Dine; one of a series of prints for an illustrated edition. Rainbows didn’t become a gay symbol until Gilbert Baker’s flag design ten years later. Continuing an occasional series. • “…the Public is a very curious thing; it is sometimes perverse, and even obstinate, and it has evidently made up […]
Byblis (1901) by Pierre Louÿs. Henri Caruchet isn’t in George Barbier’s league, never mind that of Alphonse Mucha whose graphic style Caruchet appropriated. I’ve not been able to find details about his life either, all that turns up is examples of his book illustration on various websites. Author Pierre Louÿs is notable for his erotic […]
It’s taken a while but here at last are some of the pages from my series of illustrations based on The Picture of Dorian Gray, as featured in volume 2 of The Graphic Canon (“The World’s Great Literature as Comics and Visuals”) edited by Russ Kick. I agreed with Russ not to run everything so […]
Illustration by H. Paul. Continuing an occasional series. • Front Free Endpaper has illustrations by one H. Paul from a “talking book” adaptation of Wilde’s The Happy Prince. This was a hardcover volume published in 1948 which came with a 78rpm vinyl disc containing a recording of the story by BBC newsreader Frank Phillips. Callum […]
I probably overspent a little on this charity-shop purchase, the third edition (published 1918) of In the Key of Blue by John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), a personal selection of writings first published in 1893. First edition copies sell for over a thousand pounds so this was an opportunity to acquire something close to the original […]
Atalanta and Hippomenes (c. 1612). More golden apples appear in this painting by Guido Reni, not the most famous ones in art history—those would be all the Apples of Discord seen in the various Judgements of Paris—these are the fruit of the sacred tree in the Garden of the Hesperides which Hippomenes drops to prevent […]
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