{books} – Page 352 – { feuilleton }

The art of Jindřich Štyrský, 1899–1942

From a late Surrealist to an early one. Jindřich Štyrský is a Czech artist best remembered today for his collages but he was also a painter, a photographer and a publisher of erotic material. He illustrated and published a Czech edition of Lautréamont’s Maldoror, and helped found the Surrealismus review in Prague.

The Bathe (1934).

Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve liked Štyrský’s collages for years, many of which subject sentimental Victorian illustration to processes of violent transmutation. Ever since seeing The Bathe I’ve found it impossible to look at one of Renoir’s fleshy nudes without wondering what happened to the exposed viscera. Weimar covered Štyrský’s career in some detail last year so that’s a good place to go for further information. There’s an extract from Štyrský’s dream diary here, and a substantial collection of the collage work and other material at this Flickr set.

Cover for a Czech edition of Fantômas (1929).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Initiations in the Abyss: A Surrealist Apocalypse
• Vultures Await
• Wilfried Sätty: Artist of the occult
• Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried Sätty
• Metamorphosis Victorianus
• Max (The Birdman) Ernst
• Gandharva by Beaver & Krause
• The art of Stephen Aldrich

Klapheck versus Ballard

left: The Hostage (1966); right: The Female Terrorist (1971). Both by Konrad Klapheck.

No, I’m not suggesting that David Pelham’s paintings for the Ballard covers he designed in the 1970s are inspired by the earlier work of German artist Konrad Klapheck. But it’s tempting to think of Klapheck’s isolated objects as being intended for Ballard collections that never saw the light of day. Klapheck has connections with late Surrealism, and some of his paintings prefigure the styles and concerns of Pop Art, so I’m sure Ballard would have approved.

Three of Pelham’s memorable Ballard paintings were made available as signed and numbered prints earlier this year, together with his design for A Clockwork Orange. For more about the covers see Landscapes From a Dream: How the Art of David Pelham Captured the Essence of JG Ballard’s Early Fiction, an essay at Ballardian. The designer discussed his career at some length in 2007. Then there’s the complete set of covers at the Penguin Science Fiction site, and let’s not forget Konrad Klapheck who’s still painting and who has a website here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Alice in Liverpool

Alice and the Caterpillar (1865) by John Tenniel.

It’s perhaps surprising that an art gallery, rather than a library, is holding a huge survey exhibition about Alice, but then Carroll’s creation has been and still is the inspiration of artists, photographers, theatrical designers, animators, film-makers.

Thus Marina Warner writing about an exhibition of art based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice books opening at Tate Liverpool this Friday:

Alice in Wonderland will offer visitors a rare opportunity to view Carroll’s own drawings and photographs, alongside Victorian Alice memorabilia and John Tenniel’s preliminary drawings for the first edition of the novel.

Carroll’s stories were soon adopted by other artists. Surrealist artists from the 1930s onwards were drawn towards the fantastical world of Wonderland where natural laws were suspended. From the 1960s through the 1970s, Carroll’s Alice tales also prompted conceptual artists to explore language and its relationship to perception, and the stories inspired further responses in Pop and Psychedelic art. Expect to see works by artists ranging from Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, to Peter Blake and Yayoi Kusama. (more)

The exhibition runs to January 29th, 2012, and I suppose this gives me a convenient opportunity to point again to my psychedelic Alice calendars which have been updated for the forthcoming year.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Coulthart calendars for 2012
• Scenes from a carriage
• Through the Psychedelic Looking-Glass: the 2011 calendar
• Jabberwocky
• Alice in Acidland
• Return to Wonderland
• Dalí in Wonderland
• Virtual Alice
• Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar
• Charles Robinson’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Humpty Dumpty variations
• Alice in Wonderland by Jonathan Miller
• The Illustrators of Alice

Weekend links 82

At the Mountains of Madness (1979) from Halloween in Arkham by Harry O. Morris.

• Golden Age Comic Book Stories always pulls out the stops in the run up to Halloween. In addition to a wonderful collection of Harry O. Morris collages, Mr Door Tree has also been posting Virgil Finlay’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe, Lynd Ward’s tremendous illustrations for a collection of weird tales entitled The Haunted Omnibus, Barry Moser’s woodcuts for an edition of Frankenstein, and Virgil Finlay’s illustrations for stories and poems by HP Lovecraft.

• “Eugene Thacker suggests that we look to the genre of horror as offering a way of thinking about the unthinkable world. To confront this idea is to confront the limit of our ability to understand the world in which we live – a central motif of the horror genre. In the Dust of This Planet explores these relationships between philosophy and horror.”

• “…the reader […] becomes a conscious participant in the process of imposing a linear sequence, while at the same time remaining aware that all narrative is an act of memory, and that memory is necessarily random.” Jonathan Coe reviews Marc Saporta’s book-in-a-box, Composition No.1, recently republished by Visual Editions.

• Nearly fifty years after its first performance, Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade is still disturbing playgoers. And nearly ninety years after its release, Alla Nazimova’s silent film production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé is touring the UK with live musical accompaniment.

• Tom of Sinland at Homotography, in which illustrator Bendix Bauer portrays some of the fashion world’s notable male designers as Tom of Finland-style characters for Horst magazine.

• Neil Gaiman Presents is a new audiobook imprint which launches with works by Jonathan Carroll, Alina Simone, Keith Roberts, M. John Harrison and Steven Sherrill.

• The Weird Wild West: Paul Kirchner has put all his Dope Rider comic strips online.

• Leonora Carrington prints at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London, from November 5th.

• The Fall to Earth: David Bowie, Cocaine and the Occult.

• Photos of New York City, 1978–1985.

• Kathy Acker recordings at Ubuweb.

• The Occupied Times of London.

• The Golden Age of Dirty Talk.

• Pushkin silhouettes.

• This week I’ve been lost in the Velvet Goldmine (again): John, I’m Only Dancing (1972) by David Bowie | The Jean Genie (1972) by David Bowie | Drive-In Saturday (1973) by David Bowie.

A Picture to Dream Over: The Isle of the Dead

The Isle of the Dead (second version, 1880), Kunstmuseum, Basel.

In the sudden flares of light over the water, reflected off the sharp points of his cheeks and jaw, a harder profile for a moment showed itself. Conscious of Sanders’s critical eye, Father Balthus added as an afterthought, to reassure the doctor: “The light at Port Matarre is always like this, very heavy and penumbral – do you know Böcklin’s painting, ‘Island of the Dead’, where the cypresses stand guard above a cliff pierced by a hypogeum, while a storm hovers over the sea? It’s in the Kunstmuseum in my native Basel –”

The Crystal World (1966) by JG Ballard.

A 1982 recording.

Today’s post is another guest piece over at Tor.com where I run through a history of some of the works in different media inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s The Isle of the Dead (1880–1886). The four versions of Böcklin’s painting are favourites of mine so I’ve touched on this subject a couple of times before but this is the first time I’ve gone into any detail examining their influence. Many artworks have become highly visible in the past century via copies, parodies and imitations: think of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, or Michelangelo’s David and The Creation of Adam. What’s fascinating about The Isle of the Dead is that it’s not one picture but four versions of the same scene, and they’ve all been very influential not as parodies but as direct inspirations for other artworks—musical compositions, feature films, a novel—yet few people would recognise the artist’s name. My post only scratches the surface by running through some of the more well-known works but there’s a whole website devoted to the subject for anyone wishing to investigate further.

The Call of Cthulhu (1988).

Modesty prevented me from mentioning my own work in the Tor post but I’ll do so here. Among the many references ladled into my adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu there’s the 1886 Leipzig version of Böcklin’s painting in the background of a panel. A prefiguring of the end of the story and also an excuse to add to the list of works acknowledging one of the great Symbolist paintings.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Isle of the Dead in detail
• Arnold Böcklin and The Isle of the Dead