A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
One of a great series by photographer Jean-François Carly showing male and female models adorned with snakes and little else. Makes a change from the usual state of affairs where men are more commonly depicted wrestling with serpents rather than wearing them.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angelo Colarossi and son
• Men with snakes
Cyclamen (1895).
An exhibition close enough for me to easily visit, Hermann Obrist: Art Nouveau Sculptor is a display of work by the German artist at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Obrist (1863–1927) is featured in numerous histories of Art Nouveau for his Cyclamen wall-hanging of 1895, also known as The Whiplash on account of its writhing curves. This and other stylised studies Obrist made of natural forms were very influential. The gallery site only shows us one of the items on display (so much for advertising) but the trusty A Journey Round My Skull has further examples of the artist’s work.
Hermann Obrist: Art Nouveau Sculptor runs to 29th August, 2010.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Atelier Elvira
• Karl Blossfeldt
Rogomelec (1978) by Leonor Fini. Via.
• Moving Through Old Daylight: A recording of Mark Fisher, Jim Jupp and Julian House of Ghost Box Recordings and Iain Sinclair in conversation at the Roundhouse, Camden, London, 5 June 2010. Topics under discussion included Nigel Kneale, TC Lethbridge, John Foxx, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, alchemies of sound, the homogenisation of culture, imagining space and the impersistence of memory.
• The Surreal House, “a mysterious dwelling infused with subjectivity and desire” at the Barbican, London.
• Ars Homo Erotica at the National Museum of Warsaw. Related: “(Gothenburg) Museum stops exhibition about homosexuality in religion“.
• A lot of people still arrive here looking for art by Zack aka Oliver Frey. Bike Boy, 96 pages of Frey’s exuberantly homoerotic comic strips, is published in August by Bruno Gmünder.
• “EM Forster was a virgin until the age of thirty-nine, when he had his first ‘full’ sexual experience (a ‘hurried sucking off’, Wendy Moffat informs us) with a passing soldier on a beach in Alexandria.”
• JG Ballard’s archive is accepted by the British Library, or “saved for the nation” as they rather grandiloquently describe the process. Samples from the documents to be preserved at the BBC and the Guardian.
• Shades of Ballard’s singing sculptures, Sun Boxes is a solar-powered audio installation by Craig Colorusso. There’s more at Designboom.
• Nathalie visited the MAXXI, Rome’s new museum of contemporary art designed by Zaha Hadid.
• Stephen Pinker wants everyone to stop fretting over the alleged distractions of electronic media.
• “It basically comes from love”: John McLaughlin in conversation with Robert Fripp, 1982.
• More collections of print ephemera: Agence Eureka and Ephemera Magica.
• The Serpent and the Sword, an Alan Moore rarity from 1999.
• Gulliverovy Cesty (1968) at A Journey Round My Skull.
• Within the Without: a new Thombeau Tumblr.
• The Hidden Posters of Notting Hill Gate.
• The Letters of Sylvia Beach reviewed.
• It’s Kubrick Season in St Albans.
• Riot In Lagos (1980) by Ryuichi Sakamoto still sounds futuristic thirty years on.
The magazine isn’t out for another couple of weeks but my cover art has been posted to various websites so I can finally show this here. Alan Moore was in touch at the beginning of February asking for a wraparound cover design, the only brief being that he liked my Alice in Wonderland calendar and asked for something equally florid or—for want of a better term—psychedelic. Alan’s magazine owes something to the underground mags of the 1960s and a common feature of those, especially Oz magazine, was a degree of provocation in the choice of cover art. A picture of two boys kissing is nothing more than a show of affection yet to many people the sight still inspires enormous outrage. This was demonstrated a week or so after I’d finished the cover when the Washington Post was deluged by angry letters and emails after they showed a photo of two newly-weds outside the Washington DC Superior Court. People used to have a similar reaction to the sight of a black man kissing a white woman; the only way attitudes change is when something becomes so commonplace it’s no longer worthy of note.
Aside from the politics, this was also an excuse to run riot with more Art Nouveau motifs, especially peacocks and butterflies. The butterfly-winged boys are a nod to the paintings of Yannis Tsarouchis, and this in turn gave me an excuse to borrow from another magazine cover, Frank X Leyendecker’s 1922 painting of The Flapper for Life. Frank X was the brother of the more renowned illustrator JC Leyendecker. Joseph C was known to have been discreetly homosexual; so too was brother Frank according to this article in which case his butterfly woman has an additional resonance.
Having written a lengthy polemic about Roger Dean’s work in January I had the idea of doing the magazine title in his lettering style. I spent the best part of two days working on these as I wanted the result to be as accurate as possible. All the gold parts of the cover shown here are gradients but I made a slightly different version for print which will render those areas in gold ink. I’m looking forward to seeing this printed.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Roger Dean: artist and designer
• The art of Yannis Tsarouchis, 1910–1989
• Dodgem Logic
• Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar
• Butterfly women
A pair of cover designs by the very prolific Alexandre de Riquer (1856–1920), an illustrator and designer who might be described as the Catalan equivalent of Alphonse Mucha. It’s often the case with the artists of this period that you find one or two examples of their work in books but see little else. Riquer has better representation on the web than most. These are from a post at Bajo el Signo de Libra which features other cover designs while this site has many pages devoted to the artist’s paintings, bookplates, poster designs, decorative work and even his books of poetry.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive