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John Martin’s musical afterlife

Angel Witch (1980) by Angel Witch. Art: The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium (1841).

It’s been a busy week so the posts just now are tending towards haste and laziness. The paintings of John Martin (1789–1854) make such good album covers you’d expect that there were more than this handful. Perhaps there are (Discogs.com contains numerous omissions), in which case leave a comment if you know of any. It’s no surprise that three of these are metal albums when the artist depicted so many apocalypses and scenes from Paradise Lost. Given the recent reappraisal of Martin’s work these won’t be the last albums we see borrowing his art.

Heresy (1990) by Lustmord. Art: The Great Day of His Wrath (1851).

This is the reissue of Lustmord’s excellent album of doomy volcanic rumbles. Both CDs use the same painting but the new edition has a better type layout.

Cradle (1992) by Suns of Arqa. Art: Manfred and the Witch Of The Alps (1837).

A good painting, a decent album (I have this one on CD) by a musical collective from Manchester originally, unfortunately spoiled by dreadful design. The group eventually saw sense and reissued this one with a better layout. The painting is the only example of Martin’s work in Manchester and features a ghostly figure where the artist had painted over an earlier Manfred.

The Closed Eyes of Paradise (demo, 1999) by Draconian. Art: Pandemonium (1838).

Bombs (2006) by Faithless. Art: The Great Day of His Wrath (detail, 1851).

Vast Oceans Lachrymose (2010) by While Heaven Wept. Art: Christ Stilleth The Tempest / Storm On The Sea Of Galilee (1867).

This American metal band appeared in the earlier post about Odilon Redon with the cover of their debut album.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Odilon Redon’s musical afterlife
• Danby’s Deluge
• John Martin: Heaven & Hell
• Darkness visible
• Aubrey Beardsley’s musical afterlife
• Death from above
• The apocalyptic art of Francis Danby

Odilon Redon’s musical afterlife

Pilgrim Of The Sublunary World (2002) by Heid.

It would have been surprising if Magazine were the only group to have used Odilon Redon’s art for album covers. What is surprising is that these releases are all relatively recent and aren’t the cluster of Goth doodlings I would have expected: descriptions at Discogs list Heid as an industrial outfit, Revelation and While Heaven Wept are doom metal while Spider Trio play jazz. Odilon Redon is unusual in being able to provide artwork strange enough for Magazine or, in the case of his many pastel drawings, pretty enough for classical recordings. I omitted a couple of other CD covers which inset his pictures in dreadful layouts. The Heid album uses more Redon art on the insert pages.

Live @ Rendezvous/Jewelbox Theater 8.12.06 (2007) by Spider Trio.

Never Comes Silence (2007) by Revelation.

L’Amour De Loin (2009) by Kaija Saariaho.

Sorrow Of The Angels (2010) by While Heaven Wept.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Odilon Redon and Magazine
• Odilon Redon lithographs
• The eyes of Odilon Redon
• Aubrey Beardsley’s musical afterlife

Opium dens

The Opium Den (1881) by William Lamb Picknell.

The romantic side of the addiction business. Needless to say, there’s a lot more of this kind of thing. The ultimate opium-related pictorial art is still Attila Sassy’s remarkable Opium Dreams from 1909, a series of drawings which can be seen at 50 Watts in high-quality scans.

The Opium Den (no date) by Vincent G. Stiepevich.

Chez la Marchande de Pavots (The House of the Poppy Merchant, 1920) by George Barbier.

Opium den from Fantasio (1915) by George Barbier.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Opium fiends
• La Morphine by Victorien du Saussay
• Haschisch Hallucinations by HE Gowers
• The Dark Ledger
• Demon rum leads to heroin
• German opium smokers, 1900

Weekend links 96

Sin título (monstruas) (2008) by Marina Núñez.

• Salon asks Christopher Bram “Is gay literature over?” Bram’s new book, Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America, is reviewed here.

• Robert Montgomery is profiled at the Independent as “The artist vandalising advertising with poetry.”

In addition to aesthetics, McCarthy noted a deeper link between great science and great writing. “Both involve curiosity, taking risks, thinking in an adventurous manner, and being willing to say something 9/10ths of people will say is wrong.” Profound insights in both domains also tend arise from a source beyond the limits of analytic reason. “Major insights in science come from the subconscious, from staring at your shoes. They’re not just analytical.”

Nick Romeo meets Cormac McCarthy at the Santa Fe Institute.

• For FACT mix 316 Julia Holter mixes radio broadcasts, street recordings and music.

• This week in the Tumblr labyrinth: fin de siècle art and graphics from Nocnitsa.

“There’s a widespread cultural barrenness across art and political culture. But there are some pockets of resistance on the extreme margins, like the techno-savvy protest movements, small press, the creator-owned comics, that seem to be getting some signs of hope for the future,” he says. “All of the genuinely interesting work is being done on the margins, with independent companies, self-producing, and alternative distribution networks.”

Alan Moore on Watchmen’s “toxic cloud” and creativity v. big business.

• Stone Tape Shuffle, a 12” LP of readings by Iain Sinclair. Limited to 400 copies.

• Monolake on how we cope with death: mythologies, rituals, drugs and Ghosts.

• Kraftwerk perform at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in April.

• Kathy Acker (in 1988?) interviewing William Burroughs.

Willy Pogány’s erotica: illustrations for a 1926 edition of The Songs of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs.

• Nicholas Lezard on David Lynch: director of dreams.

• Did otherworldly music inspire Stonehenge?

• Coilhouse has an Eyepatch Party.

• Tanzmusik (1973) by Kraftwerk | The Model (1992) by the Balanescu Quartet | Trans Europe Express (2003) by the Wiener Sinfonie Orchestra & Arnold Schönberg Choir.

Jacques Brissot’s Hay Wain

The Hay Wain (1973) by Jacques Brissot.

Another post intended to encourage further investigation. Searching for Jacques Brissot’s art is a problem since the French artist (born 1929) gets confused with the French writer Jacques Pierre Brissot (1754–1793). Details about Brissot the artist are also scant:

Jacques Brissot lives and works in Paris. He began his career as a film maker (his movie Egypt O Egypt was selected as the official French entry for the Cannes Film Festival). Later, his unique form of artistic expression, a reinvention of the most dramatic masterpieces of the past through collage, relief, over-painting etc., led to his immense success as a visual artist. (more)

Anyone familiar with art history will recognise Brissot’s Hay Wain triptych as being a Surrealist updating of the Hieronymus Bosch triptych of the same name: a side-by-side comparison shows that many of the details are carefully matched. (In Brissot’s version Christ in the clouds appear to have been replaced by Sigmund Freud.) The copies here come from Temptation (1975) edited by David Larkin. In the same book there’s also a panel from Brissot’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1973). Judging by the works visible on auction sites Brissot has continued his meticulous collage work to the present day but there’s a surprising lack of attention outside the marketplace. Works such as this deserve to be seen in greater detail.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Jindřich Štyrský, 1899–1942
• 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
• Fantastic art from Pan Books
• The art of Stephen Aldrich