{"id":13650,"date":"2013-04-13T01:50:26","date_gmt":"2013-04-13T00:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=13650"},"modified":"2017-02-23T01:05:54","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T01:05:54","slug":"burt-shonbergs-poe-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/04\/13\/burt-shonbergs-poe-paintings\/","title":{"rendered":"Burt Shonberg’s Poe paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"usher1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

House of Usher (1960): Vincent Price and Mark Damon.<\/em><\/p>\n

This post ought to have followed the one in January<\/a> about the sinister portraits glimpsed in Roman Polanski\u2019s Dance of the Vampires<\/em>. I still don\u2019t know who was responsible for those paintings but the artist who created the equally outr\u00e9 family portraits in Roger Corman\u2019s House of Usher<\/em><\/a> (1960) was credited for his work. Burt Shonberg<\/a> (1933\u20131977) was a friend of Corman\u2019s who had to produce the six portraits at speed (the entire film was shot in fifteen days) so the results are sketchier than they might have been in a production with a bigger budget. I always liked the anachronism of these pictures, the way they look very much of their time; the effect is a jarring one that adds a note of much-needed strangeness to Corman\u2019s otherwise sparse interiors.<\/p>\n

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Shonberg was a curious artist, the gallery page<\/a> on his website shows a progression from Picasso-style early works in the 1950s to his own brand of mystical psychedelia. Some of his paintings from around the time of House of Usher<\/em> have that stained-glass fragmentation one finds in the work of Leo & Diane Dillon<\/a> from the same period. Shonberg’s biography<\/a> says Corman used more paintings in The Premature Burial<\/em><\/a> (1962) but I don\u2019t have a copy of that to hand and haven\u2019t found any examples. There\u2019s also the detail that\u00a0Shonberg was involved for a while with Marjorie Cameron<\/a>, herself an artist who appeared as the mysterious \u201cWater Witch\u201d in another AIP production, Curtis Harrington\u2019s Night Tide<\/em><\/a>, a year after House of Usher<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"usher3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"usher4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"usher5.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"usher6.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"usher7.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"usher8.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #5: Among the others<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried S\u00e4tty<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #3: Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #2: William Heath Robinson<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #1: Aubrey Beardsley<\/a>
\n\u2022 Poe at 200<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Tell-Tale Heart from UPA<\/a>
\n\u2022 William Heath Robinson\u2019s illustrated Poe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House of Usher (1960): Vincent Price and Mark Damon. This post ought to have followed the one in January about the sinister portraits glimpsed in Roman Polanski\u2019s Dance of the Vampires. I still don\u2019t know who was responsible for those paintings but the artist who created the equally outr\u00e9 family portraits in Roger Corman\u2019s House … Continue reading “Burt Shonberg’s Poe paintings”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,7,22,44,17],"tags":[4692,1375,4694,93,2179,4693,121,4691,165,1890,2249,4690],"class_list":["post-13650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-film","category-horror","category-painting","category-psychedelia","tag-burt-shonberg","tag-curtis-harrington","tag-diane-dillon","tag-edgar-allan-poe","tag-leo-diane-dillon","tag-leo-dillon","tag-marjorie-cameron","tag-mark-damon","tag-picasso","tag-roger-corman","tag-roman-polanski","tag-vincent-price"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3ya","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}