May 2014 – Page 3 – { feuilleton }

Hans by Sibylle

Portrait HR Giger (1978) by Sibylle Ruppert.

Gradually returning to some semblance of normality here although I’ve been away from the blog for so long I feel out of the habit. HR Giger died while I was away, an artist I’ll have more to say about tomorrow. In the meantime here’s something you probably won’t see elsewhere, Giger’s portrait by the equally remarkable (and woefully under-recognised) Sibylle Ruppert (1942–2011). This picture, and many others, can be found in the catalogue for the Ruppert exhibition which was held at the Museum HR Giger in 2010.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• HR Giger album covers
• Giger’s Necronomicon
• Dan O’Bannon, 1946–2009
• Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune
• The monstrous tome

Hiatus

Ho hum. Internet problems here mean posting will be sporadic for the next few days. My apologies. In the meantime the archive feature has been activated to bring up posts from the past. Stay tuned.

Update: Still contending with a week of All The Technical Problems, not only internet-related but things like my main work computer throwing kernel panics like they’re going out of fashion. Consequently I’ve been rather preoccupied while I attempt to get back to the usual operational status and do important things like attend to deadlines. It’ll still be a few more days before there’s further activity here, I’m afraid. Stay tuned.

Update 2: UK residents will tell you that the iniquities of British Telecom are like Walt Whitman’s contradictions: vast and multitudinous. All being well, however, normal service should be resumed here on the 20th.

Paul Konewka’s Faust

Discovered via the GoetheZeitPortal, these illustrations for Faust by German artist Paul Konewka (1841–1871) date from 1865, although the copies here are from a later edition. Konewka was a silhouette cutter so while these may look like ink illustrations they’re actually paper silhouettes displaying a formidable level of detail and complexity. Whatever the technique, the story itself is immediately recognisable from the characters even if none of the more dramatic scenes are represented. There aren’t many books you could treat in this fashion since the story has to be almost universally familiar; Shakespeare would be an obvious candidate—Konewka subsequently produced illustrations for A Midsummer Night’s Dream—fairy tales (like Arthur Rackham’s Sleeping Beauty), and also Lewis Carroll’s Alice books come to mind.

The copies shown here are from another shoddy Google scan at the Internet Archive but you do get to see all the pages. The Goethe site has better copies of the illustrations.

Continue reading “Paul Konewka’s Faust”