Abysmal creatures

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Bezdna (Abyss).

A couple of film posters from a time when poster artists weren’t prevented from treating their subject in a symbolic manner. Both these designs are the work of one M. Kalmanson (and I’m assuming here that the scant information is accurate), and both are for Russian films produced in 1917. Beautiful Century alerted me to the work above which Japonisme had spotted a couple of years ago when gathering the more familiar images of women menaced by those pesky cephalopods. Searching around produced the poster below which confirms that the artist had tentacles on the brain that year, creating a picture that looks like a collaboration between Edmund Dulac and HG Wells. There’s little information anywhere about the films themselves but that’s not too surprising when so much of the silent era has been lost forever. As with The Isle of Lost Ships, it’s a good bet that the cinematic reality was a lot less interesting than the promise of the poster design.

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Poison of the Big City. (Maybe… I can’t find this title confirmed in separate sources.)

Previously on { feuilleton }
Fascinating tentacula
Jewelled butterflies and cephalopods
The art of Rune Olsen
Octopulps
The art of NoBeast
Coming soon: Sea Monsters and Cannibals!

Fascinating tentacula

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Histioteuthis ruppellii.

Suckered pseudopods flex and writhe again this week with simultaneous postings at BibliOdyssey and Sci-Fi-O-Rama. Coincidence or some cephalopodic zeitgeist thing? You decide. BibliOdyssey has a fine set of natural history plates showing various squid and octopuses while Sci-Fi-O-Rama presents a small collection of illustrations by Barnaby Ward. If it’s boys and tentacles you want (and who doesn’t?), then there’s always the art of NoBeast.

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Untitled drawing by Barnaby Ward.

Ernst Haeckel remains my favourite tentacle illustrator, and the octopus below is one of his examples from Kunstformen der Natur (1899–1904). Somewhere (although Cthulhu knows where) I have a drawing by Hal Foster from one of his Prince Valiant strips showing a sinister octopus in a pit which is almost a match for Haeckel’s, and may even have been based on it. If I ever find it again I’ll post it here. Meanwhile, China Miéville’s Kraken is currently lurking on bookshelves, and let me remind you again that he discusses that novel and other works over at Salon Futura. While we’re on the subject, let’s not forget the Octopulps.

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Octopus by Ernst Haeckel.

Finally, a note to say that my webhost is moving this site to a new server which may cause some disruption to these pages for the next few days. As always, your patience is appreciated.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Jewelled butterflies and cephalopods
Haeckel fractals
Ernst Haeckel, Christmas card artist
The art of Rune Olsen
Octopulps
The art of NoBeast

Thomas Paul’s sealife

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Thomas Paul’s melamine plates parallel Laura Zindel’s ceramics in their borrowing of natural history engravings. Anything which brings tentacles into home furnishing gets a vote here and the octopus design at the top right can also be found on Paul’s cushion designs. Jeff VanderMeer would probably bemoan the absence of the squid but I took care of that department last year.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The art of Rune Olsen
Laura Zindel’s ceramics
Octopulps
New things for April II
Darwin Day
The glass menagerie

The art of Rune Olsen

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For Everything I Long to Do (2005/08).

A sculpture which resurrects the old tentacle sex motif, part of a series of sculpted works by Rune Olsen exploring unusual erotic permutations; this one of a naked man sniffing round the hind quarters of a wolf (?) also caught my attention.

The octopoid sculpture reminds me that I’d been intending on looking at some of the lesser-known treatments of the tentacle sex theme since I keep running across new examples. Soon maybe, when work here has calmed down a bit.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Octopulps