{fantasy} – Page 114 – { feuilleton }

The art of Charles Robinson, 1870–1937

‘Fair and False’, Songs and Sonnets by William Shakespeare (1915).

More illustrated gems from the collection of books at the Internet Archive. Charles Robinson, as mentioned earlier, was the older brother of illustrator William Heath (there was also a third illustrator brother in the family, Thomas). Charles was so prolific it’s difficult to choose one work over the many examples available in the Internet Archive, so here’s a brief selection from different books. If you only look at one of these, his oft-reprinted edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson is especially fine. There’s a distinct Art Nouveau flavour to much of Charles Robinson’s work and he also devoted more attention to page layout than his younger brother, many of his drawings being presented within sinuous frames and augmented by some very elegant lettering. If they haven’t been digitised already at Fontcraft’s Scriptorium, some of these type designs would make great fonts.

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1895).

Lullaby-land : Songs of Childhood by Eugene Field (1897).

Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (1899).

‘The Red Shoes’, Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (1899).

The Story of the Weathercock by Evelyn Sharp (1907).

The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde (1913).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

New things for February

Fenella Fielding, May 2005.

A few things of interest in the Coulthart world this month.

• The Independent on Sunday this weekend ran a feature by Robert Chalmers on film and stage actress Fenella Fielding which included some discussion with my Savoy colleague Dave Britton about the recordings Savoy has been making with Fenella for the past few years. I was fortunate to meet Ms Fielding myself a couple of years ago, during one of the sessions at Lisa Stansfield’s studio in darkest Rochdale, north of Manchester. As well as having the opportunity to chat to La Fielding (as Kenneth Williams used to call her), I got to take a few photos outside the studio, the best of which can be seen above. The IoS interview is an interesting one, revealing some details about Ms Fielding’s mysterious past and confirming what we knew already, that she’s not overly enamoured of her work with the ruffians from the North.

• Also in the Savoy orbit, Michael Butterworth and I were interviewed for the second number of Trespass magazine before Christmas and I’m told the issue featuring that interview has now been published although I’ve yet to see a copy. Considering I spent most of my portion of the piece ranting intemperately about the art world, that may turn out to be a good thing.

Trespass–Issue 2: January–February 2008

Alasdair Gray tells us why Lanark took so long to write and what he thinks of Gordon Brown. Savoy: a look at the obscenity trials and establishment outrage that mark this infamous publisher’s history. ‘Transgender Adventures’: a frank account of life in the sexual margins featuring Pia. ‘Not a Pursuit for a Lady’: a modern take on Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott. ‘Stop Talking and Move’: Nottingham’s parkour crew—a growing subculture. Sarah Maple: vote for her or you’re an islamaphobasexistracialist. Also the best of poetry, art and short fiction, including Catherine Smith, A. F. Harrold, Sascha Akhtar, Bernadette Cremin, David Gaffney and Anthony Cantons.

• And finally, the Savoy boys and myself receive a note of thanks in Elric: The Stealer of Souls by Michael Moorcock, one of a new series of reprints from Del Rey. Elric was and is Moorcock’s greatest fantasy character, not so much a hero as an anti-hero, and for me the early stories, which this first volume features, have always been the best. The books in this new series collect a lot of ephemeral material along with the stories (I helped source the picture of Zenith the Albino, the old pulp character Elric is based on) and all have new introductions. The intro for this volume is by Alan Moore and it’s a tremendous piece of writing. You couldn’t ask for better company.

William Heath Robinson’s Midsummer Night’s Dream

I wasn’t planning on featuring William Heath Robinson again so soon but I couldn’t resist posting some extracts from his 1914 edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, another great download from the scanned books at the Internet Archive. I have a few of these illustrations in a WHR monograph but I didn’t realise the book as a whole was so good. The Robinson brothers had a remarkable mastery of space in their work, no doubt derived from Beardsley but they found a way to make his expanses of black and white work for their own distinctive styles. This book, like many of those of the period, features colour plates but I much prefer Heath Robinson’s black-and-white work to his watercolours. His Poe book contains many fine drawings but his style is more suited to this Shakespeare play, especially in the depictions of clouds of fairy figures tumbling through the air.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• William Heath Robinson’s illustrated Poe

Against Nature: The hybrid forms of modern sculpture

left: Morgan Le Fay by Pierre Roche (1904).
right: The Rock Drill by Jacob Epstein (1913–14).

An exhibition of ‘fantastic’ sculpture opened at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds last week with some fascinating juxtapositions, ranging from Fernand Khnopff’s Mask to Jacob Epstein’s marvellous Rock Drill which is more commonly one of the landmarks of the Tate Britain collection. Also on display is some work by a Romanian artist I hadn’t come across before, Dimitrie Paciurea (1873–1932), whose chimeras might seem influenced by Symbolism but which look a lot stranger than the usual Symbolist statuary.

Against Nature runs until May 4th, 2008.

Sculpture has frequently been used as a medium of metamorphosis. Its malleable materials allow fantastic forms to become real as it mixes human, animal and vegetal components. This was never more so than during the late 19th century when many sculptors turned their back on classical notions of anatomy and used sculpture as a vehicle for the imagination. This exhibition begins in the late 19th century and presents a common fascination with the world of the hybrid across the various art movements of the 20th century right up to recent years with the work of Louise Bourgeois.

Figures drawn from classical mythology—sphinxes, chimeras and centaurs—were the stock subjects of late 19th century Salon exhibitions. Meanwhile, outside the gallery, the pressures of industrialisation and of Darwin’s theory of evolution provided compelling new contexts for the hybrid. To say that sculpture was ‘against nature’ at this time is to suggest two lines of enquiry: firstly that sculpture could create impossible beings that went beyond the natural order, but which evolution could potentially deliver; secondly, that sculpture presents absurd fantasy creatures by means of realistic modelling so as to suggest their ‘real life’ existence.

Despite the various positions of each successive avant-garde movement—symbolism, futurism, vorticism, constructivism, surrealism—fantasy sculpture and anatomical reinvention run across them all. Sculptors soon moved from taking on mythological subjects to inventing their own modern monsters, drawing on the machine as much as on myth, as with Jacob Epstein’s Rock Drill (1913-14).

This exhibition introduces little known sculptors from across Europe and the Americas and places them in a freakish family tree which also includes some of the ‘iconic’ images of modern sculpture. Thus the exhibition includes works by Hans Arp, Umberto Boccioni, Max Ernst, Julio González and Germaine Richier alongside Thomas Theodor Heine and Dimitrie Paciurea. It suggests a new way of looking at the emergence of modern sculpture and at its underlying continuities c.1890s–1980s.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Bruges-la-Morte
• The Cult of Antinous

Fungal observations

Seeing as Jeff VanderMeer and his publisher have made the cover for the new edition of Shriek: An Afterword public, I may as well do the same. The design is mine, the cover painting is by comic artist Ben Templesmith. The design and its integration with the book contents are more evident when you see the complete dust jacket, and the rest of the book, of course. Since these are still being proofed I’ll probably post them after publication. Meanwhile, the book has a reduction of 25% if you order a copy now.

Limited Edition: 500 signed numbered hardcovers
Expected Publication Date: Second quarter 2008

“Like some delicious mashup of H.P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake, and L. Frank Baum, but with his own verbal dexterity and perverse ingenuity…An affecting narrative about love, art, sibling rivalry, commerce, history, and some really nasty ’shrooms.” The Washington Post Book World

A year’s best selection of The San Francisco Chronicle, The Austin Chronicle, and SF Site, World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer’s Shriek: An Afterword is a triumphant return to the author’s imaginary city of Ambergris—the setting of his critically acclaimed, best-selling City of Saints & Madmen.

Shriek: An Afterword relates the scandalous, heartbreaking, and horrifying secret history of two squabbling siblings and their confidantes, protectors, and enemies. Narrated with flamboyant intensity and under increasingly urgent conditions by ex-society figure Janice Shriek, this afterword presents a vivid gallery of characters and events, emphasizing the adventures of Janice’s brother Duncan, a historian obsessed with a doomed love affair and a secret that may kill or transform him; a war between rival publishing houses that will change Ambergris forever; and the gray caps, a marginalized people armed with advanced fungal technologies who have been waiting underground for their chance to mold the future of the city.

Experience the beautifully strange novel that received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was praised by, among others, Elizabeth Hand, Gene Wolfe, Zoran Zivkovic, Hal Duncan, and Jeffrey Ford.

“Shriek: An Afterword further established Jeff VanderMeer as the finest fantasist of his generation.” The Austin Chronicle

“Five stars! A stunning and very different fantasy novel.” BBC Focus Magazine

“In the telling, Shriek: An Afterword is an exceptional novel, a tapestry of fine writing, deep psychological insight, and acute narrative excitement…. a dark fantasy of tremendous distinction.” Locus

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Shriek: The Movie
• New things for April II
• Jeff on Bldgblog
• An announcement redux
• City of Saints and Madmen