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The art of Yves Doaré

Ange (1981).

Le réservoir (1979).

Yves Doaré is well known for his paintings and drawings but better known for his haunting etchings, drypoints and wood engravings. Doaré began exhibiting his art in France in 1966 and since that time his art has been the subject of one man exhibitions at the Gallery Sumers, New York (1975), the Gallery Michele Broutta, Paris (1982), the House of Culture, Orleans (1985), the Gallery Dom Quichotte, Rome (1987), Workshop of Arts, Douarnenez (1993) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chamalieres, Belgium (1994). His art is now included in such public collections as the Museum of Annecy, the Museum of Morlaix, the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco, and the National Library of Paris.

Many of Doaré’s original etchings and engravings explore the theme he has termed, “a kind of geological memory.” Using as his starting point the actual etching plate or engraving block, Doaré explores the surface’s capacity to reveal its own forms and figures. Much like a sculptor, Doaré thus orchestrates the emergence of the random forms which the surface suggests.

More pictures at the Fitch-Febvrel Gallery, Galleria del Leone and the artist’s own site.

Update: more reproductions at Velly.org.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

The art of Philippe Mohlitz

Planche où je me suis perdu (1972).

31 Decembre (1982).

Batir (1989).

Recipient of the Grand Prix L.G. Baudry 2000, Philippe Mohlitz is well known to printmakers and collectors for having spectacularly rescued the art of copper engraving from a long period of increasingly stiff and stylized treatment. A true virtuoso of the burin (engraving tool), Mohlitz has restored a freedom of line to the medium not seen for centuries. In his best work he achieves a flow of light, particularly difficult to render in engraving, reminiscent of Dürer’s “St. Jerome in his Study”. The artist’s imagination, moreover, is equal to his technique, with fantastic visions which fascinate in both composition and detail.

Frustratingly small reproductions of what appear to be very detailed engravings here and here. Slightly larger images gathered here.

Update: another gallery of pictures at Velly.org.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

Angels 4: Fallen angels

The Treasures of Satan by Jean Delville (1894).

Some more favourite paintings today. Jean Delville produced a splendidly strange portrayal of Satan as an undersea monarch lording it over a sprawl of intoxicated, naked figures. When Savoy Books decided to put together the definitive version of David Lindsay’s equally strange fantasy novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, I felt this was the only painting adequate to the task of filling out the cover. That was in 2002; a year later Gollancz used the same painting on the cover of their Fantasy Masterworks paperback edition of the book. Lindsay’s book has been plagued by bad cover art for years so we managed to raise the bar for future editions. Delville was one of the great painters of the Symbolist school, all his work is worth looking at.

There are numerous representations of Lucifer but Franz Stuck’s is especially striking and apparently caused viewers to cross themselves before it when it was first exhibited.

Gustave Doré’s tumbling figure is from his illustrated edition of Paradise Lost, a book full of armour-clad, spiky-winged angels. Some of those wings have even found their way into my work via the miracle of Photoshop.

Lucifer by Franz Stuck (1890).

Paradise Lost by Gustave Doré (1866).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Thomas Häfner, 1928–1985

The art of Andreas Martens

Andreas Martens, artist of Rork.

A native of Germany, Andreas (Andreas Martens (1951- ) studied at the St. Luc comics school in Belgium, assisting Eddy Paape on Udolfo, before relocating to France. His genre series include Arq, Cromwell Stone, Cyrrus, Rork and its spin-off, Capricorne, as well as a number of single works such as La Caverne du Souvenir (The Cave of Memory), Coutoo, Dérives (Adrift), Aztèques, and Révélations Posthumes (Posthumous Revelations).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Harry Clarke, 1889–1931

The art of Virgil Finlay, 1914–1971

Mrs Amworth.

Another great artist of the macabre and supernatural, Virgil Finlay was the one of the most talented and imaginative illustrators of his generation. Unlike older contemporaries such as Joseph Leyendecker, who became wealthy producing elegant yet often bland advertising art, much of Finlay’s best work was for pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories which paid a pittance and printed his finely-hatched scratchboard drawings on the cheapest paper. The advantages to this work, such as they were, came in the access to a huge and appreciative audience, and the chance to provide the first illustrations for what would turn out to be classic genre stories. Finlay illustrated a number of HP Lovecraft’s tales and received the highest praise from the author in doing so. His illustration for Lovecraft’s The Thing on the Doorstep (below) contains a slight nod to Harry Clarke’s Valdemar picture (see previous post) with its distant, highlighted doorway, a detail that Clarke himself borrowed from the celebrated Las Meninas by Velázquez.

Therionweb has five galleries of Finlay’s pictures and Bud Plant again has a brief biography.

Abercrombie Station.

The Thing on the Doorstep.

Six and Ten.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive