A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
After less than a week of stability I again find myself without a functioning phone line. The company responsible assures me that it will be repaired by June 2nd. I’ve been rewatching Deadwood recently so rather than pen a useless rant you may imagine me fulminating à la Al Swearengen. Service may be restored sooner than the 2nd, of course (although knowing BT I wouldn’t bet on it), so stay tuned. Again.
Update: Phone line is back again so normal service will resume.
More Marlowe, and something else for the month of May while it lasts. This embellished collection of poems by Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh dates from 1902, and is another limited edition. The embellisher was PA Schwarzenbach who provides suitably florid decorations.
I would have posted this by now if it hadn’t been for the recent unpleasantness. Robert Stewart Sherriffs (1906-60) was a Scottish artist who I confess I hadn’t come across before until Nick H (thanks, Nick!) drew my attention to this book at silver-gryph’s eBay pages. Sherriffs’ illustrated edtion of The Life and Death of Tamburlaine the Great by Christopher Marlowe was published in a limited edition in 1930.
The drawings are black-and-white throughout, and of such a quality you have to wonder why Dover or someone hasn’t done a reprint. The general approach owes much to the usual suspects, notably Aubrey Beardsley and Harry Clarke, but there’s a development of these earlier styles that you also find in the work of Ray Frederick Coyle and Beresford Egan. In addition to the full-page plates Sherriffs also provided a number of insect vignettes, the last of which is a Death’s-head Hawkmoth.
Snowflake Series (Pink Netting) (1965).
Discovered yesterday whilst searching for May-related pictures, some pieces from the Snowflake collage series by American artist May Wilson (1905–1986). Wilson was a mail artist as well as a collagist whose Snowflake series draws attention for its deployment of photos from beefcake magazines of the 1960s. It’s a commonplace that women often enjoy seeing gay porn but this interest hasn’t been reflected so much in art made by women. Offhand I can only think of the aforementioned Sibylle Ruppert making use of photos made by men for men. May Wilson produced similar works using glamour photos of women so her interest wasn’t solely concerned with the male form.
Snowflake Collage (Male Nude in Woods) (1966).
View of Fuji from Miho Bay, May (1830) by Utagawa Kunisada.
No weekend links this week, unfortunately. The past few days have been spent re-establishing some equilibrium following the technical upheavals of the previous weeks, including updating things on the old computer so it can be the main work machine until the new one is fixed. Consequently I’ve spent no time at all looking at blogs or reading RSS feeds.
Continuing the monthly post of month-related paintings, and May is a difficult month to search for when its name is also a woman’s name and a word that turns up in other contexts: the BBC’s Your Paintings website is rendered almost completely useless by the profusion of portraits of the nation’s mayors through the ages. As months go there’s an understandable emphasis on the blossoming of the natural world. Some examples are represented here, together with a few less obvious depictions.
A May Morning in Moret (1886) by Alfred Sisley.
La Belle Jardiniere: May (1896) by Eugène Grasset.
May Morn (1899) by John Henry Twachtman.