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Satyriconte

Here in the northern hemisphere it’s the wrong time of year to be cavorting in the open air with your clothes off for any length of time. In warmer months the people behind Satyriconte—who were in touch earlier this week—do just this as an exploration of what they call “the contemporary tale of a satyre”:

Satyriconte is a mix of two french words: satire and tale.
It’s a way to connect with Satyricon, this so old novel written by Petrone.
It’s a road we decided to follow to inquire our world according this point of view.

The Satyriconte project is a photo research around the filthy presence in our occidental civilisation.

So many years of education
……….and still
we can feel the Satire shadow in our daily life.

What about this Satire in our days :
……….Is it washed by our porn torrent ?
……….Is it perfumed and well dressed ?
……….Is it the breath of our parents while they exchange their flesh ?
……….Is it our animal side ? (more)

In addition to photos there are drawings and a request for assistance of various kinds, from help staging photo shoots to critical opinion of the project. I’d not-so-helpfully suggest that a contemporary satyr ought to have prosthetic legs (like those used by some paralympic athletes) which give the wearer a suitably goatish appearance.

For more traditional representations of Hermes, Pan, satyrs and fauns this page has plenty of choice examples.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
• The Great God Pan
• Peake’s Pan

The Eighth Court

Mid-January and here’s the first book cover design of the year, and another title for Angry Robot. This is the fourth book in Mike Shevdon‘s Courts of the Feyre series; since I’d already provided the three earlier books with a uniform design it didn’t take long to create this one. I’ve been very pleased with the reception of these covers, the positive response shows that it’s possible to design something for a fantasy series that isn’t the customary generic illustration plus florid typography. I wrote about the problems of designing fantasy covers last year with a lengthy examination of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium books.

Two recent Angry Robot covers: Joey HiFi‘s cover for Chuck Wendig and Amazing15‘s Pelican-styled design for Chris F. Holm.

Credit should be given to Angry Robot’s Marc Gascoigne for encouraging this direction, the company has been producing a range of very smart covers which don’t pander to the clichés of the marketplace. There’s more of an incentive for smaller publishers to do this when small press imprints and self-publishers often have terrible cover designs (sad but true) while the multinationals play safe for fear of losing readers. If you want to stand out from the crowd then it helps to look good.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Courts of the Feyre

Jean Genet, 1981

Until watching Antoine Bourseiller’s film, the only interview I’d seen with Jean Genet was the one filmed by the BBC in 1985 in which a tetchy and evidently irritated Genet made a fool of interviewer Nigel Williams, and compared the whole experience to a police interrogation. (Williams and his interview are memorialised in Iain Sinclair’s Downriver with the words “Is he the one who made a cunt of himself with Genet?”)

Bourseiller’s 52-minute film is very different, presenting a warm and effusive writer who talks at length about lovers, friends (including Alberto Giacometti), posterity (which he dismisses), and his prison experiences. Between the interview sections there are readings from some of his texts. That this is as good as BBC films used to be shows what a wasted opportunity the actual BBC interview was. At the time it was impossible to tell whether Genet was simply a prickly character or whether Williams and company had severely pissed him off. Judged against Bourseiller’s film I’d bet on the latter.

(Note: The YouTube copy is in French but includes optional subtitles.)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Un Chant d’Amour (nouveau)
• Jean Genet… ‘The Courtesy of Objects’
• Querelle again
• Saint Genet
• Emil Cadoo
• Exterface
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal
• Un Chant D’Amour by Jean Genet

The art of Henri Caruchet

Byblis (1901) by Pierre Louÿs.

Henri Caruchet isn’t in George Barbier’s league, never mind that of Alphonse Mucha whose graphic style Caruchet appropriated. I’ve not been able to find details about his life either, all that turns up is examples of his book illustration on various websites. Author Pierre Louÿs is notable for his erotic works but it’s Caruchet’s illustrations for Jean de Villiot (via this site) which travel the furthest in that direction (see below), including another example of that deviant sub-genre, the woman being mauled by an octopus. If Caruchet had been a better draughtsman his illustrations might not have languished for so long.

There’s more decorative illustration by Caruchet at Gutenberg.org with an edition of Théophile Gautier’s Émaux et Camées. Two of Gautier’s poems from that volume are quoted by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Byblis (1901) by Pierre Louÿs.

Les Litanies de la Mer (1903) by Jean Richepin.

Parisienne et Peaux-Rouges (1904) by Jean de Villiot.

Continue reading “The art of Henri Caruchet”

George Barbier’s Falbalas et Fanfreluches

George Barbier’s work has been a regular visitor to these pages. Falbalas et Fanfreluches was a series of pochoir print portfolios published from 1922–1926, a catalogue of various liaisons and amours with a mildly erotic tone. There’s also some sly humour in the examples below, such as the tiny dogs menacing a dandy in L’Agression, and the eyes of the woman in Romance sans paroles wandering to the trim backside of the posing sailor (who doesn’t seem so interested in her).

In addition to being beautiful drawings, Barbier’s title has solved for me a minor conundrum: Falbalas et Fanfreluches means “Ruffles and Frills”, and the Abbé Fanfreluche is a suitably ruffled and frilled character in Aubrey Beardsley’s unfinished erotic novel Under the Hill.

Continue reading “George Barbier’s Falbalas et Fanfreluches”