{cities} – Page 25 – { feuilleton }

Drowned worlds

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 fauna. Others would suit The Drowned World, of course, and they bear favourable comparison with Dick French’s illustrated edition (below) which was also published in 1981.

Gateway Arch (2005).

Rockman’s hothouse atmospheres remind me of earlier paintings of Brazilian wildlife by another American artist, Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), many of whose tropical landscapes only require a distant ruin or two to match Rockman’s work. (Tip via Design Observer.)

The Drowned World by Dick French (1981).

While we’re on the subject, Ballardian has posted the first of three features about my colleagues at Savoy Books, beginning with a Michael Butterworth interview 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.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The coming of the dust
• Ballard and the painters

The coming of the dust

Impossible to avoid thoughts of either JG Ballard or various apocalyptic horror and science fiction scenarios when looking at these photos of Sydney, Australia, taken a few hours ago. A cloud of red dust passed over the city in the early morning and the depopulated views only add to the eerie atmosphere. These are from a Red Dust Flickr gallery. The Other Andrew writes about the inundation on his blog. I’m looking forward now to the reaction of another Sydney Melbourne resident, Simon Sellars, who runs Ballardian.

Update: The Red Sydney Project—Dust Storm Days

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Apocalypse now

Echoes of the Cities

Mysterieux retour du Capitaine Nemo.

This week has been incredibly hectic work-wise but I’ve managed to keep these posts going, so here’s the last one devoted to an appreciation of the Cités Obscures of François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. A week of posts barely scratches the surface of their vast and involved creation of alternate worlds, fantasy design and architecture, and Borges-like metaphysical speculation. When I try to explain my disaffection with the popular end of American comics, it’s works such as these which I offer as an alternative. The problem, of course, is that only a handful of the books have been translated into English, a detail which tells you all you need to know about English-speaking comics publishers and—since demand fuels the market—their readers.

This final set of pictures is a selection from Schuiten and Peeters’ L’Echo des Cités (1993), a facsimile edition of the main newspaper which serves the cities of the Obscure World. Unfortunately, this remains untranslated but the bulk of the book is full-page illustrations, many of which are among Schuiten’s best. A number of these were later reprinted as limited lithograph prints.

Les rêves engloutis d’Oscar Frobelius.

Continue reading “Echoes of the Cities”

Further tales from the Obscure World

L’enfant penchée.

We’re at the penultimate post in this week-long tribute to the Cités Obscures series of François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, and there isn’t enough space left to cover some of the more recent volumes in detail. What follows is a quick skate through three more major works.

L’enfant penchée.

L’enfant penchée (1996), or The Leaning Child, is an expanded version of a 1995 children’s story by Schuiten and Peeters, Mary la penchée. Mary is the young daughter of wealthy industrialists from Mylos struck down one day by some cosmic calamity which shifts her centre of gravity, causing her to permanently lean at an apparently impossible angle. When she’s bullied at school she runs away and joins a circus. A meeting with scientists and astronomers leads to a resolving of her affliction, and the repairing of her ruined life. This is a fascinating story for a number of reasons, not least the existence of a parallel narrative taking place in our world which is conveyed using photographs, and which unveils some of the metaphysical aspects of the Obscure World. The story of Mary is also flawlessly drawn. Schuiten uses a black-and-white style modelled on the work of old magazine illustrators like Franklin Booth, and there are further references to Winsor McCay and Jules Verne.

Continue reading “Further tales from the Obscure World”

Brüsel by Schuiten & Peeters

The Palace of Justice, Brussels.

Brüsel (1992) by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters follows La route d’Armilia as the next major work concerning the Cités Obscures. As with La Tour, this is a longer story where it isn’t immediately apparent that we’re in the Obscure World at all, although Brüsel is clearly an alternate version of our Brussels. The unfinished Palace of the Three Powers in the city centre is modelled on the Palace of Justice in Brussels, and both buildings share architects by the name of Joseph Poelaert.

The Palace of the Three Powers, Brüsel.

Brüsel is a “small man” tale of Constant Abeels, a would-be shopkeeper preparing to launch a business selling a new and modern innovation: plastic flowers. Abeels suffers from a persistent cough, and it’s a combination of his health problems and business problems—the water for the shop is disconnected—that causes him to become enmeshed in schemings to radically transform the city, and the resistance to those plans. The tale is also a satire on the overly-optimistic march of progress of the late 19th and early 20th century, with all the problems of trying to impose sudden architectural change on a change-averse community. Inhabitants of Brussels have a long history of sudden architectural change, the huge Palace of Justice being constructed only after residents of the area had been forcibly evicted. In the 1950s and 60s, the flattening of old quarters in order to build New York-style office blocks was so destructive that the French coined the term “Brusselisation” to describe a brutal remodelling of a city against the wishes of its citizens.

Continue reading “Brüsel by Schuiten & Peeters”