{painting} – Page 156 – { feuilleton }

A Love Craft: Art Inspired by Monsters, Madness and Mythos

Painting by Matthew Buck.

I’ve linked in the past to previous shows at Observatory, an arts and events space in Brooklyn, NY, so I’m very pleased to be contributing to their forthcoming exhibition, A Love Craft: Art Inspired by Monsters, Madness and Mythos, which takes HP Lovecraft’s work as its theme. Other participants will include Aeron Alfrey, Esao Andrews, Matt Buck, Paul Carrick, Melita Curphy, Mike Dubisch, Bob Eggleton, FuFu Frauenwahl, Cyril van der Haegen, Dan Harding, Stephen Hickman, Joshua Hoffine, Kurt Komoda, Dieter Van der Ougstraete, Greg Ruth, Johnny Ryan, Andrew Scott, Allison Sommers, and AJ Wagar.

Wilbur Whateley from The Dunwich Horror (1989).

Prints of four of my Lovecraft-related works will be on display including everyone’s favourite rendering of Wilbur Whateley’s terminal moment from The Dunwich Horror. Visitors will have a rare opportunity to see my ink drawing of R’lyeh at a large size. I’m also told that prints of various works will be available for purchase but you’ll have to either visit the exhibition or contact Observatory for further details.

A Love Craft opens on Friday, June 11th at 7:00pm and runs to July 23rd, 2010.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The monstrous tome
• Lovecraftian horror at Maison d’Ailleurs

Monsieur Fantômas by Ernst Moerman

Jean Michel as Fantômas.

Ernst Moerman’s Belgian short from 1937 is available for viewing at Ubuweb and is described on its title card as “Un film Surrealiste”. One might equally describe it as “un film amateur” since it’s very much in the home movie mould as was much of the independent cinema of this time. The direction may be perfunctory but the photography is surprisingly good in places. The action, such as it is, concerns an avatar of the Surrealists’ favourite anti-hero, Fantômas, in a series of farcical scenes many of which are filmed on a beach with a few spare props. The most notable moment for me is one which none of the online documentation mentions, a brief appearance by a youthful René Magritte who pretends to be painting Le Viol. Magritte was a great Fantômas enthusiast so his presence here isn’t too surprising.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Dark Ledger
• Judex, from Feuillade to Franju
• Fantômas

Vintage swordplay #4

The Crusader by George Quaintance (1943).

Continuing an occasional series, I was hoping to find the original photo which George Quaintance used as a model for this painting but failed dismally. I did find the photo below, however, a piece of Roman camp by beefcake photographer Alonzo Hanagan, aka ‘Lon of New York’ on this Boy Culture post where Hanagan is interviewed about his work.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The men with swords archive
• The gay artists archive

The art of Michael Hutter

Stadtlandschaft I (City I) (1999).

Michael Hutter‘s work is pitched at that enjoyably nebulous zone which lies on the borderlands of fantasy, science fiction and Surrealism, from which hybrid visions emerge that are never too defined in one direction or another. It’s a zone that French and Belgian artists often visit but whose inhabitants from other nations often seem all too few. Hutter’s art encompasses oil paintings and also ink drawings which include some erotic scenes like the example below. His site is well worth a browse, especially the vast and detailed Triptych which recalls similar works by Wayne Barlowe and Hieronymus Bosch. For more inhabitants of the nebulous zone, see the archive link below.

Pterdactyl II.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Bob Peak revisited

left: Mame (1974); right: Excalibur (1981).

Matthew Peak, son of film poster artist Bob Peak, left on a comment this week on an earlier post I made about his father’s art with news of the relaunch of the Peak site. I’m looking forward to seeing what gets posted there especially since the additions to date are such good quality. Peak was a tremendously powerful and dramatic artist whose posters are often a lot more engaging than the films they were intended to promote. He was also exceptionally versatile, as the two examples above demonstrate (via IMP Awards), being equally adept at hard-edged graphics as he was with nebulous airbrush paintings. As with the similarly versatile Richard Amsel, the more time passes, the more these posters seem evidence of an artistry and individuality which has vanished from the world of film design.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Aquirax Uno
• Alice in Acidland
• Salomé posters
• Polish posters: Freedom on the Fence
• Kaleidoscope: the switched-on thriller
• The Robing of The Birds
• Franciszek Starowieyski, 1930–2009
• Dallamano’s Dorian Gray
• Czech film posters
• The poster art of Richard Amsel
• Bollywood posters
• Lussuria, Invidia, Superbia
• The poster art of Bob Peak
• A premonition of Premonition
• Metropolis posters
• Film noir posters