Psychopathia Sexualis (1967).

This, dear friends, is what the art of the fantastic could give us but rarely does, something which combines the metaphysical intensity of the Symbolists with a post-Freudian sensibility to create what Philip José Farmer once called “the pornography of the weird”. Jim Leon was a British artist whose work gained prominence via the underground magazines of the 1960s, especially Oz, although he was never really a psychedelic artist as such. Many of his earliest paintings show the influence of the Pop artists, it was only later in the decade that a distinctly original and surreal imagination came to the fore. Oz was always pretty scurrilous and had no qualms about challenging the authorities with bizarre sexual imagery which other magazines would never dare to print. Leon and other artists were fortunate to have such a public forum for outré work, a few years earlier or later and they might not have found an outlet at all.

Untitled (1979).

His early work blended influences from Francis Bacon, surrealism and the baroque. Lurking there is also the English visionary William Blake, together with the obsessive Romanticism of the pre-Raphaelites. A number of his early paintings and drawings refer to William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (first published in Paris in 1959). These were just some of the ingredients of an amazing, semi-abstract, spatially complex, ritualistic, orgiastic flesh-painting, expressing highly wrought morbidity, eroticism, transcendence and ecstasy; astonishing explorations of the murkier depths of the human mind. (More.)

A Very English Visionary by Simon Wilson.

I first encountered Leon’s work thanks to David Britton’s curating of a portfolio feature in Wordworks magazine which was republished in the Savoy Books anthology, The Savoy Book in 1980. Having seen a Leon painting in a back issue of Oz I was surprised that an artist with such a powerful imagination was so little-known. It turns out that he’d been working all along, albeit far from the public gaze, having moved to Lyons in France where he spent the 1970s and 80s painting many canvases of mystical scenes similar to those produced by the California artists featured in the Visions book. None of his later work explores the darker realms of his earlier Psychopathia Sexualis drawings, and since it’s the early work that I prefer, that’s what’s featured here. These drawings and paintings bear comparison with the art of Raymond Bertrand but where Bertrand has had his work published in lavish book collections, we have to rake through back issues of magazines for Leon’s endeavours. Leon’s later paintings at least have a website which is maintained by his family.

No title or date.

Psychopathia Sexualis (1967).

Psychopathia Sexualis (1967).

Two untitled drawings, presented as a spread in Oz #31 (1970).

Necrophilia, Oz #36 (1971).

Untitled spread from Oz #40 (1972).

Untitled spread from Oz #42 (1972).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Sibylle Ruppert
• The art of Mati Klarwein, 1932–2002
• The art of John Hurford
• Visions and the art of Nick Hyde
• The art of Bertrand
• Oz magazine, 1967–73

Calling this 1927 edition “illustrated” perhaps stretches the point seeing as Frans De Geetere’s illustrations are rather more minimal and restrained than you’d expect for Lautréamont’s proto-Surrealist masterwork. The Koopman Collection’s page for this book lists 65 Geetere’s etchings but only shows a handful. I’d like to see more of these even if the samples here are representative, Les Chants de Maldoror being a book more deserving of illustration than most.

Frans De Geetere (1895–1968) was Belgian and there’s a Symbolist lineage in this work with his naming Fernand Khnopff and other Belgian Symbolists as influences. He was also a friend of the wealthy arts patron Harry Crosby whose note about the artist promises more than the artwork here delivers:

The darkness of the forest where he was born, the sombre curriculum of the monks together with the rich darkness of ecclesiastical music, the spark of revolt kindled at the Academy of Brussels and whipped into a flame of hatred by the frescoes his father compelled him to paint in the neighboring churches, his first escape (if artists can be said to escape), the year of hunger whitewashing the walls of houses (le soleil contre le mur blanc) and, at nineteen, night duty as guardian in a maison de fous, these were, for M. Frans de Geetere, the foundation stones of that strange building men call the soul. In the madhouse he worked at his painting by day, and by night snatched unsettled hours of sleep, and in this environment developed those queer, abnormal faces that stare out at us from the pages of Maldoror. …And if “Lautreamont has liberated the imagination and dispelled our fear to enter into darkness” as Mr. Jolas so significantly remarked, M. de Geetere with a smoldering rage and fearlessness of creation followed the poet into darkness–”into the occult beyond” to quote Mr. Jolas again, “where new and demonic visions” (I am reminded of Beardsley and Redon and Alastair) “people our solitude.”

Elsewhere on {feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
• The etching and engraving archive

Previously on {feuilleton }
• The art of Sibylle Ruppert
• Maldoror illustrated

Hommage à KS.

The web isn’t the best place to see works by this extraordinary German artist, most of what’s available tends to be tiny thumbnails which give no impression of the detail in her drawings and paintings. Ruppert is another artist who’s been brave enough to try illustrating Lautréamont’s Maldoror but I’ve yet to see anything of her interpretation. Given the nature of both book and pictures one might easily pair any number of her intense and erotic works with Lautréamont’s words.

La Décadence.

These are some of the better online samples, the last one coming from her official site which also includes some recent black and white work but little else. The curious are advised to search book dealers for print portfolios or exhibition catalogues.

Tear out (1984–87).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Maldoror illustrated

Previous posts about fantastic, surreal or visionary artists.

• The art of Jim Leon, 1938–2002

• Surrealist echoes

• The art of Laurie Hogin

• The art of Christian rex Van Minnen

• Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism

• The art of Oleg Denysenko

• The art of François Schuiten

• The art of Sibylle Ruppert

• The eyes of Odilon Redon

• Fata Morgana: The New Female Fantasists

• Franciszek Starowieyski, 1930–2009

• The art of Boris Indrikov

• The art of Mati Klarwein, 1932–2002

• The art of Pierre Clayette, 1930–2005

• The monstrous tome

• A Midsummer Night’s Dadd

• The art of Ian Miller

• The art of Leonor Fini, 1907–1996

• The art of Michel Henricot

• The art of Heidi Taillefer

• Set in Stone

• Against Nature: The hybrid forms of modern sculpture

• The art of Jean-Paul Faccon

• The art of Andrew Severynko

• The Hound of Heaven by RH Ives Gammell

• The art of Jean Carriès, 1855–1894

• Visions and the art of Nick Hyde

• The art of Julie Heffernan

• Custom creatures

• The art of Harold Hitchcock

• The art of Agostino Arrivabene

• The art of Takato Yamamoto

• The art of NoBeast

• A Madmen’s Museum

• The art of Andrey Avinoff, 1884–1949

• Imaginary maps by Francesca Berrini

• The art of Jacques Sultana

• Fantastic art from Pan Books

• The art of Jean Benoît

• The art of Bertrand

• Pierre Matter’s cyborg sculpture

• The art of José Hernández

• Czanara’s Hermaphrodite Angel

• The art of Sergei Aparin

• The art of Nicola Verlato

• The art of Stephen Aldrich

• The art of Rudolf Hausner, 1914–1995

• The art of Erik Desmazières

• The Codex Seraphinianus

• Surrealist women

• Leonora Carrington

• Two American paintings

• The art of Thomas Häfner, 1928–1985

• The art of Jean Louis Ricaud

• The art of Gérard Trignac

• The Museum of Fantastic Specimens

• The art of Franz Xavier Messerschmidt, 1736–1783

• The art of Ernst Fuchs

• The art of Jean-Marie Poumeyrol

• Las Pozas and Edward James

• The art of Jean-Pierre Ugarte

• The art of Ljuba Popovic

• The art of Stanislav Szukalski, 1893–1987

More archive pages:
• The archive page archive

L’abattoir.

From ‘Visionary Art in France’, The Visionary Review, Fall 2004:

Poumeyrol shares with Margotton a fascination for the interior landscape, where dimly illuminated grottos resonate with the remains of past epochs. And yet, his barren and abandoned spaces are often redolent with signs of the artists’ own lost memories.

In his early works, Jean-Marie Poumeyrol was recognized as a master of erotica, combining hallucinogenic and macabre imagery in an unparalleled manner. But, in his maturity, the artist has displayed a marked fascination for landscapes, particularly the enclosed spaces of sewers, industrial waste and disposal plants. Yet, the amazing accuracy and finesse of rendering which enlivened his early works has not left him and, if anything, only increased with age.

Horse.

Poumeyrol was born in 1946 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bordeaux. Upon graduation he already had a four year old son to support, and so began his illustrious career as a teacher of mechanical draftsmanship (his students learned to draw screws, bolts, etc).

This occupation was mercifully cut short when he was released from the educational system. In fact, art teachers had to pass tests given by the board to determine if they were skilled enough to teach drawing. At the same time that Poumeyrol’s erotic works were first seeing print and sought out avidly by collectors, he failed his art teacher’s exam—being given an ‘F’ for nude drawing…

Encouraged by this failure, he dedicated himself to painting and drawing full time, eventually creating a large body of erotica which have marked him ever since (along with Sibylle Ruppert) as one of France’s greatest artists in this domain.

Le Sabbat.

A self-portrait from this period reveals the artist as ambulant and a dreamer—travelling in a train compartment encumbered by photo snapshots of his more personal memories. In essence, the artist’s working methods are well represented by this image: his preference for the ‘in-between state’ of revery and melancholy:

“As long as I can remember” Poumeyrol writes, “I have been faithfully accompanied by boredom. These sad and useless moments, like a pleasant emptiness, have invented those strange chimeras which continually wander into my visual memory. With time, this uncommon state between memory and imagination has matured into a kind of contemplation, and I have become a great connoisseur of solitude, prefering that boredom which accompanies all my wanderings into a world delicious, extravagant and vain.”

Le Maitre de Manege.

Despite the lucrative gains to be made from erotic art, the painter gradually moved beyond the female form, finding a greater fascination in the interior spaces devoid of nudes:

“Over time,” he writes, “the women in my erotic works became more discreet and eventually disappeared, leaving only the faintest traces of their presence. Those interiors, no longer occupied by living beings, offered me in their stead a mysterious emptiness which invited all possibilities. A few remaining clues suggested their darker dimension.

L’Ogresse.

“From this moment on, I became fascinated by a series of rooms guarding their secrets. This metamorphosis in my work allowed me to explore man’s most primitive fears and anxieties: distress, obsession, solitude, darkness, enclosure, the passage of time, abandonment and death.”

A fine example of this new genre of work is his 1983 painting Hope. The slanting sunlight across the wall reveals an empty chamber where someone has been hard at work, building a model ship from balsam and glue. Erotic photos, reminiscent of Poumeyrol’s own early works, are taped against the wall. It is only when our eye wanders towards the barred door that we realize the hidden protagonist’s sad predicament, and why the sailboat offers him such a desperate and futile ‘hope’.

Canal asséché.

From a series of ‘chamber works’ such as these, Poumeyrol moved on to darker enclosures where any sign of humanity had long since left. Only the changes of the seasons, such as his 1994 series The Wells of Daylight, offer faint signs of movement, life and transformation. Here, movement comes from the different lights of the seasons that pour into the well.

Liberated entirely from the human form, Poumeyrol exalted: “I could explore caves, passages, depots, shelters, garrets, pantries, attics and all hidden places… Wooden doors, their locks unchained, swung open to reveal stained kitchen sinks, enamalled gas heaters and even a bed with dishevelled sheets in a narrow alcove.

Voie sans issue.

“These labyrinthine places were lit by small openings whose cruel light unmercifully exposed the objects within. Through these openings we could also make out the building’s surroundings – the vague terrain and industrial wasteland, the swamps and distant rooftops – all these ‘landscapes’ blanketed by snow or autumn leaves in the golden light of day’s end.”

At present, Poumeyrol lives in Pau in the Pyrenees, not far from Jean-Pierre Ugarte (indeed, the two have often exhibited together). His perspective has evolved once more, and his latest works offer more open spaces such as fishermans’ huts and shorelines.

L’amie.

At first glance, these may not seem to be ‘visionary’ at all. But, when considered in the context of his oeuvre, undeniable signs of continuity are present. The sailboat, for example, which the prisoner of Hope left half-built in his cell now appears on the open waters, a reality undreamed of.

And the artist himself continues to wander the shores, seeking those signs which trigger his own lost memories:

“After wandering long and alone” he recently wrote “through mysterious interiors, I managed to emerge into the outside world. Once again, a rich flow of memories revealed to me new paintings. I rediscovered in my mind those spaces which had fascinated me once before.

“These were born through a series of quick sketches, or else, from drawings made from memory (a little uncertain perhaps) where certain details survived with almost photographic precision. The passage of time makes the memory more selective, discarding all excess in order to reconstruct the most essential and meaningful.”

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive