{illustrators} – Page 58

Weekend links 359

An urban scene from Yotsuba&! by manga artist Kiyohiko Azuma.

• The resurgence of interest in Alice Coltrane’s music is very welcome even if she joins for the moment the list of those artists (usually women: see Leonora Carrington) tagged by editors as “lost”, “forgotten”, “unrecognised”, etc. Alice Coltrane was only ever lost if you weren’t paying attention, and was notable enough fifteen years ago to be given the cover of The Wire magazine. Articles appearing this week have been prompted by a compilation of the devotional music that Coltrane recorded for a series of self-released cassettes in the 1980s. Geeta Dayal writes about the creation of the ashram recordings, while Stewart Smith suggests starting points for new listeners.

• Mentioned here before, but there’s now a page for the book: a new edition of Hashish (1902) by Oscar Schmitz will be published by Wakefield Press in November. “A collection of decadent, interweaving tales of Satanism, eroticism, sadism, cannibalism, necrophilia, and death”, illustrated by Alfred Kubin.

• Mixes of the week: A Dark Entries mix for the 400th issue of The Wire, Procedure, LA, April 25, 2017 by Pinkcourtesyphone, and Secret Thirteen Mix 220, a 4-hour epic by Ricardo Gomez Y De Buck.

• More off-the-beaten-path film lists: Sarah Lyons for Dirge Magazine on three occult documentaries, and Terry Ratchett for Dennis Cooper on 18 needlessly obscured avant-garde films.

• An Island of Peace: James Conway on Amanda DeMarco’s new translation of Walking in Berlin: A Flâneur in the Capital by Franz Hessel.

• Ryuichi Sakamoto talks to Aaron Coultate about overcoming cancer, The Revenant and his new album, async.

• Ingrid D. Rowland on Caravaggio: The Virtuoso of Compassion.

• “I think I am weirdly politically correct,” says John Waters.

• Mnemonic Generator

• Berliner Nächte Part 1 (1990) by Seigen Ono | Berlinerstrasse (1995) by Coco, Steel & Lovebomb | Berlin (1998) by Pole

Arthur Zaidenberg’s À Rebours revisited

Arthur Zaidenberg’s Masereel-like renderings of Decadent icon Des Esseintes appear here for the second time courtesy of a recent upload at the Internet Archive. Zaidenberg’s illustrations were for a 1931 edition of Huysmans’ novel, and the copies I linked to back in 2008 were rather fuzzy and low-res compared to these scans. The earlier collection does, however, include an additional illustration not present in the Internet Archive copy, possibly the result of the plate theft that plagues old illustrated volumes. The 1931 edition isn’t the best illustrated À Rebours by any means—the illustrations aren’t even on a par with Zaidenberg’s other work—but this is one cult novel whose treatment in any medium is liable to attract my attention.

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Die Buecher der Chronika der drei Schwestern

Die Buecher der Chronika der drei Schwestern (The Books of the Chronicles of the Three Sisters) is a German fairy tale set down by Johann Karl August Musäus, and presented here in a 1900 edition illustrated by Heinrich Lefler and Joseph Urban. Lefler and Urban were brothers-in-law who worked as set designers as well as illustrators; Urban was also an architect who later moved to the United States. One of his extant buildings is the Mar-a-Lago in Florida but he can’t be held responsible for its current use or its present owner.

Looking at the excellent illustrations the pair produced for this volume I’d guess that Urban concentrated on the building design which is much more elaborate and inventive than you generally see in children’s books. The selections here are mostly full-page pieces but the book is illustrated throughout, with the text flowing into and around the drawings.

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Weekend links 355

Quería ser pájaro (1960) by Leonora Carrington.

• Artist and author Leonora Carrington was born 100 years ago this week. Marina Warner, an advocate of Carrington’s work in the years when the artist was “forgotten” (ie: ignored by those who should have known better), remembered her friend as someone adept at making “visible the invisible”. Elsewhere, Carrington’s centenary was noted by Phantasmaphile (with many links), Strange Flowers and the LRB, the latter being a Leonora Carrington A-Z by Chloe Aridjis.

• Geeta Dayal on Ikutaro Kakehashi who died this week. The synthesizers, drum machines, effects units and other gear produced by Kakehashi’s Roland Corporation are inextricably entwined with the development of electronic music in the 1970s and 80s.

• Do we really need a compilation of singles by Can? Not when all the music has been available for years on albums and compilations. Of more interest is Rob Young‘s forthcoming (well…not until next year) biography of the band, All Gates Open.

• Out from Thames & Hudson this week: Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue by Aubrey Powell.

• At Dangerous Minds: The Master of Moorcock: The psychedelic sci-fi book covers and art of Bob Haberfield.

• Abigail Ward on Queer Noise: the history of LGB music & club culture in Manchester.

• FullFathom5, home of “something rich and strange” makes a welcome return.

• At Flickr: Occult Beliefs and Themes in British Popular Culture (1875–1947)

• At I Love Typography: Jamie Clarke on the evolution of chromatic fonts.

• Mix of the week: a mix for The Wire by Patterned Air Recordings.

• Invisible Cities (1990) by Invaders Of The Heart | Invisible Architecture (1997) by John Foxx | Invisible (2005) by Monolake

The Eerie Book

Work-wise, I’m still preoccupied with Edgar Allan Poe so I’ve been delving into the Internet Archive’s stock of scanned books more than usual. I’m not looking now for earlier Poe illustrations but a search last month turned up this collection of horror stories edited by Margaret Armour, and illustrated by William Brown Macdougall. Armour and Macdougall were married, and collaborated on several illustrated books; they also knew Aubrey Beardsley—Macdougall contributed to both The Yellow Book and The Savoy—so many of the illustrations in this volume are in the post-Beardsley manner. As Beardsleyesque drawings go they’re not as successful as, say, those of Will Bradley; some of Macdougall’s faces are rather dopey, and the cross-hatching doesn’t always work with this style of black-and-white art, as Beardsley himself discovered. But Macdougall’s drawing for The Masque of the Red Death is a better illustration than Beardsley’s own, horror not being one of Aubrey’s strengths. The Eerie Book may be browsed in full here.

The Masque of the Red Death.

The Iron Coffin.

The Mother and the Dead Child.

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