A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Art
Thanks to Radugo for drawing my attention to this piece of street art in Melbourne, Australia. This Facebook page identifies the location as Drewery Place, off Drewery Lane. The photo below is a vague equivalent of the Flandrin pose spotted at Chateau Thombeau. I can’t find a credit for this so if anyone knows who the photographer is, please leave a comment.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive
From the Ornamental Age series (2009) by Seher Shah.
Seher Shah has recently updated her website giving us a better view of her extraordinary art.
• The Demon Regent Asmodeus, my short film of Alan Moore’s reading from the first Moon & Serpent CD, has been posted to YouTube. In other self-promotion news, Mahakala, a drawing of mine from 1984, finds an audience on Tumblr.
• Yet more Moore: Alan Moore & Iain Sinclair “explore psychogeography” at the Cheltenham Festival in June. Alan will also be discussing science and fiction with Robin Ince. Then in July he’s performing with fine fellow Stephen O’Malley at Alexandra Palace as part of Portishead’s I’ll Be Your Mirror festival. They’ll be providing text and music for Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic.
In most countries, parents can tell their kids that if they work hard and do everything right, they could grow up to be the head of state and symbol of their nation. Not us. Our head of state is decided by one factor, and one factor alone: did he pass through the womb of one aristocratic Windsor woman living in a golden palace? The US head of state grew up with a mother on food stamps. The British head of state grew up with a mother on postage stamps. Is that a contrast that fills you with pride? (…) Earlier this month, David Cameron lamented that too many people in Britain get ahead because of who their parents are. A few minutes later, without missing a beat, he praised the monarchy as the best of British. Nobody laughed.
Johann Hari kicks the royals.
• Related to the above: Lydia Leith’s royal wedding sick bag.
• Beautiful Century relates a dispiriting (and very common) encounter with Google’s blog prudery. The new Beautiful Century is now at Tumblr.
• In the future, everything will be on Tumblr for fifteen minutes. Among this week’s discoveries there’s Writers and Kitties, attractive men and vintage photos at Stuff Doer, and all manner of things at Maggs Counterculture including a picture by Jim Leon I hadn’t seen before.
From the Ornamental Age series (2009) by Seher Shah.
“Sidewalk cafés, free from conservative business attire…” Film of groovy Greenwich Village in the late 1960s. Related: groovier fashions in Art Nouveau Barcelona.
• Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009, a book from MIT Press.
• The Delian Mode, a film about electronic musician Delia Derbyshire by Kara Blake.
• Austin Osman Spare, a biography of the artist and occultist by Phil Baker.
• Lando Jones is giving away three limited edition prints of his artwork.
• Plano Creativo, a blog (in Spanish) by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
• B Magazine is a new publication for gay Americans.
• Diaghilev gets his due at Coilhouse.
• Baby’s On Fire (1973) by Brian Eno | Baby’s On Fire (1976) by 801 | Baby’s On Fire (from Velvet Goldmine) (1998) by The Venus In Furs.
Water Serpents I by Gustav Klimt. See it in colour here.
Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Yesterday’s post concerned a Klimt-like artist, today volume 19, covering the period from October 1906 to March 1907, includes further work by Klimt himself. The Wiener Werkstätte, with whom Klimt was affiliated, continues to dominate these editions, understandably so when the architecture, art and design being produced by the group was some of the most advanced in the world. In addition to the customary graphics and interiors there’s also some examples of dress design by Gustav Klimt which I hadn’t seen before.
As usual, anyone wishing to see these samples in greater detail is advised to download the entire number at the Internet Archive. There’ll be more DK&D next week.
A portrait of Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein by Gustav Klimt. The sitter was the sister of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
A poster by Koloman Moser.
Will at 50 Watts points the way to a set of line drawings by Kozma Lajos, a Hungarian artist better known for his later work as an architect and designer. What strikes me about these illustrations is their similiarity to the graphics being produced by German and Austrian artists a few years earlier, some of whom have been turning up in the recent samples from Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. There’s the same Klimt-like decorative detail and a lack of perspective. See the series here and further illustration work at the end of this page.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
I posted a few examples of work by French artist Gilles Rimbault last year, and was hoping at the time that further drawings might come to light. We have D.R. Tenge to thank for posting these and other scans from Plexus magazine on the same LJ page where I found some of the earlier works, together with text that accompanied the pictures. “He pursues an endless search in the ‘erotisme fantastique'” Plexus tells us, and that’s a great description of this curious sub-genre which I’ve previously referred to (following Philip José Farmer) as “the pornography of the weird”. From what I know about Plexus it specialised in this typically late 60s/early 70s blend of science fiction, fantasy and erotic exploration, being a spin-off from Pauwels & Bergier’s magazine of “fantastic realism”, Planète; it also wasn’t the only magazine doing so which makes me wish that Taschen (or somebody) would delve into this sorely neglected area.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Ran Akiyoshi, 1922–1982
• The art of Gilles Rimbault
• The art of Jim Leon, 1938–2002
• The art of Sibylle Ruppert
• The art of Bertrand