Pushtorg (Fur-Trade) by Il’ia L’vovich Sel’vinskii (1931). Designer uncredited.
Tri veka (Three Centuries) by Dmitrii Dmitrievich Blagoi (1933). Designer uncredited.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Pushtorg (Fur-Trade) by Il’ia L’vovich Sel’vinskii (1931). Designer uncredited.
Tri veka (Three Centuries) by Dmitrii Dmitrievich Blagoi (1933). Designer uncredited.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
Here we go again… Okay, so it’s not quite the Flandrin pose since he has his head up, but I love Lindsay Lozon’s photography and can use the topical excuse that he has a new book of his work out, All My Boys, which includes this picture.
Previous posts in this series have now been archived to a single page for convenience.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive
Dedalo (2004).
Laberinto 21 (2000).
Lots more etchings of labyrinths and other
imaginary landscapes at the artist’s site.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
Jeff VanderMeer at Dark Roasted Blend
| New interview which includes one of my illustrations.
Beowulf wrestles with Grendel, Lynd Ward (1939).
There’s nothing new in pointing out Hollywood’s crimes against literature, the film business has been screwing up book adaptation since the earliest days of silent cinema. But sometimes the wound is so grievous you can’t help but speak out, in this case against Roger Avary’s Beowulf which is released next month. This is another CGI-heavy confection along the lines Polar Express, with the actors being given digital bodies via motion-capture, and it’s something I’d probably have ignored until I saw this picture of Grendel, the story’s principal monster. Beowulf is one of the earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon poems and Grendel, the bloodthirsty creature which Beowulf battles, is one of the ur-fiends of English literature, along with his equally monstrous, lake-dwelling mother and the dragon which fatally wounds the hero. The trio give us a peek back into the dark imagination from a time before recorded history and Grendel especially has always had something raw and primal about its character. So when you see a beast with such a history portrayed as little more than a diseased muppet you wonder what’s going on. Are the creators inept? Ignorant? Were studio restrictions at work? How does an industry with the talent to give splendid life to the trolls and Balrog of Lord of the Rings, or Davy Jones and crew in Pirates of the Caribbean, screw up so badly?