{ feuilleton }

The Art of the Book

Endpaper design by Reginald L Knowles for JM Dent’s Everyman’s Library series.

A few of the many illustration samples to be found in The Art of the Book, an overview of book design published in 1914. The editor was Charles Holme, also the editor of leading art magazine The Studio from whose contents and resources books such as this were easily compiled. The Internet Archive has a collection of Holme’s books, and this particular volume includes work from Hungary and Sweden, two countries which are often overlooked in creative surveys. I’ve selected illustrations here but the book contains many examples of binding design and page layouts.

Initial letters and ornaments by Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens.

Continue reading “The Art of the Book”

Jean Genet… ‘The Courtesy of Objects’

Jean Genet… ‘The Courtesy of Objects’ is an exhibition by Anglo-French artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz currently running at The Gallery at Norwich University College of the Arts. Chaimowicz presented a show entitled Jean Cocteau in Norwich last year; this new exhibition will include “works on paper, theatrical props, furniture, slide projections, documentation and an imaginary casting session for Genet’s 1947 play The Maids and videos charting Chaimowicz’s pilgrimages to the author’s childhood home in Burgundy, France, and to his grave on the Moroccan coast.” (More.) About Genet, Chaimowicz has this to say:

Jean Genet, in his fashion, loved Jacky Maglia. Jacky was the stepson of Genet’s lover Lucien Senemand. Genet was generally attracted to heterosexual men, often delinquents or petty criminals… and Jacky stole cars… Genet actively encouraged Jacky to take up motor racing and later managed his fledging career. In Norfolk he bought Maglia a Lotus Elan… They grew very close, travelling widely together and illicitly entering the US to cover the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention for Esquire. Fame and critical success were suddenly and violently echoed by financial gain… Genet was at one point Gallimard’s highest-earning author… This having the converse effect in that the more rich and famous he became, the less he was able to write. For so long the outsider and now the literary celebrity, it was as though he felt alienated from his own unique and cherished sense of alienation.

The exhibition is free and runs until May 21st when it will move to Nottingham and then New York. See here for opening times and other details.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Querelle again
• Saint Genet
• Emil Cadoo
• Exterface
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal
• Un Chant D’Amour by Jean Genet

The Steampunk Bible

Cover and interior designs by Galen Smith.

Arriving in your book emporia this week is The Steampunk Bible by Jeff VanderMeer & SJ Chambers, a comprehensive guide to the sub-genre which is now a thriving sub-culture. I contributed some bits of graphic design as well as a bespoke dirigible illustration (see below). The book also features a few other steampunk-related pieces of mine among its wealth of photos and illustrations. This is a typically lavish production from Abrams, beautifully designed by Galen Smith with a cover based on the celebrated Hetzel editions of Jules Verne’s novels. Inside there are essay contributions from Bruce Sterling, Catherynne M Valente, Jess Nevins and others. If you’re a steampunk enthusiast (or know one) this is an essential purchase. Some links and page samples follow below.

• The official Steampunk Bible site
• The Steampunk Bible: Mecha-Elephants, Raygun Rocketships, and Great Stories, a feature by Jeff V.
• Amazon US | Amazon UK | Book Depository | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

My cover for KW Jeter’s Morlock Night which has just been republished by Angry Robot.

My brief was to create a cannon-bedecked piscine dirigible so this is what I came up with. See it in all its belligerent glory here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Steampunk Reloaded
• Steampunk overloaded!
• Vickers Airship Catalogue
• The Air Ship
• Dirigibles
• More Steampunk and the Crawling Chaos
• The art of François Schuiten
• Steampunk Redux
• Steampunk framed
• Steampunk Horror Shortcuts
• The Airship Destroyer
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls
• The Hetzel editions of Jules Verne

Weekend links 57

A 1973 Ballantine edition of William Burroughs’ novel with a cover illustration from Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) by Salvador Dalí. Via the Burroughs Book Covers archive.

The Sel Publishing House, Turkey, published a new translation of The Soft Machine by William Burroughs in January, an edition which is now under investigation by the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office following a report by the (deep breath) Prime Ministry’s Council for Protecting Minors from Explicit Publications. The Council lodged a number of complaints, among them assertions of “lacking unity in its subject matter,” “incompliance with narrative unity,” “using slang and colloquial terms” and “the application of a fragmented narrative style.” Details here. Does Turkey still want to join the EU? Because this kind of persistently illiberal bullshit (see the earlier treatment of Orhan Pamuk) isn’t helping their case at all.

• Related to the above: Evan J Peterson reads Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in the toilet of a Seattle gay bar; Ginsberg himself reads Kaddish and other works here.

• More illiberal bullshit: LGBT activists arrested during royal wedding; Queer Resistance released a statement about the arrests. MPs, activists and trade unionists condemn new attacks on the right to protest.

• The Dorian Gray That Wilde Would Want Us To Read. Harvard University Press publishes an uncensored and annotated edition of Wilde’s novel. Kudos for using Caravaggio’s Narcissus on the cover.

One weekend in late 1967, they all decamped to a hotel suite in California’s Ojai Valley for a brainstorming session. Amid clouds of pot smoke, they talked all weekend with the tape recorder running. [Jack] Nicholson then took the tapes and turned the conversations into a screenplay; according to Rafelson, he structured it while on LSD.

Revisiting The Monkees’ psychedelic movie, Head.

Kraftwerk icons for Windows and Mac OS X by Dave Brasgalla.

• Robert Louis Stevenson gets his revenge on sneaky literary agent – 120 years later. And Michael Moorcock imagines tales of unseen Mervyn Peake pictures.

Painting doesn’t look so good on the web. It looks better in life. Sculpture looks better in life. What you end up with is just a reproduction. Whereas with film or with sound or with poetry, you get the deep primary experience not the secondary experience. The web delivers those primary experiences very well.

Ubuweb’s Kenneth Goldsmith interviewed.

• Arkhonia’s Another Dispatch in a World of Multiple Veils is now a free download.

• The story of This Is The Sea: An interview with Mike Scott of The Waterboys.

• Fairlight: The Rolls Royce of synthesizers.

• Haeckel Clock, a free app for the iPad.

• What is totalitarian art?

• Porpoise Song (1968) by The Monkees | Hope For Happiness (1969) by The Soft Machine | I’m A Believer (1974) by Robert Wyatt.

Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #21

The Eternal Idol by Auguste Rodin.

Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Volume 21 covers the period from October 1907 to March 1908, and the highlight of this issue is a feature on the black-and-white art of Julius Klinger, an artist whose drawings appeared regularly in Jugend.

If you’ve been following this series it’s worth noting that volume 3 which is missing from the collection at the Internet Archive can be found at the University of Heidelberg. I would have featured it here but it turns out to be surprisingly dull compared to the other early editions. As before, anyone wishing to see these samples in greater detail is advised to download the entire number at the Internet Archive. There’ll be more DK&D next week.

Continue reading “Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #21”