A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Art
Another addition to the burgeoning archive of you-know-what, the Flandrin pose on this occasion being by Egon from JKK Fine Arts. He also sent details of some new photobooks, the image below being an example from The Blue Book. There’s also Narcissus and Homage to Egon Schiele. Thanks Egon!
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive
The Ludwig Habich building, Darmstadt.
Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Volume 9 covers the period from October 1901–March 1902. This edition continues the examination of the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony begun in the previous number. Despite the colony being very much an Art Nouveau venture the pictorial content is largely photographic, with many views of the show-homes built by the colony artists. Much of the other content is a disappointment compared to what’s gone before, the featured painters being the conservative types who were crowding Jugend magazine at this period with generic depictions of stolid German farmers. Unlike Jugend, however, this isn’t the end of the line. As usual, anyone wishing to see these samples in greater detail, or the rest of the edition, is advised to download the entire volume at the Internet Archive. There’ll be more DK&D next week.
St Sebastian with wounded chest (c. 1906).
The work of American photographer Fred Holland Day (1864–1933) has featured here in the past but it’s only recently that I came across the archive of prints at the Library of Congress. Not all the works there are digitised yet, and some are still unavailable for viewing, but the LoC prints one can view are always quality scans. Day would have been a significant photographer whatever his subject but his work has additional interest today for its overt homoerotic dimension; he manages to play the usual evasive games with Biblical themes or Classical mythology whilst maintaining a pictorial quality through soft focus and heavily-grained paper. The mood of some of these shots makes them seem far in advance of other work of the period.
St Sebastian in loincloth, tied to tree with rope, arrows in stomach and side, hands behind back (1906).
From a Void City to what might be a Vulture City, this is an illustration I produced last September for San Jose psych rock band Vultures Await. I would have mentioned it sooner but the following months were very busy and I was also waiting for the band to make the artwork public. Stylistically, this is another piece of collage Surrealism à la Wilfried Sätty, an illustration approach I’d like to keep developing for a while yet. The forthcoming Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities will have more Sätty-inspired pieces, although my contributions there tend towards the decorative. There is, however, a connection between this piece and the Cephalopod Bride.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Wilfried Sätty: Artist of the occult
• Nyarlathotep: the Crawling Chaos
DG-2499 (1975) by the fantastic (in every sense of the word) Zdzisław Beksiński (1929–2005). See the Dmochowski Gallery for a comprehensive collection of the artist’s work. Thanks to BibliOdyssey for the tip.
• More ICA events: From Animism to Zos: Strange Attractor Salon will be “a series of weekly events, consisting of a talk and a film, exploring some lesser-known intersections of culture, history, mind and nature” running from 10 March–12 May, 2011.
• And on May 10, the London Word Festival presents a Dodgem Logic evening with entertainment provided by contributors to that magazine:
Alan Moore’s reinvigoration of the underground fanzine, Dodgem Logic, comes alive in the non-conformist surroundings of Hackney’s Round Chapel. A night of art, comedy, comment and put-something-back localism. (…) With Robin Ince heading up a colossal stand-up bill, artists Steve Aylett, Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie and Kevin O’Neill panel-up to talk about their comic work, while music comes from hyperactive racketeers The Retro Spankees. With an exhibition of artwork from the magazine, and conducted by editor-in-chief Alan Moore.
• Taschen publishes a collection of Dennis Hopper’s photographs this week. The Independent has a small selection here. Also new from Tachen, Alex Steinweiss, The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover.
• Bass Notes: The Film Posters of Saul Bass at the Kemistry Gallery, London.
DG-2507 by Zdzisław Beksiński.
While riding through the bustling streets of London from 1603 to 1621, one was liable to hear the shout “Long live Queen James!” King James I of England and VI of Scotland was so open about his homosexual love affairs that an epigram had been circulated which roused much mirth and nodding of the heads: Rex fuit Elizabeth: nunc est regina Jacobus—”Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen.”
There’s more about the private life of the man who gave his name to the King James Bible here.
• Addams and Evil, a Tumblr devoted to the great Charles Addams.
• Hannes Bok again at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.
• Caravaggio’s crimes exposed in Rome’s police files.
• Deserted City, photographs by Kim Høltermand.
• The blue sand dunes of the planet Mars.
• A map of the ghost signs of Chicago.
• The movie title stills collection.
• The pitfalls of e-book buying.
• Life On Mars? (1971) by David Bowie | Uncle Sam’s On Mars (1979) by Hawkwind | Eyes On Mars (1980) by Chrome | Cache Coeur Naif (1997) by Mouse on Mars.