{borges} – Page 13 – { feuilleton }

The art of Pierre Clayette, 1930–2005

The Library of Babel (no date).

Another French artist who specialised in fantastic architecture, Pierre Clayette’s work came to my attention via the picture above which illustrates a Borges story. This leads me to wonder once again what it is about French and Belgian artists which attracts them more than others to this type of imagery.

Whatever the reason, there isn’t a great deal of Clayette’s work online and biographical details are few. This page (the source of the untitled picture above) reveals that he worked as an illustrator for Planète magazine, the journal of “fantastic realism” founded by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels in the early Sixties. Some readers may know that pair as the authors of a { feuilleton } cult volume, The Morning of the Magicians (1960), whose vertiginous blend of speculative and weird fiction, occultism and futurology Planète was intended to continue.

Clayette also worked as a theatre designer and book illustrator. Le Chateau (above) is an illustration from Songes de Pierres, a 1984 portfolio depicting scenes from Pierres by Roger Caillois. That writer has his own significant Borges connection, being responsible for introducing Borges’ work to France via his editorship of the UNESCO journal, Diogenes. (Pauwels and Bergier later published Borges in Planète.)

Finally, there’s a less extravagant Flickr collection of some Clayette covers for Penguin Shakespeare editions. All of which only scratches the surface of what was evidently a prolific career; I’ll look forward to more examples of his work coming to light.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Michiko Hoshino
• The art of Erik Desmazières
• The art of Gérard Trignac
• The Absolute Elsewhere

Max Eastley’s musical sculptures

left: Aeolian Harp; right: Wind Flute.

The Wire has a selection of Max Eastley-related materials among the web exclusives on its site. As well as a photo gallery showing many of his musical instrument/artworks there’s a couple of video clips including part of Simon Reynell’s 1989 film, Clocks of the Midnight Hours. (Title borrowed from a poem by Borges.)

And as you’d expect there’s Eastley work to be seen and heard at YouTube as well, including an extract from Derek Bailey’s excellent documentary series about improvised music, On the Edge. For Eastley on record I’d recommend his 1994 CD with David Toop, Buried Dreams, but that seems to be out of print for the time being.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Avant Garde Project

Pasticheur’s Addiction

The Boojum Press edition of the Guide (1997).
(Frame supplied by Mark Roberts.)

A few days ago we had the CD cover meme which encourages people to create cover designs for invented groups generated by random means. In a similar vein but minus the random element there’s the growing selection of books by reclusive author Constance Eakins. A Flickr pool has been established for newly-discovered Eakins volumes and you can read more about the mysterious writer here.

This flourishing of pasticheury encourages me to post some of the cover designs I created for the various editions of The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Invented and Discredited Diseases, a fake disease guide published in 2003 and edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts. The anthology featured a host of notable contributors and was great fun to work on. Although these were done in colour, they were all printed in black & white inside the book, with a shrunken glimpse of the colour versions on the rear of the dust jacket. My jacket design wasn’t used on subsequent printings so this is the first many people will have seen of these.

Continue reading “Pasticheur’s Addiction”

The art of Michiko Hoshino

Library Recollection II (1993).

Artist Michiko Hoshino (born 1934) has produced a number of lithograph portfolios based on the work of Jorge Luis Borges. More inspirations than illustrations, which is no bad thing, with disembodied clock faces and—unsurprisingly—books among the melting textures.

Garden of Borges—Labyrinth (2001).

• A Japanese gallery page
• An American gallery page

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal

Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal

Detail from La Havane by René Portocarrero; photo by C. Marker.

This week’s book finds are a pair of titles I hadn’t come across before in these particular editions, another haul from the vast continent that is the Penguin Books back catalogue. Labyrinths I’ve had for years in a later edition (see below) but the cover of this one seems more suited to Borges (as much as he can be illustrated) than the somewhat bland Surrealism of illustrator Peter Goodfellow. René Portocarrero (1912–1985) was a Cuban painter with a post-Picasso style who specialised in hallucinogenic profiles like the one here. And it’s a guess but I’d bet the “C. Marker” who photographed the painting is French filmmaker Chris Marker (who I compared to Borges last year), director of La Jetée and Sans Soleil. Marker worked as a photo-journalist for many years and made a documentary entitled ¡Cuba Sí! in 1961.

Continue reading “Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal”