Weekend links 11

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Panneaux decoratifs (1900) by Manuel Orazi at NYPL.

Ghostsigns: “a collaborative national effort to photograph, research and archive the remaining examples of hand painted wall advertising in the UK and Ireland.”

• Golden Age Comic Book Stories posts some Alphonse Mucha.

Voyage Fantastique – An illustrated guide to the body and mind at A Journey Round My Skull.

The gallery of the International Exhibition of Calligraphy.

Trevor Wayne Pin-Up Show, a new photo collection of the tattooed Mr Wayne which includes photos and a foreword by Clive Barker.

Phallophonies, a gallery exploring the penis in religious art. Related: “Churchgoers are outraged over a crucifix in a Catholic church that they say shows an image of genitalia on Jesus.”

Hollingsville: “Expect live and unscripted wanderings around voodoo science parks, examinations of cities as battle suits and thoughts on pods, capsules and world expos.”

Phantom Circuit #33 is a Ghost Box special featuring an interview with Jim Jupp (Belbury Poly) and Julian House (The Focus Group). Related: Ghost Box films at YouTube.

Eldritchtronica and Wyrd Bliss, a mixtape by Simon Reynolds.

• Avant garde music and cinema meet at The Sound of Eye.

• Make your own newspaper with Newspaper Club.

Drawdio: A pencil that lets you draw music.

Yoko Ono collects rare books.

KittehRoulette.

• Song of the week: The Four Horsemen (1972) by Aphrodite’s Child.

Manuel Orazi’s Salomé

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The Biblical bad girl returns in three pictures from an illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde’s play, published as a limited run in 1930. Manuel Orazi (1860–1934) was a French artist whose work has appeared here before, and no doubt will do again very soon since I’ve been finding further examples of his illustrations and designs. These drawings are closer to Gustav Klimt or George Barbier than his earlier illustrations which owed much to the stylisation of Mucha’s Art Nouveau.

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Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The illustrators archive
The Salomé archive

The panoramic towers of Prague

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The Tower at Charles Bridge, Old Town.

More panoramas of Prague from 360 Cities by Jeffrey Martin, a photographer who’s made a speciality of capturing the city in 360º views. Among his collection are a number of photos taken from Prague’s many towers and steeples including a few where he’s managed to remove the supporting building, as in the view from the Charles Bridge above. This gives the effect of floating in weightless suspension above the city and may well induce alarm in vertigo sufferers. Needless to say, all these are best viewed on the full screen setting.

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The Powder Tower (Prasna Brana).

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Mikulas Tower.

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Prague TV Tower Babies 1; one of David Cerný’s crawling baby sculptures looks over the city. See also the 18 gigapixel view from the tower.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
Karel Plicka’s views of Prague

Jugend, 1899

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Continuing the delve into back issues of Jugend magazine, the German fin de siècle periodical of “art and life”, this post covers the year 1899. The earlier years of the magazine are replete with a variety of elegant and often bizarre graphics, as well as some classic examples of Art Nouveau graphic design. 1899 is the point in the magazine’s history that the variety (and, for me, the interest) begins to diminish. The covers lose their earlier inventiveness while the Art Nouveau stylings within are being replaced by drab illustrations of the German middle classes and patriotic depictions of country folk. There are still gems to be found, however, some of which follow below. As before, anyone wanting to see more of these graphics is advised to explore the bound volumes at the Heidelberg University archive. The two books for 1899 can be found here and here.

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Otto Eckman (above) and Julius Diez (below) were heavily featured in the earlier years of the magazine and Diez in particular produces some of the best work in this year’s run.

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Continue reading “Jugend, 1899”

Weekend links 10

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One of a number of vintage ads and ephemeral items at this Flickr set.

• From 1971: The Anthony Balch/William Burroughs/Jan Herman video experiment.

• The NYT reports on World on a Wire, a neglected science fiction drama by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

• “While some of the technology industry’s brightest minds were inventing the first PCs and developing groundbreaking software, they were also feeding their heads with LSD.”

• The archive of author and illustrator Mervyn Peake has been acquired by the British Library for £410,000.

• Thames & Hudson are publishing I Wonder, a book by the wonderful Marian Bantjes, later in the year. Her site has a preview. I want.

• The gays: It’s election season in the UK so My Gay Vote looks at how the three main parties have supported LGB issues. (No data for the graphs, however.) Is theatre finally glad to be gay? Yet more Tumblrs: I heart skinny boys & Cute boys with cats.

• Trend-spotter, “svengali”, Situationist and the man who named the Sex Pistols: RIP Malcolm McLaren. The Guardian ran a number of memorial pages. Related: Anarchy in Gardenstown.

• Dublin’s One City, One Book choice for April 2010 is The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Catastrophist: Christopher Hitchens on JG Ballard.

Steampunk Taxidermy by Lisa Black.

• LIFE looks back at Aleister Crowley.

• Groovy songs of the week: Julie Driscoll (with Brian Auger & The Trinity), a pair of songs by Bob Dylan—This Wheel’s On Fire—and Donovan—Season Of The Witch—and sets which look like a collaboration between Verner Panton and Marcel Duchamp. Amazing.