{painting} – Page 83 – { feuilleton }

The art of Aleksandr Kosteckij

This is the kind of fantastic art I like a great deal: nebulous landscapes whose vast forms may be some kind of hybrid architecture; implications of the alien and mystical that retain some ambiguity; dreamlike without slipping into post-Surrealist cliché. Monsieur Thombeau at Full Fathom Five (whose excellent eye I have to thank once again) describes the paintings of Aleksandr Kosteckij/Kostetsky (1954–2010) as being “like Gustave Moreau, Salvador Dalí, and Max Ernst put in a blender and left out in the rain.” I’d place them somewhere between Ernst Fuchs and Bruce Pennington but Moreau’s chimeras are certainly present. You’d think an artist of this calibre with a large body of work would be better known, most of the attention at the moment seems to be on Russian websites. Let’s hope that changes soon.

Update: Thanks to Joe for pointing the way to this dedicated website, something I missed in my haste.

Examples chosen from these sites:
• http://vk.com/album-32941665_175452413 (139 images)
• http://www.2photo.ru/en/post/18614

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Invisible Cities: Miscellanea

Cover art: The Castle in the Pyrenees (1961) by René Magritte.

A final post for this week devoted to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and it occurs to me that “Miscellanea” could easily be the name of one of Marco Polo’s cities.

One thing that’s become apparent over the past few days is that this subject is a very popular one with artists, especially in Italy. This is understandable but it also means you could probably fill another week of posts pursuing further illustrations and homages. Rather than belabour things I’m ending with a few of the more notable derivations including some cover designs. The Einaudi volume above was the first printing in Italy in 1972.

Cover design by Arnold Skolnick.

And this was the first American edition from Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich in 1974. The cover is printed in silver foil which makes the book a particularly desirable item. This might explain why it’s also rather expensive today.

Cover art: Martyrdom of a Saint by Monsù Desiderio.

The 1979 Picador edition is one of two paperback editions I own. The enigmatic “Monsù Desiderio” has a confused identity (see this post), and specialised in curious architectural paintings so this is an apt choice.

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Colleen Corradi Brannigan’s Invisible Cities

Cities and Memory 5: Maurilia.

Colleen Corradi Brannigan’s multimedia project was linked here back in 2011 when news of her endeavours reached a number of high-profile websites. These artworks are another attempt to depict all of Italo Calvino’s cities, this time using a range of media that includes sculpture. I like the variety of this series; some of the depictions approach the more rigorous perspectives of MC Escher while others are as loose as Expressionist paintings. The website also includes extracts from Calvino’s descriptions.

Trading Cities 4: Ersilia.

Thin Cities 3: Armilla.

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The recurrent pose 56

A pair of literary poses for this increasingly sluggish series. Both these titles are gay-themed to a greater or lesser degree. James Purdy (1914–2009) received much praise from contemporaries while he was alive but, like Angus Wilson, he’s one of those writers’ writers you don’t hear about today. Outsiders were a favourite Purdy theme, and he wrote several novels about gay characters, of which Narrow Rooms is considered something of a classic. I’ve not read it but going by descriptions the use of Flandrin’s painting on this cover from 1980 would seem a little lazy. This later use on the cover of Teleny (another gay classic) at least suits the French theme. (Thanks to Sander for the tip!)

The second volume hasn’t been published yet but Callum James posted the cover proof on Twitter a few days ago so I hope he doesn’t mind my showing it here. The book is a collection of letters by Frederick Rolfe aka Baron Corvo. I don’t know whether this is one of Rolfe’s own photos but he enjoyed photographing naked youths so even if it isn’t his work it suits the book. Further news about the publication should be announced at Front Free Endpaper.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive

Weekend links 264

Stonehenge Suite, No.10 (1977) by Malcolm Dakin.

• “Part of me always wanted to write a teatime drama. That’s something that I wanted to get out of my system,” says director Peter Strickland. The results may be heard here. In the same interview there’s news that Strickland will be adapting Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape for radio later this year.

• “He was, as one obituary stated in terms unusually blunt for the time, ‘not as other men’.” Strange Flowers on the eccentric and profligate Henry Cyril Paget (1875–1905) aka The Dancing Marquess.

• “Please tell Mr Jagger I am not Maurits to him.” MC Escher rebuking The Rolling Stones. The artist is the subject of a major exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland from June 27th.

Often mentioned in the same breath as works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, Ó Cadhain’s novel is, in some ways, even more radically experimental. For starters, all the characters are dead and speaking from inside their coffins, which are interred in a graveyard in Connemara, on Ireland’s west coast. The novel has no physical action or plot, but rather some 300 pages of cascading dialogue without narration, description, stage direction, or any indication of who’s speaking when.

Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin on the newly-translated Cré na Cille (The Dirty Dust) by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

• Paul Woods examines “10 Edgy Properties No Film Producer Dared To Touch
(Yet)”. No. 2 is David Britton’s Lord Horror.

• Mallory Ortberg ranks paintings of Saint Sebastian “in ascending order of sexiness and descending order of actual martyring”.

• The Sign of Satan (1964): Christopher Lee in a story by Robert Bloch for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

• Sympathy For The Devil – The True Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment.

• At Dangerous Minds: Paul Gallagher on the seedy malevolence of Get Carter (1971).

• Mix of the week: Sonic Attack Special – Earth by Bob’s Podcasts.

• Sanctuary Stone (1973) by Midwinter | The Litanies Of Satan (1982) by Diamanda Galás | Sola Stone (2006) by Boris