{"id":6294,"date":"2009-11-06T03:39:44","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T02:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=6294"},"modified":"2009-11-07T06:32:26","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T05:32:26","slug":"drowned-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2009\/11\/06\/drowned-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"Drowned worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rockman1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hollywood at Night (2006).<\/em><\/p>\n

Alexis Rockman<\/a>‘s paintings of swamped or ruined American landmarks present views which are a novelty in contemporary art galleries whilst being very familiar to science fiction readers. Many of these could well be illustrations for JG Ballard’s 1981 novel, Hello America<\/em>, which imagined a depopulated United States reclaimed by flora and fauna. Others would suit The Drowned World<\/em>, of course, and they bear favourable comparison with Dick French’s illustrated edition (below) which was also published in 1981.<\/p>\n

\"rockman2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Gateway Arch (2005).<\/em><\/p>\n

Rockman’s hothouse atmospheres remind me of earlier paintings of Brazilian wildlife by another American artist, Martin Johnson Heade<\/a> (1819\u20131904), many of whose tropical landscapes<\/a> only require a distant ruin or two to match Rockman’s work. (Tip via Design Observer<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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

The Drowned World by Dick French (1981).<\/em><\/p>\n

While we’re on the subject, Ballardian<\/a> has posted the first of three features about my colleagues at Savoy Books<\/a>, beginning with a Michael Butterworth interview<\/a> which discusses some of Ballard’s connections with Savoy. One of the subsequent posts should see yours truly discussing the visual dimension of the Savoy world. More about that later.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The coming of the dust<\/a>
\n\u2022 Ballard and the painters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hollywood at Night (2006). Alexis Rockman‘s paintings of swamped or ruined American landmarks present views which are a novelty in contemporary art galleries whilst being very familiar to science fiction readers. Many of these could well be illustrations for JG Ballard’s 1981 novel, Hello America, which imagined a depopulated United States reclaimed by flora and … Continue reading “Drowned worlds”<\/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":[8,2,42,51,44,20,23],"tags":[796,792,789,137,791,790,151,493],"class_list":["post-6294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-art","category-books","category-cities","category-painting","category-science-fiction","category-work","tag-alexis-rockman","tag-ballardian","tag-dick-french","tag-jg-ballard","tag-martin-johnson-heade","tag-michael-butterworth","tag-savoy-books","tag-the-savoy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-1Dw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6294","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=6294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}