April 2010 – Page 4 – { feuilleton }

Hector Guimard sketches

Projet pour la couverture Revue d’art (1899).

French architect and designer Hector Guimard (1867–1942) is most renowned today for his entrances to the Paris Metro but his work extended from architecture to interior and graphic design, much of it a superior application of the Art Nouveau style. Le cercle Guimard is a site devoted to the designer’s work (French-only for now) while these sketches are from a substantial collection at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Projet de demi-canapé pour Mme Legrand (1900).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Temples for Future Religions by François Garas
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• Atelier Elvira
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• The Maison Lavirotte
• The House with Chimaeras

The art of Aquirax Uno

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 get repeated a great deal. You can see more examples like these at Pink Tentacle, Ganymede Kids and Beautiful/Decay.

Keiko’s at Marubutsu Department Store (1967).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alice in Acidland
• Salomé posters
• Polish posters: Freedom on the Fence
• Kaleidoscope: the switched-on thriller
• The Robing of The Birds
• Franciszek Starowieyski, 1930–2009
• Dallamano’s Dorian Gray
• Czech film posters
• The poster art of Richard Amsel
• Bollywood posters
• Lussuria, Invidia, Superbia
• The poster art of Bob Peak
• A premonition of Premonition
• Metropolis posters
• Film noir posters

The panoramic towers of Prague

The Tower at Charles Bridge, Old Town.

More panoramas of Prague from 360 Cities by Jeffrey Martin, a photographer who’s made a speciality of capturing the city in 360º views. Among his collection are a number of photos taken from Prague’s many towers and steeples including a few where he’s managed to remove the supporting building, as in the view from the Charles Bridge above. This gives the effect of floating in weightless suspension above the city and may well induce alarm in vertigo sufferers. Needless to say, all these are best viewed on the full screen setting.

The Powder Tower (Prasna Brana).

Mikulas Tower.

Prague TV Tower Babies 1; one of David Cerný’s crawling baby sculptures looks over the city. See also the 18 gigapixel view from the tower.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague

Jugend, 1899

Continuing the delve into back issues of Jugend magazine, the German fin de siècle periodical of “art and life”, this post covers the year 1899. The earlier years of the magazine are replete with a variety of elegant and often bizarre graphics, as well as some classic examples of Art Nouveau graphic design. 1899 is the point in the magazine’s history that the variety (and, for me, the interest) begins to diminish. The covers lose their earlier inventiveness while the Art Nouveau stylings within are being replaced by drab illustrations of the German middle classes and patriotic depictions of country folk. There are still gems to be found, however, some of which follow below. As before, anyone wanting to see more of these graphics is advised to explore the bound volumes at the Heidelberg University archive. The two books for 1899 can be found here and here.

Otto Eckman (above) and Julius Diez (below) were heavily featured in the earlier years of the magazine and Diez in particular produces some of the best work in this year’s run.

Continue reading “Jugend, 1899”

Weekend links 10

One of a number of vintage ads and ephemeral items at this Flickr set.

• From 1971: The Anthony Balch/William Burroughs/Jan Herman video experiment.

• The NYT reports on World on a Wire, a neglected science fiction drama by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

• “While some of the technology industry’s brightest minds were inventing the first PCs and developing groundbreaking software, they were also feeding their heads with LSD.”

• The archive of author and illustrator Mervyn Peake has been acquired by the British Library for £410,000.

• Thames & Hudson are publishing I Wonder, a book by the wonderful Marian Bantjes, later in the year. Her site has a preview. I want.

• The gays: It’s election season in the UK so My Gay Vote looks at how the three main parties have supported LGB issues. (No data for the graphs, however.) Is theatre finally glad to be gay? Yet more Tumblrs: I heart skinny boys & Cute boys with cats.

• Trend-spotter, “svengali”, Situationist and the man who named the Sex Pistols: RIP Malcolm McLaren. The Guardian ran a number of memorial pages. Related: Anarchy in Gardenstown.

• Dublin’s One City, One Book choice for April 2010 is The Picture of Dorian Gray.

• The Catastrophist: Christopher Hitchens on JG Ballard.

• Steampunk Taxidermy by Lisa Black.

• LIFE looks back at Aleister Crowley.

• Groovy songs of the week: Julie Driscoll (with Brian Auger & The Trinity), a pair of songs by Bob Dylan—This Wheel’s On Fire—and Donovan—Season Of The Witch—and sets which look like a collaboration between Verner Panton and Marcel Duchamp. Amazing.