A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
The Arcade, Cleveland (c. 1901).
More arcade fetishism courtesy of the Library of Congress photo archives. The black-and-white prints can be downloaded in enormous high-res versions if you’re as compelled as I am to scrutinise the details.
St. Hubert’s gallery, Brussels.
Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Volume 2 covers the period April–September 1898 and, as before, this issue can be downloaded in a variety of formats at the Internet Archive. This edition opens with a feature on the Wertheim department store, Berlin, design by Alfred Messel. Like many examples of Art Nouveau architecture, the store suffered damage during the Second World War and was eventually demolished.
This number also has a lengthy feature devoted to artist Hans Christiansen whose work was appearing regularly in issues of Jugend magazine at this time. The colour panels below are Christiansen’s work.
Townscape (1934).
Carel Willink was a Dutch painter whose self-described brand of “imaginary realism” conjured in its early years a collection of views of desolate plazas, empty lanes and abandoned ruins over which smoke or cloud hangs like an ominous portent. The works of Giorgio de Chirico and Paul Delvaux come to mind when looking at these pictures although Willink’s work has enough unique qualities to stand apart from his more famous contemporaries. I’m also reminded a little of Spanish artist Arnau Alemany who has a similar predilection for isolated architecture.
Chateau in Spain (1939).
There’s an official Willink website here, while further paintings can be seen at this Flickr set and also at Ten Dreams.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Bruges-la-Morte
• Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux
• The art of Arnau Alemany
Golden Fairy Specimen.
These have already been featured on many other sites but that shouldn’t exclude their presence here. The Wunderkammer concept seems to be a recurrent fascination on the web—see here and here and here, for example—possibly because the nature of the medium lends itself to the accumulation of curiosities. It’s a small step from collecting genuine curios to inventing those the world stubbornly refuses to provide, that’s what we see happening here and also at some of the earlier posts below. About the Colmore Fatagravures we’re told:
A Scottish adventurer, inventor, and photographer named Neville Colmore claimed to have constructed a device capable of “…parting the veil of Faery…”. The device, which he called the “Spectobarathrum”, produced beautiful photo graphic plates he called “fatagravures”, through a now lost process. The original “Spectobarathrum” along with all of the images he claimed to have made were believed destroyed in a fire. (More.)
French Harpy of Questionable Provenance.
In a similar vein, I’ve already mentioned that I’ve done some design and illustration for the Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, the sequel to the Lambshead Disease Guide which is forthcoming from HarperCollins. The new book is edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer and publication has been announced for June. Jeff unveiled the near-final cover design just before Christmas (not my work, I should note) and a preview of some of the contents, including one of my interior pages. More about this closer to publication.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The specimens of Alex CF
• Walmor Corrêa’s Memento Mori
• Harpya by Raoul Servais
• The art of Ron Pippin
• Custom creatures
• Jan Švankmajer: The Complete Short Films
• Cryptozoology
• The Museum of Fantastic Specimens
Blasphemous Rumours (2009/2010) by Ryan Martin. The artist now has a dedicated site for his paintings.
• The Museum of Censored Art, a mobile gallery, will be showing the withdrawn David Wojnarowicz film outside the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, until their contentious gay art exhibition closes next month. Related: Bishop of Mallorca criticises calendar—which shows Catholic youths posing naked—for ‘not respecting Christian symbols’.
• Didier Lestrade published French gay zine Magazine in the 1980s, and later co-founded Têtu. He’s interviewed at BUTT and has started uploading the entire run of Magazine about which he says: “I don’t want to stamp some kind of logo on this material. It’s gay. It’s gay history. It belongs to everybody. If you want to take a piece of it, please try to mention the origins of it, a simple code word “Magazine” will be enough. If you wanna be more specific, be my guest.”
• HMV, Britain’s last big music chain, is closing 60 branches. Yet a new wave of CD stores is thriving. Oh, HMV, how I’ll miss your £17 CDs (and double-CDs at £34)… On second thoughts, no I won’t, your wretched retail barns always exemplified the greed endemic in the music business.
Love Comes/Destroyer by Stephen Kasner.
• Artist Stephen Kasner‘s work has adorned music releases by Sunn O))), Isis and others. He’s currently another American creator in need of assistance with medical expenses. Details here.
• The Ghosts of Old London: the gloomy Victorian metropolis in all its deteriorated splendour. See also: In Search of Relics of Old London.
• “It’s time to recognise [Sandy] Denny as not simply a folksinger but one of Britain’s great poets of song,” says Rob Young.
• Louis Pattison talks to Locrian about JG Ballard, old VHS tapes and their new album The Crystal World.
• The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of: Lebbeus Woods’ big drawings.
• Hannes Bok portfolios at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.
• An Iranian rapper named Salome. Also here and here.
• Book Worship.
• Sons of Pioneers (1981) by Japan; Tao-Tao (1982) by Masami Tsuchiya; Glow World (1983) by Bill Nelson.