A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Art
Illustrated editions of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales are so numerous it’s easy to overlook the better examples. Kay Nielsen’s edition isn’t only better than most, it’s an outstanding example of his meticulous approach to story illustration. Hansel and Gretel and Other Stories was published in 1925, and the beautiful colour plates really need to be seen at a larger size. You can view the rest of the book here or download it here.
The Water Spirit (1904).
Theodor Kittelsen is, we’re told, one of Norway’s most popular artists and illustrators. This would explain why so much of his work has appeared on the covers of albums by Norwegian metal bands although it also helps that one of the books he illustrated is entitled Svartedauen (The Black Death). The picture below, one of several portraits of trolls and mythological creatures, appeared on the sleeve of Long Island, the most recent album by US band Endless Boogie. Discogs has a list of Kittelsen’s other album cover appearances which also include classical releases. This site has more of the artist’s paintings and illustrations. (Via Wood s Lot).
Forest Troll (1906).
Fishing Water Spirit (1912).
Ghost in the Machine (2012) by Hope Kroll.
• Nothing Here Now But The Recordings, an album of William Burroughs’ personal tapes originally released by Industrial Records is reissued on vinyl this month. Andrew Spragg reviews it here. Burroughs’ readings fill several collections but this one was the first I owned, and it’s always been a favourite. The album features recordings of early texts such as The Last Words of Hassan I Sabbah, as well as cut-up tape experiments which fuelled some of the chapters in the Nova Trilogy.
• The Melancholy of Perversion: a study of Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Metamorphosis A by Scott Dwyer. More weird fiction: “Written with real psychological depth, these enigmatic tales rise far beyond straightforward ghost stories.” Chris Power on Robert Aickman.
• At Dangerous Minds: Gay Semiotics, a taxonomy of San Francisco life in the 1970s. Related: The case of One, a gay magazine from Los Angeles prosecuted for obscenity in 1958.
Poe’s mind was by no means commonplace. In the last year of his life he wrote a prose poem, Eureka, which would have established this fact beyond doubt—if it had not been so full of intuitive insight that neither his contemporaries nor subsequent generations, at least until the late twentieth century, could make any sense of it. Its very brilliance made it an object of ridicule, an instance of affectation and delusion, and so it is regarded to this day among readers and critics who are not at all abreast of contemporary physics. Eureka describes the origins of the universe in a single particle, from which “radiated” the atoms of which all matter is made. Minute dissimilarities of size and distribution among these atoms meant that the effects of gravity caused them to accumulate as matter, forming the physical universe.
Marilynne Robinson on Edgar Allan Poe
• Vanished City: London’s Lost Neighbourhoods, a book by Tom Bolton with photographs by SF Said.
• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 143, a selection of soundtrack music by Las CasiCasiotone.
• “I am in Brussels, numbering the Bruegels.” Toby Ferris conducts a Brueg[h]el Census.
• Mothmeister “taxidermy collector & curiosity cabinet”.
• Ben Zurawski collects and makes flip books.
• Akira Kurosawa’s 100 favourite films
• The Trip (1965) by Kim Fowley | The Trip (1966) by Donovan | The Trip (1967) by Park Avenue Playground
Awake Gróa, Awake Mother.
The book is Our Fathers’ Godsaga (1911), tales of the Norse gods by Viktor Rydberg. The illustrations are by Swedish artist John Bauer (1882–1918), and may be seen at a larger size here. Bauer’s drawing of Gróa makes me think of the opening scene of David Rudkin’s television film Artemis 81, a drama that involves attempts to wake a more potentially destructive Earth Mother.
Fenrir and Tyr.
Freyja and Svipdag.
Art by and for the library of Aangel Mendez (1950).
Only the first example here is overtly erotic but the one below is tagged as such on this site which displays a huge variety of bookplate designs. There’s more to be found in the Ex Eroticis Libris, Erotica, and Nude sections. Pretty much everything there is heterosexual, of course; homoerotic bookplates from the earlier decades of the 20th century are scarce for obvious reasons but naked males, equivocal or not, can always be found. (Via Things Magazine.)
Art by Heino Beddig (1966).
Art by and for the library of Haagen Bartam-Jensen (no date).
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Koloman Moser bookplates
• Erotic bookplates by Franz von Bayros
• German bookplates
• Troutsdale Press bookplates
• Bookplates from The Studio
• Yuri Yakovenko bookplates
• Tranquillo Marangoni bookplates
• Book-plates of To-day
• Louis Rhead bookplates
• Pratt Libraries Ex Libris Collection
• The Evil Orchid Bookplate Contest
• The art of Oleg Denysenko
• David Becket’s bookplates