A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Gay
A couple of examples of fetish and bondage art by American artist Taylor Buck. An interesting technique is always welcome in gay art and I like the the stylised quality of these pictures. Bondage art especially lends itself to black-and-white renderings. Taylor Buck is open to commissions and also requests any photos from interested parties that might provide inspiration.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
Planet of the Apes Magazine #15 (1975), art by Bob Larkin.
I never read any of Marvel Comics’ Planet of the Apes titles but the painted covers of the American editions are evidence of a distinctly lurid imagination. An excess of drugs—this was the Seventies, after all—or mere enthusiasm? You decide. Related: “The Soft Intelligence”: 5 Underrated Literary Cephalopods by China Miéville. Kudos to him for mentioning The Sea Raiders (1896) by HG Wells, a favourite story of mine when I was 12.
My ever-lovin’ octopussy (1970) by Jackie Black.
• A Journey Round My Skull chooses selections from Ang Wyman’s flickr group Eye Candy (above), psychedelic illustration for children’s books by Nicole Claveloux, Peter Max, Heinz Edelmann and others.
• Watch out, there are “fancy gentlemen” about. It’s The Homosexual Menace!
• Design in opposition: Neville Brody announces the Anti-Design Festival.
• The Almias Rural Psychogeography Walk takes place on July 25th.
• Steven Heller on The Incredible Posters of Tadanori Yokoo.
• Hipster Priest: Alan Moore interviewed at The Stool Pigeon.
• FACT mix 167, a great selection by These New Puritans.
• The Orion Galaxy is a beautiful bespoke synthesizer.
• A radio portrait of Moondog at Speechification.
• RIP: Sugar Minott. RIP Tuli Kupferberg.
• Introducing Wizard’s Tower Press.
• Octopus (1970) by Syd Barrett.
The Fool.
I’d like this photo series by young British photographer Jak Flash even if it didn’t feature attractive men; the eye candy is icing on a thaumaturgic cake. The Major Arcana takes the Trumps of the Tarot as its inspiration and manages to reinterpret the symbolism whilst retaining the hieratic nature of the traditional images. Of his reworking, the photographer says:
I developed my own themes based around things like geometric shapes so that I could encode my images with meaning. The images link to each other and can be read to some extent almost as a progressive story, or commentary. Various signifiers are used throughout the images such as cubes, triangles and spheres to help communicate my ideas. Cubes for example are a representation of the material world and triangles show transition. In an image such as The Hanged Man we see two men firmly seated on a large cube, whilst above their heads another cube breaks apart around them. … The Lovers image is an interpretation of the fall of man from Eden. The man represents mankind in his fall after taking the fruit of Knowledge, whilst being denied eternal life. (More.)
The Major Arcana is available in book form at Blurb. Via Homotography, doing all the leg work once again.
top left: The Lovers; top right: Justice.
bottom left: The Wheel of Fortune; bottom right: The Sun.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Sapphire Museum of Magic and Occultism
• Strange Attractor Salon
• The art of Pamela Colman Smith, 1878–1951
• Layered Orders: Crowley’s Thoth Deck and the Tarot
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman
• The Major Arcana
A poster by Kazumasa Nagai.
• Franco Maria Ricci creates the world’s largest maze. “The former publisher said he first confided his ambition to Jorge Luis Borges, who characteristically told him the world’s largest maze already existed and was called a desert.” Related: Mirror, Mask, Labyrinth, a review of two new collections of Borges’ poetry.
• FACT mix 164 is a dubstep collection by Pinch and a promotion for the Dark Matter compilation which I designed earlier this year.
• One of the monuments of 20th century music, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, is released in another new (and expensive) edition next month by Sony. Nice packaging, and there’s a vinyl edition included, but these things always come across as a cyncial attempt to milk the hardcore fans one more time. And have you noticed how all vinyl releases are now described as “audiophile”? If the big record companies had shown this much dedication to quality in the 1980s when they were jobbing out sub-standard vinyl pressings their reputation might be slightly higher today.
• More Gysin: Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, and the secret life of a building on the Bowery. And Ubuweb’s page of Gysin sound works and recordings.
• Michael Moorcock: “I think I preferred my own imagination”. A two-part interview about the cover designs for Moorcock books.
• The Pansy Project: “Artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at the site of homophobic abuse, he finds the nearest source of soil to where the incident occurred and generally without civic permission plants one unmarked pansy. The flower is then photographed in its location and posted on his website, the image is entitled after the abuse … The Pansy Project also marks locations where people have been killed as a result of homophobic attack”
• This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities. Jim Rossignol’s book is available as a free download.
• Lost London. Also, the Victorian Catacombs of South London.
• Dedalus Books had its Arts Council grant reinstated.
• ’Zine Lutefisk: fashion/art/escape.
• Time Will Show The Wiser (1968) by Fairport Convention | She Moves Through The Fair (1969) by Fairport Convention | She Moved Through The Fair (1994) by Jam Nation.
If someone hasn’t already named these things mantlers you know it’s only a matter of time. The photo on the left is Johan by Michelle Martinoli from a series she calls Body Sculptures. On the right is Jeremy by Jamie Luca, part of a set at Homotography.