Oscar Wilde – Page 21 – { feuilleton }

Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #10: Heinrich Vogeler

Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Volume 10 covers the period from April to September 1902. There’s so much of interest in this edition I thought it worth making a two-part post. The number opens with a substantial piece devoted to artist and illustrator Heinrich Vogeler (1872–1942) whose edition of Oscar Wilde stories was featured here a while ago. One of the pleasures of this journal is the attention they devote to overlooked artists. Vogeler has an unusual and distinctive style, playful and florid, and with the same enthusiasm for filling the paper with tiny details as later illustrators such as Harry Clarke. Some of these illustrations are for fairy stories, others for more adult fare; peacocks abound. The article also has examples of his painted work although I find his line drawing to be of greater interest. As before, anyone wishing to see these samples in greater detail is advised to download the entire volume at the Internet Archive. Part two follows tomorrow.

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Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #4

Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. There isn’t a volume 3 in the Internet Archive collection, hence the jump in the series to volume 4 which covers the period from April–September 1899. This edition features a few more familiar names beginning with artist and illustrator Heinrich Vogeler whose illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde stories was featured here last year. Vogeler’s work isn’t always to my taste although I liked his Wilde drawings; the Tod und Alte piece above is an exception to his usual work of this period rather than the rule. Elsewhere there’s a feature on the graphic designs of Paul Bürck, a profile of Dutch Symbolist Jan Toorop and a report on the Dresden art exhibition of 1899 which includes an array of beautiful Art Nouveau interiors. As with all such idealised exhibition displays, they point the way to a future that was never to be.

More DK&D next week.

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Art Deco bindings

Contes Oscar Wilde (c. 1928), design by Paul Bonet.

Two selections from this gallery of bookbindings from the 1920s. Few books receive this kind of treatment today but it’s by no means a lost art, The Guild of Book Workers has examples of recent designs.

La Canne de Jaspe (c. 1925), design by Pierre Legrain.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Prismes
• The art of Thayaht, 1893–1959
• The Mentor
• The art of Cassandre, 1901–1968
• The Decorative Age
• The World in 2030

Alastair’s Carmen

“The artist at home” from Alastair: Illustrator of Decadence (1979) by Victor Arwas.

More Beardsley derivations in the form of some illustrations by Hans Henning Voigt (1887–1969), better known as Alastair, and an artist who more than anyone carried the Beardsley style and the fin de siècle ethos into the 20th century. If the photograph above is anything to go by he seemed to take Beardsley’s effete and languid characters as role models for an equally effete and languid manner.

The drawings here are a selection from twelve pieces for a 1920 edition of Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen, the novel upon which Bizet based his opera. Alastair for me has always been an artist whose enthusiasm for his subject matter outpaced his technique, his figure drawing can be rather weak at times which perhaps explains some of his more eccentric costume designs. Every so often the weakness becomes a virtue when it provides a surprising composition. Carmen didn’t seem to inspire him as much as other works, his illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salomé are a lot better and I may post some of them here if I can find a way of scanning my Victor Arwas book without spoiling it. There still isn’t much else of his work on the web but S. Elizabeth did make a start recently with her post A Decadent Parade of Outrageous Fancies at Coilhouse.

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Wildeana 4

I could make these posts a lot more often since there’s seldom a week goes by when Oscar Wilde’s work or something from his life isn’t making the news somewhere. I forget now how I came across the Robert Hichens book but the Beardsley-derived cover design is the best I’ve seen for this title. The Green Carnation was first published in 1894 and is the notorious roman à clef whose lead characters, Esmé Amarinth and Lord Reginald Hastings, are based on Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. Hichens paints the pair as very obvious inverts with none of the “is he or isn’t he?” subtlety that Wilde managed to sustain in public. For a scandalised London the book seemed to confirm what was already suspected about Wilde and Bosie’s relationship.

The cover art is credited to one John Parsons, an illustrator whose other work, if there is any, eludes the world’s search engines. This edition was published in 1949 by Unicorn Press and it’s something I’m tempted to buy as a companion for my Unicorn Press edition of Dorian Gray.

The following links are to recent articles spotted whilst looking for other things:

• Oscar Wilde, Classics Scholar. A review of The Women of Homer by Oscar Wilde, edited by Thomas Wright and Donald Mead.
• A new Broadway production of The Importance of Being Earnest has actor Brian Bedford playing Lady Bracknell.
• Buyers go Wilde for Oscar as short note to his friend sells for €1,500.
• Outsmarted: What Oscar Wilde could teach us about art criticism.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Oscar Wilde archive
• The book covers archive