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Alla Nazimova as Salomé (1923).
I wrote a while ago about Alla Nazimova’s luscious silent film production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, a suitably Decadent affair with an allegedly all-gay cast, and costume and stage design based on Aubrey Beardsley’s celebrated illustrations. The film is currently touring England and Wales with a new score for four musicians [...]

One of a series of stunning ads by Y&R of Chicago for the River North Chicago Dance Company which give the old “body as machine” a contemporary and rather erotic twist. (I would have credited the photographer but the ad agency site is the usual Flash interface which refuses to work in any of [...]

Peacock and Peahen (18th c.).
I’ve had an untitled Japanese painting of a peacock as a desktop image for a while now, its origin forgotten, and I’ve wondered a few times who the artist was. A recent posting about Maruyama Okyo (1733–1795) at Bajo el Signo de Libra made me think that Okyo might be the [...]

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. He [...]

La femme au paon (Woman with peacocks): from L’Estampe Moderne (1897).
Two works by British Art Nouveau poster artist and illustrator, Louis Rhead (1858–1926). The first of these is very typical and resembles many of his magazine covers of the period. The cover illustration for The Century, meanwhile, must count as the only time I’ve seen [...]

The Peacock (no date).
Dancer Ruth St Denis (1879–1968) strikes Art Nouveau poses in the New York Public Library’s Denishawn Collection, now at Flickr.

Radha (1904).
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Peacocks
• Rene Beauclair
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• The Maison Lavirotte
• Whistler’s Peacock Room
• Beardsley’s Salomé
• The art of Hernan Gimenez
• Images of Nijinsky

Men and their swords.

• Salomé scored

• Fencing fashion again

• Antonin Mercié’s David

• Nicoletto Giganti’s naked duellists

• The art of Oliver Frey

• Fencing fashion

• The recurrent pose #26

• Xiphophilia

• Katana twink

• Eonism and Eonnagata

• Macho men

• Battle of the Naked Men

• Naked hussar

• Parsifal

• Cocteau’s sword

• Vintage swordplay #3

• Vintage swordplay #2

• Sword on the rocks

• [...]

It was only a week ago I announced a new calendar for 2009 and now here’s an additional CafePress creation which manages to offer more than another collection of Lovecraft illustrations. This is a sampling of my work from the past few years gathered under the vague rubric of Heaven and Hell. A couple of [...]

The Modern Poster by Will Bradley (1895).
A selection from the NYPL Digital Gallery. There’s more by the great Will Bradley (1868–1962) here.

Abstract design based on peacock feathers by Maurice Verneuil (1900?).

Pavo; Lophophorus (1834–1837).
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Rene Beauclair
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• The Maison [...]

Dilettantes by You Am I (2008). Illustration and design by Ken Taylor.
Dilettantes is the eighth studio album from Australian band You Am I which is released this week sporting a very creditable Beardsley pastiche by illustrator Ken Taylor. Sleevage has more details about the creation of the CD package, including preliminary sketches. Those familiar with [...]

In honour of the great news that a print of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis has been discovered containing scenes long-believed to have been lost, here’s a link to my favourite Guy Maddin film, The Heart of the World. Maddin’s short is six minutes of frenetic genius which references Metropolis in passing although it owes far more [...]

Aubrey Beardsley photographed by Frederick Evans (1894).
I’ve been going through the Coulthart VHS library recently, transferring to DVD recordings which can’t be purchased or found online. Among these is a drama from the BBC’s Playhouse strand, Aubrey by John Selwyn Gilbert, broadcast in 1982. This follows the life of artist Aubrey Beardsley from the [...]

Colette.
Work this week designing a CD of readings from Colette had me searching books for pictures of the author. Of the few I found this is the most interesting, one of several Colette portraits made by photographer Leopold Reutlinger and one of at least two from 1907 which Colette used to promote her Moulin [...]

Frustration Attraction (2006).
A Canadian artist works a marvellous variation on Salomé using oils and photo-printed canvas. Lots of other fine, inventive work at her site, all of it shown far too small to see the considerable detail. A tip to artists with websites: let us see the pictures properly; people appreciate it and will spread [...]

Jacob, a dancer with the Canadian National Ballet, photographed by Toxicboy.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Chris Nash
• Peter Reed and Salomé After Dark
• Felix D’Eon
• Dancers by John Andresen
• Youssef Nabil
• Images of Nijinsky
• The art of Hubert Stowitts, 1892–1953

Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni (c. 1616).
The Agony and the Ecstasy is an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, based around Guido Reni’s paintings of the martyr, six of which are on display.
This will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare directly the six masterpieces which are coming from all over the world to [...]

Random browsing this week turned up some nice high-res photos of Harmony in Blue and Gold, as James Abbott McNeill Whistler named the room he decorated for Frederick R. Leyland in 1878. Leyland had bought one of Whistler’s paintings, La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine (1864), and architect Thomas Jeckyll was concerned that the [...]

Today’s book purchase was an edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray published in 1945 by the Unicorn Press, London. It’s rather battered and the spine is stained by some unknown brown fluid that may be blood (which would suit a sanguinary tale such as this) but which is most likely something less dramatic.
The cover [...]

So the first book purchase of the year turns out to be the original Dover edition of Beardsley and Wilde’s Salomé. This appeared in 1967, a year after the major V&A exhibition which introduced Beardsley’s work to a new generation and commenced the Beardsley craze that lasted into the Seventies. Not that I’m in desperate [...]

Dancer Javier de Frutos (1998).
Dance photography by Chris Nash.

Bread—Bedlam Dance Company.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Peter Reed and Salomé After Dark
• Felix D’Eon
• Dancers by John Andresen
• Youssef Nabil
• Images of Nijinsky
• The art of Hubert Stowitts, 1892–1953