A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Painting
Red, the second album by the wonderful Guillemots is released today with a striking cover image that seems rather familiar.
left: The Listening Room (1958) by René Magritte.
right: The Wrestler’s Tomb (1961) by René Magritte.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Guillemots
Nick + Matt (2004).
Collage and painting by Canadian artist Scott Treleaven who says of his work “occult language and symbology often remains the most accurate way of describing and dignifying the human condition.”
Black Shuck (i) (2007).
• Scott Treleaven at Gay Utopia: I | II
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Andrey Avinoff, 1884–1949
• The art of Robert Flynt
• Austin Osman Spare
La Déstruction.
More Symbolist femmes fatale, this time courtesy of Carlos Schwabe (1866–1926) and his illustrations for Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal from 1900. I’d had the site these pictures are from bookmarked for some time but hadn’t noticed that the version of Schwabe’s Spleen et Ideal illustration (below) was different to the one more commonly seen in books of Symbolist art. In fact the more common picture is about the only one of these illustrations that turns up at all in books. (It also appeared on a UK edition of Baudelaire’s poems, as I recall.) Schwabe is more usually represented by his mystically-inspired paintings and drawings, especially those he produced for the Salon de la Rose+Croix; on the strength of some of his Baudelairean pieces I’d say he’s a worthy companion to Félicien Rops.
Untitled (Adrian Kissing) 2007.
The icon of male vanity returns again in a surreptitious form via this photograph by Brandon Herman from a new exhibition, My Vacation with a Kidnapper, which opens today at the Envoy Gallery, NYC, until April 19, 2008. Herman’s photography brings to the surface (so to speak) the homoerotic subtext of the Narcissus myth. Despite the most common rendering of the story being one concerning the romance between Narcissus and Echo, there are other versions:
An important and earlier variation of this tale originates in the region in Greek known as Boeotia (to the north and west of Athens). Narcissus lived in the city of Thespiae. A young man, Ameinias, was in love with Narcissus, but he rejected Ameinias’ love. He grew tired of Ameinias’ affections and sent him a present of a sword. Ameinias killed himself with the sword in front of Narcissus’ door and as he died, he called curses upon Narcissus. One day Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a spring and, in desperation, killed himself.
Some earlier (and favourite) artistic representations follow.