{illustrators} – Page 64

Edmund Dulac’s Tanglewood Tales

Another Dulac I’d not seen before, and what an exceptional edition it is. Tanglewood Tales is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling of Greek myths, a popular book for children that’s been through many reprints. Dulac’s edition dates from 1918, with the illustrations combining some of the stylisation of Greek art with Dulac’s own derivations from Persian miniatures. This might seem odd historically—the Greeks and Persians were enemies, after all—but every plate is a beautiful piece of work. Collectors of Pan imagery should note a fine example in the twelfth painting.

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Edmund Dulac’s Tempest

This is a copy of The Tempest that I managed to miss when I was looking for illustrated editions a few years ago. When Edmund Dulac is away from his beloved (and mythical) Arabia or Persia his work tends to resemble that of Arthur Rackham, and that’s what you get in this volume from 1915, a series of Rackham-like colour plates with a handful ink vignettes. Dulac shows us Ariel in his harpy form, and as the more familiar fairy being, while Caliban is depicted as a bearded troglodyte. Of note near the end is Prospero’s sword—which has a moon-shaped hilt of a type only seen in modern-day witchcraft or ritual magic—and the plate for “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”, a suitably strange and almost abstract rendering of a dissolving cosmos.

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The weekend artists, 2015

Fathomless Sounding (1932) by Gertrude Hermes.

This should have been the last post of the year but Ken Murphy’s film made a more fitting end. This is still the laziest post of the year, however, being a review of the artists/designers/photographers from 50 or so weekend posts. Scroll down to see what caught my attention over the past twelve months.

Untitled drawing by Jean Gourmelin.

Cover by Valentine Hugo for Contes Bizarres (1933) by Achim d’Arnim. See Hugo’s interior illustrations here.

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Merlin

Merlin building Stonehenge (14th century) from Folio 30r of British Library, Egerton 3028.

The Arthurian magus in art and illustration. Despite the antiquity of the Arthur legend there doesn’t seem to be much early representation of Merlin outside a few drawings in old manuscripts. The British Library’s folio showing the raising of Stonehenge is the oldest known depiction of the ancient structure.

Most of the pictures here are illustrations for the Merlin and Vivien section of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, the first book of which was published in 1859. Vivien (or Viviane, Nimue, etc) is the sorcerous Lady in the Lake who either imprisons Merlin underground or in a tree depending on whose account you read. Edward Burne-Jones’ The Beguiling of Merlin has long been my favourite of that artist’s paintings. This is only a very small selection of possible pictures, of course. A more complete catalogue would include Nicol Williamson in John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981), a performance that some find overly mannered but one that I’ve always enjoyed.

Merlin and Vivien (1867) by Gustave Doré.

The Beguiling of Merlin (1874) by Edward Burne-Jones.

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Weekend links 289

Fathomless Sounding (1932) by Gertrude Hermes.

• Over at Greydogtales (“weird fiction, weird art and even weirder lurchers”) I talk about art, design, the writing of this blog, and I also reveal more about my ongoing Axiom project. The latter currently stands at two novels, a couple of half-finished stories and a few pieces of artwork. I may be unveiling some of the art in the new year so watch this space.

• Howard Brookner’s Burroughs: The Movie (1983), a definitive film portrait of William Burroughs, is released at last on DVD/Blu-ray. US-only for the moment but further releases elsewhere are promised. The director’s nephew, Aaron Brookner, has a documentary about his uncle released next year.

• “…beautifully articulated bawdiness, perverse pleasures and a radical, though nondidactic, political view.” Melissa Anderson reviews Boyd McDonald’s Cruising the Movies: A Sexual Guide to Oldies.

The crisis, as Ellis and Silk tell it, is the wildly speculative nature of modern physics theories, which they say reflects a dangerous departure from the scientific method. Many of today’s theorists — chief among them the proponents of string theory and the multiverse hypothesis — appear convinced of their ideas on the grounds that they are beautiful or logically compelling, despite the impossibility of testing them. Ellis and Silk accused these theorists of “moving the goalposts” of science and blurring the line between physics and pseudoscience. “The imprimatur of science should be awarded only to a theory that is testable,” Ellis and Silk wrote, thereby disqualifying most of the leading theories of the past 40 years. “Only then can we defend science from attack.”

Natalie Wolchover on A Fight for the Soul of Science

• Mixes of the week: A mix by Front & Follow, and The Ivy-Strangled Path Vol. XIV by David Colohan.

• “Psychedelics can’t be tested using conventional clinical trials,” says Nicolas Langlitz.

• At Dangerous Minds: Ralph Steadman illustrates Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

• Why does Moby-Dick (sometimes) have a hyphen? Erin Blakemore investigates.

• My thanks again to Dennis Cooper for including this blog on his year-end list.

• Cian Traynor was given 20 minutes to ask Ennio Morricone some questions.

• Lolita at 60: Ten writers reconsider Nabokov’s novel, page by page.

• At Ballardian: High-Rise: Wheatley vs Cronenberg.

• Poison Ivy: The Queen of Psychobilly Punk

• The Cinema of Hotels: a list

• Solo intimacy DIY

• Moby Dick (1970) by Led Zeppelin | William Burroughs Don’t Play Guitar (1996) by Islamic Diggers | Physical (2001) by Goldfrapp