A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Gay
Not had one of these posts for a while but the theme still seems inexhaustible. The cute dancer above is Mathieu from a set I linked to earlier by Jean-Philippe Guillemain.
Below there’s a pose that’s closer to Flandrin’s original, complete with seascape and a no doubt uncomfortable rocky perch. This one is from a set of photos by Tony Patrioli at Homodesiribus, and was a tip from Mexicology. (Thanks!)
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive
“The rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates.” Above and below: illustrations by Charles Robinson from The Happy Prince and Other Tales, an edition from 1920.
Continuing an occasional series. I’ve yet to see a copy of the recent annotated and unexpurgated edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray but Alex Ross wrote a marvellous essay for the New Yorker about the novel, its creation, its public reception, and Wilde’s decision to tone down the overt homoeroticism of its earlier drafts. This is one of the best pieces I’ve seen for a while about Wilde, replete with choice detail:
The gay strain in Wilde’s work is part of a larger war on convention. In the 1889 story “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,” a pseudo-scholarly, metafictional investigation of Shakespeare’s sonnets to a boy, Wilde slyly suggests that the pillar of British literature was something other than an ordinary family man. In the 1891 play “Salomé,” Wilde expands a Biblical anecdote into a sumptuous panorama of decadence. Anarchists of the fin de siècle, especially in Germany, considered Wilde one of their own: Gustav Landauer hailed Wilde as the English Nietzsche. Thomas Mann expanded on the analogy, observing that various lines of Wilde might have come from Nietzsche (“There is no reality in things apart from their experiences”) and that various lines of Nietzsche might have come from Wilde (“We are basically inclined to maintain that the falsest judgments are the most indispensable to us”). Nietzsche and Wilde were, in Mann’s view, “rebels in the name of beauty.”
As for the novel, I’m feeling rather Dorian Grayed-out at the moment, having recently completed ten illustrations based on the story for a forthcoming anthology. More about that later.
Elsewhere, the William Andrews Clarke Memorial Library in Los Angeles has been running an exhibition, Oscar Wilde & the Visual Art(ists) of the Fin-de-Siecle, since July, and will continue to do so until the end of September. No word about what’s on display but this page on their website has details of their collection of Wilde materials which they say is the most comprehensive in the world.
Finally, the majority of visits to these pages in recent days have come from this post about Ivan Albright’s astonishing Dorian Gray painting in the Art Institute of Chicago. The post links to an earlier one of mine about the paintings used in Albert Lewin’s 1945 film of the book.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Oscar Wilde archive
Manuel Orazi (1860–1934) was one of the best of the many Mucha imitators. An untitled & undated posting at Indigo Asmodel.
The mob now appeared to consider themselves as superior to all authority; they declared their resolution to burn all the remaining public prisons, and demolish the Bank, the Temple, Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Mansion House, the Royal palaces, and the arsenal at Woolwich. The attempt upon the Bank of England was actually made twice in the course of one day; but both attacks were but feebly conducted and the rioters easily repulsed, several of them falling by the fire of the military, and many others being severely wounded.
To form an adequate idea of the distress of the inhabitants in every part of the City would be impossible. Six-and-thirty fires were to be seen blazing in the metropolis during the night.
An Account of the Riots in London in 1780, from The Newgate Calendar.
In a week of apparently limitless bloviation, a few comments stood out. Hari Kunzru: “Once, a powerful woman told us there was no such thing as society and set about engineering our country to fit her theory. Well, she got her way. This is where we live now, and if we don’t like it, we ought to make a change.” Howard Jacobson: “One medium-sized banker’s bonus would probably pay for all the trash that’s been looted this past week.” Meanwhile Boff Whalley complained about the predictable misuse of the word “anarchy” by lazy journalists.
• For further historical perspective, a list of rioters and arsonists from The Newgate Calendar (1824), and an account of the looting in London during the Blitz.
From a selection of works by Max Walter Svanberg (1912–1994) at But Does It Float. There’s more at Cardboard Cutout Sundown.
• NASA posted a gorgeous photo from the surface of the planet Mars. Related: Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet. Obliquely related: Julio Cortázar’s From the Observatory, a prose poem inspired by the astronomical observatories at Jaipur and New Delhi, India, receives its first English translation.
• The Advisory Circle is still in a Kosmische groove. Not Kosmische at all, Haxan Cloak’s mix for FACT has Wolf Eyes, Sunn O))) and Krzysztof Penderecki competing to shatter your nerves.
• The wonderful women (and friends) at Coilhouse magazine are having a Black, White and Red fundraising party in Brooklyn, NYC, on August 21st. Details here.
• Sodom’s ambassador to Paris: the flamboyant Jean Lorrain is profiled at Strange Flowers.
• Empire de la Mort: Photographs of charnel houses and ossuaries by Paul Koudounaris.
• The Craft of Verse by Jorge Luis Borges: The Norton Lectures, 1967–68.
• Jesse Bering examines The Contorted History of Autofellatio.
• Robert Crumb explains why he won’t be visiting Australia.
• The Crackdown (1983) by Cabaret Voltaire.
Ludwig von Hofmann was a German artist whose work has already appeared via the above example from Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. Many of Hofmann’s drawings and paintings appeared in that magazine’s rival publication, Pan magazine, for which the artist also provided a cover design for the collected editions, and vignettes for the interiors.
Hofmann is also of note for those of us who search art history for potentially gay art or artists. A handful of his works turn up continually on forums where homoerotic artwork is posted even though I’ve yet to see any evidence that his desires ran in this direction. It’s true that many of Hofmann’s pictures focus exclusively on the naked male form, but it’s equally true that he painted and drew a large number of naked women. Males and females often appear together in Adam and Eve pictures, a theme which was so common in German art at this time it’s easy to assume that most artists were using the subject as the merest excuse to represent the unclothed figure.
Ganymede poster design from Pan (1895).
Biographical details state that Hofmann married his cousin in 1899 although he still may have been bisexual, of course. If I was making a case for a Uranian inclination in his art I’d point to his poster design on the Ganymede theme (a favourite among gay artists with its story of Zeus falling for a beautiful boy), his many drawings of bathing boys and naked riders on horseback (the latter seems an obsession), Thomas Mann’s admiration for his work, and at least one sketch of a boy from Capri, an island with a long history as a favourite holiday resort for the rich and famous homosexuals of Europe. Whatever the truth, many of Hofmann’s pictures remain homoerotic, intentionally or not, and a few further examples are posted here. I should note that two of the pictures have been cropped to focus on the male figures, and that many of them lack verifiable dates.
Peacock Apocalypse (detail) by Julie Evans in collaboration with Ajay Sharma.
Here at { feuilleton }, home of the curly bracket affectation, your correspondent is still surprised to find his postings the subject of a critique by Rick Poynor in the latest edition of Eye magazine, the international review of graphic design. I haven’t seen a print copy yet but you can read Mr Poynor’s appraisal here. Meanwhile, over at Design Observer this week there’s another Poynor piece about the collage illustrations of Andrzej Klimowski.
• Alan Moore (yes, him again) discusses the moment when the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen gets all swinging and psychedelic. And Iain Sinclair (yes, him again) is still doing the interview rounds promoting his current book, Ghost Milk.
• Ayin Acla, a short film by Anna Thew with a soundtrack by Cyclobe. The most recent Cyclobe album, Wounded Galaxies Tap at the Window, was previously vinyl-only but is now available on CD.
• Bones and beads and other things in Wren Britton’s Pure Vile clothing and accessories. Related: Patrick Veillet’s wearable bone sculptures.
• Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities Q&A: Ann & Jeff VanderMeer answer questions about their latest anthology at Fangoria.
• Being a lifelong introvert, I’m sympathetic to Four Ways Technology Can Enable Your Inner Introvert by Philip Bump.
• In an all-too-rare meeting of minds and talents, Roy Harper talks to Joanna Newsom.
• Jon Macy’s Teleny and Camille is reviewed at Lambda Literary.
• Author Carol Birch tells us how best to read Finnegans Wake.
• Joel Pirela’s Design Classics posters.
• Each And Every Word Must Die (1999) by Cyclobe | Brightness Falls From The Air (2001) by Cyclobe | Indulge Yourselves With Our Delicious Monster (2006) by Cyclobe