{"id":6142,"date":"2009-09-27T03:44:06","date_gmt":"2009-09-27T02:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=6142"},"modified":"2013-07-12T01:55:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-12T00:55:58","slug":"design-as-virus-11-burne-hogarth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2009\/09\/27\/design-as-virus-11-burne-hogarth\/","title":{"rendered":"Design as virus 11: Burne Hogarth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Mighty Baby (1969). Illustration by Martin Sharp.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet another album cover prompts this post, part of an occasional series. Mighty Baby<\/a> were a British rock band who formed out of psychedelic group The Action in the late Sixties, and their music is fairly typical of the period, being “heavy” without any of the psych trappings which\u2014for me\u2014often make everything from that time a lot more interesting. This was a journey undertaken by many groups at the end of that lurid decade, a junking of the playful and evocative side of what was now called rock music in favour of a denim-clad earnestness. This album isn’t one I like very much\u2014I’d rather listen to their earlier incarnation\u2014but the cover painting by psych artist Martin Sharp<\/a> is certainly a startling piece, being a violent mutation of one of the most famous Tarzan drawings by comic artist Burne Hogarth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

Tarzan by Burne Hogarth (194?).<\/em><\/p>\n

Hogarth was drawing Tarzan for much of the 1940s and this particular panel showing the Ape-Man attacking Numa the lion dates from the latter part of his run on the series. I wish I could pin this to an actual year but I don’t have a complete set of the comics and that detail eluded me. If anyone knows the date, please leave a comment.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"reverbstorm2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reverbstorm 7 (2000).<\/em><\/p>\n

Readers of the Savoy comics series, Reverbstorm<\/em><\/a>, which David Britton and I created in the 1990s, will be familiar with its many references to Hogarth and other artists (some of which were catalogued here<\/a>). The image of Tarzan and Numa was reworked on three separate occasions. The first was a double-page piece in a long run of pages which are the most excessive and outrageous things I’ve drawn to date. Burne Hogarth saw some of this work, including this spread, and while he wasn’t impressed at all by the violence he had the good grace to say some very flattering things about my drawing.<\/p>\n

\"reverbstorm1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That image of Lord Horror on the solar-phallic lion was reworked for the cover painting in a style intended to resemble the work of Frank Frazetta<\/a>. This version also tries to match Hogarth’s original more closely.<\/p>\n

\"reverbstorm3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Near the end of Reverbstorm<\/em> #7 one finds this panel showing Jessie Matthews astride Picasso’s bull from Guernica<\/em> (1937) in the midst of Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte<\/em> (1884). How the story gets to a point of such intertextual confusion would involve far too much explanation; the curious will just have to buy the comics, or wait for the definitive book edition to appear.<\/p>\n

I’m fairly sure I’ve seen other reworkings of Hogarth’s drawing aside from the Sharp version. If anyone knows of others, please leave a comment.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The album covers archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Design as virus 10: Victor Moscoso<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 9: Mondrian fashions<\/a>
\n\u2022 Max (The Birdman) Ernst<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 8: Keep Calm and Carry On<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 7: eyes and triangles<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 6: Cassandre<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 5: Gideon Glaser<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 4: Metamorphoses<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 3: the sincerest form of flattery<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 2: album covers<\/a>
\n\u2022 Design as virus 1: Victorian borders<\/a>
\n\u2022 My pastiches<\/a>
\n\u2022 A premonition of Premonition<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mighty Baby (1969). Illustration by Martin Sharp. Yet another album cover prompts this post, part of an occasional series. Mighty Baby were a British rock band who formed out of psychedelic group The Action in the late Sixties, and their music is fairly typical of the period, being “heavy” without any of the psych trappings … Continue reading “Design as virus 11: Burne Hogarth”<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,9,4,21,48,3,17,38,23],"tags":[727,394,729,3654,1891,417,726,165,728,3616,493,691],"class_list":["post-6142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-comics","category-design","category-fantasy","category-illustrators","category-music","category-psychedelia","category-pulp","category-work","tag-burne-hogarth","tag-david-britton","tag-frank-frazetta","tag-jessie-matthews","tag-lord-horror","tag-martin-sharp","tag-mighty-baby","tag-picasso","tag-reverbstorm","tag-tarzan","tag-the-savoy","tag-victor-moscoso"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-1B4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6142","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=6142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}