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William Strang’s Sindbad the Sailor

Another collaboration between William Strang and JB Clark, Sindbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was published in 1895. The Sindbad text is from Edward William Lane’s popular (and bowdlerised) translation of the Thousand and One Nights; Ali Baba is from the translation by Rev. Jonathan Scott. The illustrations follow the same bold style as the Baron Munchausen book but with more detail and decoration. The compositions are also more careful which makes me wonder if the Munchausen book was a product of haste. As before, the book as a whole contains many more illustrations. The copies here have been slightly cropped and lightened to compensate for another poor scanning job by Google.

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William Strang’s Baron Munchausen

The paintings and illustrations of Scottish artist William Strang (1859–1921) were much more typical of their time than the bold drawings in this 1895 edition of Rudolf Erich Raspe’s tall tales. Not all the illustrations are Strang’s work, some are by JB Clark, and there are many more in the book as a whole. Years later, the Gollancz publishing company was based next door to Lawrence & Bullen’s former home at 14 Henrietta Street.

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Victor Vasarely album covers

Terretektorh / Nomos Gamma (no date; late 60s) by Iannis Xenakis.

Xenakis and Victor Vasarely are paired again on this album cover from the late 1960s. Given how often record companies have used abstract artwork on the sleeves of classical recordings, especially those by 20th-century composers, you’d expect there to be more examples. There may well be but Discogs (always the easiest place to search) only turns up the following examples.

Chamber Concerto For 11 Instruments / Symphonic Variations (no date) by
Neils Viggo Bentzon / The Royal Danish Orchestra conducted by Jerzy Semkow.

Kontakte For Electronic Sounds, Piano And Percussion / Refrain For Three Instrumentalists (1968) by Aloys Kontarsky, Christoph Caskel, Karlheinz Stockhausen.

David Bowie (1969) by David Bowie.

I confess that until I began searching for Vasarely covers I hadn’t known that this was an early example. That’s partly down to David Bowie’s second album (the first in his official canon) having been reissued for years in a different cover with Bowie’s face filling the sleeve. The album reissues in 1999 restored the original design, one of the artist’s Folklore Planetaire series. The credit is to “Vaserelli”.

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Vasarely, a film by Peter Kassovitz

I’ve always liked Victor Vasarely’s brand of Op-Art so this short film from 1960 would be of interest even without the addition of a score, Neg-Ale, by Iannis Xenakis. Considering the stature of the composer the music fails to add much at all so it’s no surprise to read at Ubuweb that Xenakis later withdrew it from his catalogue. Kassovitz’s film is worth watching for Vasarely’s artworks, however, especially some three-dimensional creations I hadn’t seen before.

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The art of Fay Pomerance, 1912–2001

The Sixth Palace of Hell (1945).

Fay Pomerance’s painting of Lilith makes a startling appearance in a book I have about the history of magic symbols, and it’s that appearance which prompts this post since I’ve never seen her work given any attention elsewhere. This seems surprising when women artists, and artists whose concerns encompass mysticism or the occult, are receiving greater attention than ever before.

The Union of Isis and Osiris (1959).

Pomerance was British, and had the misfortune to be working during a lengthy period when expressions of the imagination or unorthodox spirituality in visual art were regarded as suspect or even disreputable. Her work also stands apart from any of the prevailing movements which provide such convenient labels for those art critics and writers who dislike anything that won’t fit into one of their boxes. The Lilith picture shows an obvious debt to another British artist who stands apart from the crowd: William Blake. The BBC’s Your Paintings site has a few of Pomerance’s larger works from the collection at Durham University, including the Sphere of Redemption below which is painted on a fibreglass globe, but for the moment there isn’t a dedicated site representing her art.

The Temptation (date unknown).

The Sphere of Redemption (date unknown).