{art} – Page 367 – { feuilleton }

The art of Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, 1884–1965

Tjur och Matador III (Bull and Matador III) (1926).

My thanks again to Will at 50 Watts for generously sending me this selection of paintings by Swedish artist Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, or GAN as he was known. These pictures alone show him to have been a very versatile artist, ranging from the late Symbolism of his Young man with death to the works below which deploy a variety of Modernist styles including nods to Cubism and Futurism. A translation of his Swedish Wikipedia page explains the preponderance of matelots and toreadors thus:

The GAN was homosexual reflected in several of his works. For example, he was at times almost manic fixed at the Mariners, and he worshiped the masculine force. Other favorite subjects were male athletes. Meanwhile, the homosexual eroticism both forbidden and taboo and GAN forced to live a double life.

It’s a shame there isn’t a good single site for his work but Google’s image search turns up a lot more paintings. There’s also this Swedish site which contains more biographical detail.

Ynglingen och döden (Young man with death) (1908).

Epilog.

Ilja (Portrait of Karl Edvard Holmström) (1911–12).

Inspiration (1928).

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The art of Gregorio Prieto, 1897–1992

Predicadors del be i del mal (c. 1928–1930).

My thanks to Will at 50 Watts for sending these experimental photos by Spanish artists Eduardo Chicharro (1873–1949) and Gregorio Prieto, neither of whose work I’d looked at before. Prieto is of most interest here (that’s him in photo five with the metalwork wrapped around his head) for the homoerotic quality of his other work, a quality which no doubt explains why some of these pictures set the gaydar bells ringing. I thought that Javier at Bajo el Signo de Libra might have featured Prieto already but it seems not.

Iluita (c. 1928–1930).

The photos are from Les avantguardes fotografiques a espanya, 1925–1945. The superimposed images are reminiscent of those that Emil Cadoo was producing in the 1950s albeit with more of a deliberate Surrealist flavour; the ruins and Classical references are also a feature of Prieto’s paintings, some of which can be seen here. (Also a coloured print of the first photo above.) The homoerotics is most evident in his line drawings, some of which can be seen here. His reclining youths and embracing sailors look rather Cocteau-like but they probably owe more to the etchings of Picasso’s Vollard Suite which were being produced around the same period. There’s more Picasso-esque Prieto at Flickr including a drawing dedicated to Lorca.

Metamorfosi (c. 1928–1930).

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Weekend links 134

Technological mandala 02 (The beginning) (2012) by Leonardo Ulian.

• The Yellow Magic Orchestra really were the Japanese equivalent of Kraftwerk in 1978. I’d not seen this video for Firecracker before. Same goes for the Technopolis and Rydeen videos. Related: YMO’s synth programmer, Hideki Matsutake, showing off his modular Moog on a Japanese TV show.

• Sra is the final book in the Aedena Cycle by Moebius. It’s never been translated into English but Quenched Consciousness has just finished posting the entire book in an unofficial translation.

• “It’s better to have a small amount of good comics, than a big amount of mediocre comics.” Dutch comic artist Joost Swarte interviewed.

• From 2007: The Strange Lovecraftian Statuary of Puerto Vallarta (Thanks, Ian.) Related: More art by Alejandro Colunga.

A novelty mechanical clock barometer in the form of a steam engine (c. 1885).

• The MR-808: a room-size TR-808 drum machine by Moritz Simon Geist with real instruments played by robot hands.

• “Shoot us and dig the grave; otherwise we’re staying.” The women living in Chernobyl’s toxic wasteland.

• Hotel Room Portraits 1999–2012 by Richard Renaldi, a new photo exhibition at Wessel + O’Connor.

• Lane’s Telescopic View of the Opening of the Great Exhibition, 1851.

• “I’m the target market, and I don’t like it!” A Creative Catharsis.

• Brian Eno’s new ambient album, Lux, is released on Monday.

• Collages by Sergei Parajanov.

• Techno City (1984) by Cybotron | Techno Primitiv (1985) by Chris & Cosey | Techno Dread (2008) by 2562.

Reverbstorm in print

A couple of months ago I was starting to wonder whether I’d ever see this book printed, the production process became so tortuously drawn out. But Reverbstorm is finally in print and looking exactly the way I intended with black boards, black endpapers and black ink on the page edges. The latter proved to be a costly extra which explains why it’s an uncommon effect.

More important than the book design is that the printing of the artwork is excellent, with rich blacks and pin-sharp detail throughout. You’d think that printing black-and-white pages was a fairly straightforward business but the first set of proofs were pretty disastrous, the ink bleeding over the edges of many panels and detail elsewhere being blacked in. A combination of copious cross-hatching, spattered ink and—on later pages—brush shading and monochrome painting proved to be too much when the A3 artwork was reduced to half its size. This was particularly galling since these pages had never been properly printed since they were drawn: the original comics looked glossy enough but were all produced by back-street printers who didn’t bother too much about quality, and even made mistakes. They were a necessary evil at a time when other Savoy books had been refused by printers who objected to the material they contained. The relief at finally seeing the series completed and printed to this standard is considerable.

However, I’m afraid would-be purchasers still have a slight wait before they can buy a copy. The official publication date will now be early February but copies will be available to buy from the first week in January after distribution details have been finalised. I tried to persuade Savoy to relent on this and let a few copies go out prematurely but that won’t be happening. Sorry to anyone who’s been waiting since April (!) for the book but the decision is out of my hands. I believe it’ll be worth the wait. This is a better book than The Haunter of the Dark, and the best (and last) thing I’ll do in the comics medium. Next up is Axiom, a different world entirely. More about that later.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Reverbstorm update
• James Joyce in Reverbstorm
• A Reverbstorm jukebox
• Reverbstorm: Bauhaus Horror
• Reverbstorm: an introduction and preview

World Fantasy Awards

Presenting some of the cover art and interior illustration from 2011 which won me the World Fantasy Award for best artist in Toronto on Sunday. (The complete awards list is here.) It was a surprise to be nominated, and even more of a surprise to win since working in different areas—book, music, comics—is never a good way to get noticed for doing one particular thing. It’s also the case that sf/fantasy art awards tend to favour painters or virtuoso digital artists over people such as myself who I suppose are more illustrator-designers; that’s not a criticism, just an acknowledgement of the strength and popularity of highly-refined pictorial art in this area of the literary world. The recognition hazard works in the opposite direction: the design world often gives the most attention to graphic design alone, with the illustration quotient being regarded as secondary content.

I’m not exactly sure what the judges were looking at of my work so these examples have been chosen for being published during the year under examination. They’re also covers that people seemed to like a lot, especially KW Jeter‘s Morlock Night (even though I still prefer Infernal Devices!), and those for Mike Shevdon‘s books. The Jeter and Shevdon volumes are all published by Angry Robot who will also be publishing Lavie Tidhar‘s The Bookman Histories early next year sporting another of my covers. Lavie’s novel Osama won best novel in Toronto while Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (editors of the Lambshead book below) picked up a best anthology award for their monumental The Weird. And to add to the good company, my regular publishers Tachyon saw one of their authors, Tim Powers, gaining best story collection. Congratulations to everyone, and a big thanks to Ann for collecting my award.

I’m always using these posts to point to other artists so it’s only right that I encourage everyone to go and look at the work of the other nominees. Here they are (although Jon Foster’s site appears down at the moment):

• Julie Dillon
• Jon Foster
• Kathleen Jennings
• John Picacio

John Picacio has a rather gorgeous calendar due out soon, details here.

Title page for The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Harper Voyager).

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