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Jo Daemen’s The Sacred Flame

Johanna Maria Hendrika Daemen (1891–1944), credited here as “Jo”, wrote and illustrated The Sacred Flame: The Fairy-Tale of Stefan Pártos (1927), a tribute to a Hungarian violinist who died young. Daemen was a Dutch illustrator, graphic designer and glass artist who one suspects would be better known if she’d been British or American. The detail and composition of these illustrations is exceptional, falling somewhere between Kay Nielsen’s meticulous detailing and Harry Clarke’s stained-glass designs. This is another volume currently for sale at silver-gryph’s eBay pages where larger views of the drawings may be seen. (Thanks again to Nick for the tip!)

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John Yunge-Bateman’s King Lear

When Majesty turns to folly!

John Yunge-Bateman (1897–1971), aka “Yunge”, is another British illustrator whose work I’d not noticed until now, possibly because this 1930 edition of King Lear is an early creation in a derivative style the artist abandoned. The ten black-and-white drawings are closer to Harry Clarke than Aubrey Beardsley, and a couple of them even try to match Clarke’s more grotesque inventions albeit with variable results. Some of the faces are rather dopey for my taste but I like the use of solid blacks. These samples are taken from a scarce copy currently up for auction at silver-gryph’s eBay pages should anyone be interested. (Thanks again to Nick for the tip!)

Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, go to the creating a whole tribe of fops.

If you come slack of former services you shall do well.

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Weekend links 251

Beliel (2013) by Dan Quintana.

• Guida essenziale all’Italian Occult Psychedelia. Out next month: Nostra Signora Delle Tenebre, a tribute to “movies that…retained a decidedly Italian flavour, a bizarre mix of nasty violence, lurid sexuality and feverish Catholic mysticism, all filtered through a manic obsession with death, blood and the sins of the flesh.” In the meantime, try the Italic Environments mix by Lay Llamas.

• “His work matters more than ever now because it stands in contrast to all the sequels, the comic-book adaptations, that Hollywood makes to sell lunchboxes.” Ryan Gilbey looks at a new documentary about the great Robert Altman.

• Psychedelic Culture at the Crossroads: Erik Davis on the ongoing reappraisal of the value of psychedelic drugs. Related: Dude, You Can Draw Magic Mushrooms With an Oscilloscope.

Like [Ellen Sofie] Lauritzen, what I appreciate about music, writing, and films that vary from dated to downright misogynist is the rawness I see expressed, a sheer energy that can’t toe the line of perfect political obeisance. I join her in hoping that we back down from using “problematic” as a censorious bludgeon against creative achievements, no matter how problematic they are.

Sarah Seltzer on whether feminists can enjoy misogynist art

• Mixes of the week: Roger Eagle’s jukebox selection for Eric’s club, Liverpool; Switched On! Vol. 4 by AnchSounds; T-P-F Mix 3: Bucolic Intrigue Romance by The Pattern Forms.

• At Dangerous Minds: Paul Gallagher on the whimsical anarchism of the White Bicycle revolution.

• Opening the Ghost Box: Dave Thompson on a record label that’s mentioned here more than most.

• Abominations Of Yondo (2007), a free album inspired by the weird fiction of Clark Ashton Smith.

• Placards of earthly delight: Isabel Stevens on Vera Chytilová’s film posters.

• I’m an artist to watch according to Nakid Magazine.

• Tomb of Insomnia

• Death Surf (2012) by Heroin In Tahiti | Voices Call (2015) by Lay Llamas | Averno (2015) by OVO

Weekend links 250

Untitled artwork by Melinda Gebbie.

• “Johnny Rocket is like a Chaucerian epic retold by David Peace with music by Bruce Haack and The Focus Group for a music hall located in Hell.” John Doran talks to Maxine Peake and the Eccentronic Research Council about their “psychedelic ouija pop”.

• Allison Meier looks at a new exhibition of Victor Moscoso’s psychedelic drawings. Related: Julia Bigham writing in Eye magazine in 2001 about London’s psychedelic poster scene.

• “Oh to eye the very enfilade through which that orchidaceous entity would make his stately progress…” Strange Flowers on the eccentric Count Stenbock.

• Melinda Gebbie: What Is The Female Gaze? The artist is in conversation next month with Mark Pilkington and Tai Shani at the Horse Hospital, London.

• Pamela Colman Smith: She Believes in Fairies. The Tarot artist and illustrator in a rare interview from 1912.

• Minimalist posters: “a lack of nuance disguised as insight,” says John Brownlee.

• Saturday night in the City of the Dead: Richard Metzger on the John Foxx-era Ultravox.

• The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble plays the Brandenberg Concerto No. 3.

• “In a weird way”: a brief history of a phrase by Ivan Kreilkamp.

• Die Hexe: An installation by Alex Da Corte.

• RIP Daevid Allen

• Istaqsinaayok

• You Can’t Kill Me (1971) by Gong | Master Builder (1974) by Gong | When (1982) by Daevid Allen

Spare things

Cthulhu Cultus: The Sun is Sick (no date) by Austin Osman Spare.

I’ve been telling people about this drawing for years but I’ve not posted it here before. Spare produced this piece after Kenneth Grant gave him some of HP Lovecraft’s stories to read. I’ve never seen it dated but it’s probably from the mid-50s when Kenneth and Steffi Grant were corresponding with Spare and commissioning new artworks. What’s notable for me is that this is probably the first Lovecraft-derived drawing that wasn’t either a magazine or book illustration, or something done for one of the horror fanzines.

The Call of Cthulhu (1987) by John Coulthart.

Lovecraft aficionados have never seemed aware of Spare’s drawing since Lovecraft studies tended until very recently to remain fixed on popular media and the often parochial world of genre fandom. When I came to draw the swamp scene for The Call of Cthulhu in 1987 I borrowed the faces from Spare’s pillar for the column in the centre of the picture.

Bulldog Breed.

While we’re on the subject, and in the spirit of showing how all the obsessions here connect in one way or another, Phil Baker’s excellent biography of Austin Spare notes a surprising reference to the artist that predates Man, Myth and Magic via the psychedelic music scene. Bulldog Breed were a short-lived London group, one of many being promoted by the Deram label in the late 1960s. The group’s one-and-only album, Made In England, was released in 1969. The cover art is dreadful but the final song is a number entitled Austin Osmanspare [sic], a paean to the artist that turns AOS into a typical character from British psychedelia: an eccentric, oddly named, Victorian type with a sinister and mysterious glamour. According to Baker one of the band members had an aunt who knew Spare. It’s not a bad song, and the choice of magus gave them an edge over the Beatles who went for the more obvious Aleister Crowley. “They said he was before his time…”

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dreaming Out of Space: Kenneth Grant on HP Lovecraft
• MMM in IT
• Intertextuality
• Abrahadabra
• The Occult Explosion
• Murmur Become Ceaseless and Myriad
• Kenneth Grant, 1924–2011
• New Austin Spare grimoires
• Austin Spare absinthe
• Austin Spare’s Behind the Veil
• Austin Osman Spare