{art} – Page 608 – { feuilleton }

How to make crop circles

The Field Guide: the Art, History & Philosophy of Crop Circle Making
by Rob Irving & John Lundberg.
Edited by Mark Pilkington

Three decades ago, two men in their fifties began flattening circles into the fields of Hampshire and Wiltshire. Little did they know that their Friday night antics would seed an international phenomenon that continues to change people?s lives to this day.

Now, in the first book of its kind—part history and part how-to guide—the secrets of the crop circle world are revealed, by the people behind the modern era?s most astounding artform. Whether you think crop circles represent a genuine mystery, a new kind of art, or an elaborate practical joke, The Field Guide is sure to leave a lasting impression.

The English landscape would never be the same again!

• How two men in their fifties “conned the world” and spawned an international phenomenon.
• Three generations of crop circle makers tell the stories behind the amazing crop formations, in the first book of its kind.
• Secrets of the artists revealed in a complete “how-to” guide!
• Inside the world of the “croppies”, the people who study the crop circles.
• Bizarre beliefs examined, bogus science exposed!
• In-depth interviews with Doug Bower, the man who started it all, and The Circlemakers, the team behind some of the most spectacular formations on record.
• From the team behind www.circlemakers.org and the editor and publisher of Strange Attractor Journal.

£8.99, Pb, 288pp, heavily illustrated. ISBN 0954805429
File under Art / Culture / Paranormal Phenomena
Available late August 2006 from all good bookshops
or from www.strangeattractor.co.uk and www.circlemakers.org
Strange Attractor Press
BM SAP
LONDON WC1N 3XX

JG Ballard book covers

In a similar vein to the Burroughs cover gallery, Rick McGrath’s site does the same for one of Burroughs’ followers, JG Ballard. The covers below are two typical examples using Surrealist art as their illustration, The Eye of Silence by Max Ernst and City of Drawers by Dalí. I’ve always loved the pairing of Ernst’s painting (my favourite by that artist) with The Crystal World, a design that Panther carried over to their 1968 paperback edition.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

William Burroughs book covers

This site has a great selection of Burroughs’ cover art. By no means complete but pages like this are always fascinating for showing the variety of visual interpretations that can be brought to a single title. Also nice to see how books looked in their earlier editions before they achieved status as “classic” works. And sometimes you see odd book title variations, so Queer in some foreign editions has become Pederast.

Too many great designs to choose from so I’ve picked out a couple of favourites by Thomi Wroblewski for Picador editions of the early Eighties. Cities of the Red Night remains my favourite Burroughs novel and I still toy with the idea of doing an illustrated edition one day.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
• The William Burroughs archive

20 Sites n Years by Tom Phillips

Tom Phillips has long been one of my favourite contemporary artists and he’d certainly be my candidate for one of the world’s greatest living artists even though the world at large stubbornly refuses to agree with this opinion. Phillips’ problem (if we have to look for problems) would seem to be an excess of talent in an art world that doesn’t actually like people to be too talented at all (unless they’re dead geniuses like Picasso) and a lack of the vaunting ego that propels others into the spotlight.

Phillips is predominantly a painter but a restlessly experimental one. On my journey through the London galleries in May I visited the National Portrait Gallery, a rather dull place mostly filled with pictures of the rich and famous by the rich and famous. There were two Tom Phillips works on display in different rooms, inadvertently showing his artistic range: one, a fairly standard (if very finely detailed) portrait of Iris Murdoch, the other a computer screen showing a portrait of Susan Adele Greenfield which manifested as an endlessly-changing series of 169 processed drawings and video stills. One work was static and traditional, the other fluid, contemporary and unlike anything else in the building.

Continue reading “20 Sites n Years by Tom Phillips”

The art of Gérard Trignac

Gérard Trignac produces etchings of a kind I’d most likely be doing myself if I wasn’t otherwise occupied, detailed architectural fantasies that owe a lot to my sainted Piranesi and (I’m guessing, since they’re both French) Charles Méryon. As usual with contemporary artists of this nature one can find the pictures but information about the artist is harder to come by. A web search reveals this:

Gérard Trignac was born in 1955, and initially trained to become an architect—training which is evident in his imagined cityscapes. Each of his prints begins with a detailed sketch, which is then fully developed on the copper plate. Each print can take months to complete. Besides individual prints, Trignac has often turned his talents to series of prints used to illustrate classic texts by authors such as Calvino, Borges, and others. His work is in the collection of numerous museums and public collections in Europe and the United States.

The wonderful (French-only) Egone.net has an artist’s quarter with two Trignac portfolios (scroll to the bottom of the page—and look at some of the other work while you’re there). Work by Gérard’s sister, Colette, is also featured. Other print collections can be found here, here and here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive