{surrealism} – Page 81 – { feuilleton }

Visions and the art of Nick Hyde

Cover painting: Holy Grove by Gage Taylor (1975).

Book purchase of the week was this American collection of what we have to call “hippy art” (or “California Visionary Art”, as its creators preferred) published by Pomegranate Publications in 1977. I’d seen this circa 1979 and many of the pictures inside were used by Omni Magazine to decorate the science fiction stories in their early issues. After that it vanished from view completely which leads me to believe that UK distributors Big O didn’t sell as many as they would have liked. The white cover design made me remember it for a long time as being part of the David Larkin series which I discussed in May but it isn’t, although the Larkin books were quite probably the model for the book’s presentation.

Finally acquiring a copy was something of a disappointment since it transpires I remembered the decent painters and forgot the terrible ones who comprise at least half the book. Cliff McReynolds is one of the better artists (Omni thought so too) and by coincidence I posted one of his Visions paintings, Landscape with Grenade, almost a year ago to the day.

BethAnn (1970).

Best of the bunch for me is Nick Hyde whose fantastically detailed works blend the fractal filigree of psychedelic art with the kind of dreamscapes and tableaux one sees in Surrealism. The print reproductions do little justice to his detail and the web degrades his work even further (see Abraxas for a good example). Happily there are posters available.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

The magic kingdom

The magic kingdom
| Edward James and Las Pozas again.

Dada Dolls

“Callie” and “Frank” by artist Elaine Benjamin, both of whom are for sale and come with their own biographical epiphanies.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dada at MoMA

The art of Julie Heffernan

Self Portrait as Booty (2007).

I hadn’t come across Julie Heffernan’s work before until examples turned up a few weeks ago on several different websites in the space of a few days. The picture above—a typical indicator of her current concerns—is featured on the cover of a new edition of Tin House, a collection of fantasy stories by women.

All Heffernan’s paintings are very detailed oil on canvas and no doubt look a lot better at a larger size. A book of these would be most welcome.

Self Portrait in the Bedroom (2003).

• Three picture galleries at PPOW
• An appraisal by David Cohen

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

The art of Harold Hitchcock

Sunrise in a Valley (1974).

It’s difficult to say whether the work of Harold Hitchcock (born 1914) is rarely seen in his native country because of those British art critics who’ve often regarded fantastic or sacred themes with suspicion—or whether it’s merely because people find his work to be bad. Sometimes the latter accusation appears to be a disguise for the former belief, especially among those who follow the pack rather than drawing their own conclusions. At times the English Channel has acted as an aesthetic as well as a physical barrier. British art never quite got to grips with Surrealism, despite the best efforts of Roland Penrose and others, while Symbolism was almost exclusively a Continental movement whose existence was largely expunged from later art histories; the 1959 Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists, for instance, has entries for minor groupings such as the Hudson River School and the Nazarenes, but no entry at all for Symbolism. Fantasy was allowable in illustration but not elsewhere; no wonder Mervyn Peake took up writing.

So much for polemic. Hitchcock’s work comprises very detailed landscapes that present a Claude Lorraine-like approach to light with more Modernist forays reminiscent of Expressionist painters such as Franz Marc. His fanciful works remind me of his Surrealist contemporary Leonora Carrington, with their creation of a self-contained, often naive, private world. Hitchcock lives in South Devon and was still active three years ago when the BBC reported his 90th birthday. The American exhibition mentioned in that news story took place at the Phillips Gallery, Carmel, CA and their site has three pages of (rather blurred) examples of his luminous work.

Update: The official Harold Hitchcock site

• Harold Hitchcock by Leonard Hitchcock
• Catching the Light by Emmanuel Williams

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive