A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Black and white art
The plates from Stephan Michelspacher’s Cabala, Speculum Artis Et Naturae In Alchymia (1654) are familiar from histories of alchemy but SLUB Dresden has high-resolution scans of the entire book. Also there is Wenzel Jamnitzer’s astonishing Perspectiva Corporum Regularium (1568), a volume covered in detail at BibliOdyssey last year.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Digital alchemy
Further retrievals from the depths of the Internet Archive (and thanks to Lord Cornelius Plum for the tip) come in the form of three bound editions of The Savoy magazine, a British art and literary periodical which ran for eight issues from January to December 1896. Aubrey Beardsley was art editor and chief illustrator, Arthur Symons the literary editor and the publisher was the heroic and duplicitous London pornographer Leonard Smithers whose patronage and, it should be noted, exploitation of Beardsley’s work kept the artist solvent during his last two years.
A thesis could be written (and no doubt has been) exploring the curious symbiosis between pornography publishers and the artistic avant garde. Smithers was a proud purveyor of what he called “smut” but he also complained about all the money he lost supporting poets and down-at-heel writers. Posterity can thank him for publishing Teleny, the classic early work of gay fiction attributed to Oscar Wilde, as well as Beardsley’s Lysistrata illustrations and The Savoy, a magazine founded in the fallout of the Wilde scandal when The Yellow Book dropped Beardsley from its staff in order to appease its more conservative contributors. The magazine’s run was short due to poor sales after WH Smith’s refused to stock it, worried again about the controversial nature of Beardsley’s art. (Speculative fiction magazine New Worlds faced similar problems with Smith’s in the late Sixties.) This seems astonishing to us now when looking at the world-class roster of contributors to the first issue, a list which included two future Nobel winners—George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats—as well as Max Beerbohm, Ernest Dowson, Havelock Ellis, JM Whistler, Charles Shannon, William Rothenstein, and Beardsley writing and illustrating the first part of his erotic caprice, Under the Hill.
Beardsley’s illustrations are very familiar from book reproduction but it’s good to see them in the context in which they first appeared, and to be able to read some of the features. The later issues include pages of adverts which always fascinate for their contemporary detail.
• The Savoy: Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Aubrey Beardsley archive
• The illustrators archive
Continuing the series of posts about Jugend magazine, all these samples are from the issues for 1897. This is where things start getting really interesting graphically so I’m only posting a very small selection from 900 pages of content. As before, anyone interested is advised to examine the complete volumes which can be viewed and downloaded here and here.
Cupid drawings abound in early issues of Jugend, with men and women falling prey to love’s vicissitudes. This is one of the more unusual examples.
The first issue of yesterday’s arts and crafts magazine Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration includes an article about Melchior Lechter, a German artist and designer whose illustration work I knew from books by gay poet Stefan George but who seems unjustly neglected by fin de siècle art histories. The reminder prompted me to search a bit more actively and doing so turned up another Internet Archive document, Melchior Lechter, a monograph from 1904 by Maximilian Rapsilber. These are Google scans and the quality is very good for once, with a collection of impressive graphic works in Lechter’s religious Art Nouveau style, as well as photos of his furniture and stained glass window designs. I can’t say much more about artist since all the available documentation is in German but the visuals in Rapsilber’s book make me wish we could see more of his work.
(Note: if you want to download the full PDF, do so here.)
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration
A poster design by Yusaku Kamekura. More here, via A Journey Round My Skull.
First of all this week, there’s a new interview posted which I gave last year to Crows ’n’ Bones magazine. The replies skate around the usual subjects (Cthulhu et al) and you also find out why I don’t think design and illustration for music is going to vanish as soon as some people think.
• A Journey Round My Skull has announced The Raymond Roussel Illustration Contest which is open to all.
• Cover designs: David Pearson on redesigning Cormac McCarthy’s UK covers, a huge improvement on the previous Picador series. Also, The Robert Lesser Pulp Art Collection.
• Last year I discussed Teleny, Or the Reverse of the Medal, the novel of gay erotica attributed to Oscar Wilde, giving a mention in passing to Jon Macy’s comic strip adaptation of the book. That adaptation has now been published and is available via his website.
The Kiss (1896) by Will Bradley.
• More Art Nouveau (because too much is never enough): Will Bradley’s work at Golden Age Comic Book Stories. Can’t understand how I missed this one.
• A discussion: The Magic Mystery and Melancholy of Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake.
• Sandi Vincent’s Flickr pages overflow with Graphis Annual goodness.
• A new edition of the Arthur Radio Voyage is available to download. And Trunk Records’ Jonny Trunk has a mix of obscure vinyl for you.
• Song of the week: We Want War by These New Puritans. Slow motion shots in the video are a plus.