People or, indeed, things in the Los Angeles area may be interested in the Thing Group Art Show which opens this Saturday at Creature Features in Burbank. The gallery will be displaying prints and original artwork from the forthcoming The Thing: Artbook including a print of my own contribution. Some of the prints are for sale, as mine will be, so Coulthart collectors (I know there’s one or two out there) should head to Magnolia Boulevard.
The publishers of The Thing: Artbook, Printed In Blood, have requested that the artists refrain from showing their contributions until the book is launched in July. I can show this Thing head, however, a manifestation that I couldn’t fit into my final composition. Even before I began work on my piece I suspected that many of the other artists would be doing their own versions of favourite moments from the film, an accurate prediction as it turns out. So my intention was to try and show some of the nastiness that might be occurring between the filmed scenes, to which end I produced a number of sketches of fanged heads. The one below would have worked better attached to a body (or at least some limbs) but I was running out of time so it was left aside. The Thing: Artbook may be pre-ordered here.
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• Things
A lovely thing indeed, John! After watching Carpenter’s film recently I was wondering what such a creature or species would look like in its original state (dare we ask) having the intelligence and physical ability to build a space craft a flying saucer as it were – before having contact with humans? – That goes for a lot of Lovecraft’s creatures as well as others in science fiction which seem similar to the Thing albeit in the transformative state – builders of vast architectures machines and abstract visual language (as in the recent film Arrival) with pincers and tentacles? – I’m not sure there is any logic to any of this and it certainly doesn’t diminish the film experience in the end, but it does lend itself to speculation – from the inside out so to speak…maybe I’m just too hand biased to appreciate a genius race of misunderstood tentacles! John S.
Thanks, John. If I’m remembering correctly there’s speculation in the original story that one of the creatures may be the Ur-Thing but the humans are never sure about this. In the film it’s evident that the Thing not only invades each new host but retains some of the knowledge from former hosts, as seen with Blair’s half-built escape craft. I don’t mind not knowing more than this (or knowing what the creature in the ice looked like, although the story describes that as well); the mystery is part of the pleasure.
Hi John,
Thanks for your reply – I agree that often the less we know the greater the effect in these sort of films and in literature and life as well – that play of ambiguity and revelation is where the mystery lies and as you say the pleasure – since I sent my email I discovered and viewed the so-called prequel to Carpenter’s film also titled The Thing released in 2011 which goes some way toward revealing more of the creature but still manages to walk a pretty fine tightrope of disclosure – not as great as the original, but well worth a look…