{art} – Page 514 – { feuilleton }

Steinlen’s cats

Chat Noir poster (1896).

We had Louis Wain yesterday so it only seems right to follow with the other notable cat artist of the period, and also the one whose work I prefer, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (1859–1923).

Steinlen’s designs for the Montmartre cabaret, Le Chat Noir, of which there are many variations, are dismayingly ubiquitous in contemporary Paris, so much so that you quickly tire of his haloed feline when wandering the streets. Parisians regard Steinlen’s posters the way Londoners regard pictures of Beefeaters; they’re part of the background noise of the capital city, intended solely for tourists. A shame because it really is a splendid cat.

The Apotheosis of the Cats (c. 1890).

Steinlen’s cat pieces run the gamut of styles and variations, from delicate life studies and bronze sculptures to works such as the three-metres wide mural above depicting the advent of some ultimate feline deity. Among his many drawings he produced a number of marvellous cartoon sequences like the one below featuring cats fighting, playing and generally getting into trouble. Some of these can be found on Flickr here and here.

For more Steinlen, including his non-feline works, there’s Steinlen.net.

The End of a Goldfish.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Louis Wain at Nunnington Hall
• The Boy Who Drew Cats
• 8 out of 10 cats prefer absinthe
• Monsieur Chat

Louis Wain at Nunnington Hall

The Mother of Triplets.

Anyone in the vicinity of Nunnington Hall in North Yorkshire over the next month has the opportunity to view and—if you’re wealthy enough—buy some pictures by Victorian cat artist Louis Wain (1860–1939). Wain is famously “The Cat Artist Who Went Mad” (as Chris Beetles’ gallery site puts it) and that piece of knowledge always comes to the fore when looking at his anthropomorphised felines with their huge eyes and often scowling expressions. The excellent Beetles gallery has an overview of the works on display at Nunnington. For the really eccentric stuff, however, you’ll have to go here.

Louis Wain at Nunnington Hall runs until September 13, 2009.

• Catland: The art of Louis Wain

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Marbled papers
• A Madmen’s Museum
• The art of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, 1736–1783

Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

When Herman Melville complains in chapter 55 of Moby Dick about erroneous representations of whales, this is the kind of thing he had in mind. Among those he takes to task, however, I don’t recall any of them having two blow-holes like the creature above.

The coat of arms of Portugal.

These fanciful beasts are the work of (no sniggering, please) Hieronymus Cock (1510–1570), an Antwerp engraver, and they populate the seas as part of his marvellous map of America created with the assistance of Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérrez.

Gutiérrez’s magnificent 1562 map of America was not intended to be a scientifically or navigationally exacting document, although it was of large scale and remained the largest map of America for a century. It was, rather, a ceremonial map, a diplomatic map, as identified by the coats of arms proclaiming possession. Through the map, Spain proclaimed to the nations of Western Europe its American territory, clearly outlining its sphere of control, not by degrees, but with the appearance of a very broad line for the Tropic of Cancer clearly drawn on the map.

The map is described in detail here while another part of the Library of Congress Map Collections site has an incredible high-resolution copy which is a delight to pore over. This is a really big image (10492 x 11908 pixels) but the huge size is just what I love to see. You can not only zoom into the myriad details—cannibals cooking a human feast in Brazil—but also admire the precision of the cross-hatching. Less than forty years separate these generic creatures from Jan Saenredam’s far more accurate rendering of a beached sperm whale.

A dolphin (Melville classed dolphins and porpoises as small whales).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jan Saenredam’s whale
• The Whale again
• Rockwell Kent’s Moby Dick

David Trautimas

The Fishing Complex (2008).

Canadian artist David Trautimas re-purposes household and other objects into fantasy buildings by exaggerating their scale then montaging them into landscapes. This example is from his Habitat Machines series; there’s also an Industrial Parkland series. Many of the former group are pleasantly convincing, and their weathered appearance adds to the impression of having discovered the works of a lost Modernist architect. Some of these are like digital equivalents of paintings by Arnau Alemy.

Via Things Magazine.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Arnau Alemany

The art of Goh Mishima, 1924–1989

Untitled.

The gay artists archive is currently receiving more than twice as many visits as the rest of these pages so here’s a new addition to what is, it should be stressed, only a personal selection, not a definitive catalogue.

Goh Mishima (born Tsuyoshi Yoshida) specialised in what everyone seems to call “Yakazuza porn” although many of his men have fewer tattoos than genuine Japanese gangsters. Given the Japanese predilection for exploring every fetish imaginable someone had to cover this area. His name, of course, alludes to writer Yukio Mishima and there’s a lot about his work that Mishima would have enjoyed. The Tom of Finland Foundation has a small selection of works and there’s also an exhibition of originals running this month at the Gramercy Gallery. ~~Their site is blighted by pointless Flash bollocks, however; go here instead for further pictures.~~ (Dead link: try the Leslie Lohman Museum or this page at Japanese Gay Art instead.)

Note: The Tom of Finland Foundation biography page says Goh Mishima died three days before Emperor Hirohito in “1988”. Since Hirohito actually died in 1989 that’s the date I’ve listed here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Hideki Koh
• Mishima’s Rite of Love and Death
• Secret Lives of the Samurai
• Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian
• The art of Sadao Hasegawa, 1945–1999
• The art of Takato Yamamoto