A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Comics
Relativity (1953) by MC Escher.
Escher’s famous lithograph has a less familiar companion piece in the woodcut below.
Delirius (1972) by Philippe Druillet.
Lone Sloane’s adventure on the pleasure planet of Delirius was written by Jacques Lob, and features this diversion in the Palais d’Escher. Possibly the first fictional use of one of Escher’s prints.
Lilith Births the Djinn (2015) by Rithika Merchant. Via Phantasmaphile.
• Lord of Strange Deaths: The Fiendish World of Sax Rohmer, edited by Phil Baker & Antony Clayton, is a new publication from Strange Attractor. “This is the first extended attempt to do justice to Rohmer, and it ranges across the spectrum of his output from music-hall writing to Theosophy. Contributors focus on subjects including Egyptology, 1890s decadence, Edwardian super-villains, graphic novels, cinema, the French Situationists, Chinese dragon ladies, and the Arabian Nights. The result is a testimony to the enduring fascination and relevance of Rohmer’s absurd, sinister and immensely atmospheric world.”
• More weird fiction: Twisted Tales of the Weird promises “an evening of readings by some of the finest writers in the contemporary scene, a panel discussion about the mode, and a Q&A with the audience” at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, on 23rd October. Writers M. John Harrison, Helen Marshall and Timothy J. Jarvis will be reading from their works. The event is free but space is limited so tickets are required.
• More Lovecraft: “Lovecraft never said his entities were evil,” says Alan Moore discussing his new Lovecraftian comic series, Providence, with Hannah Means Shannon. At the University of Sterling, Chloe Buckley reviews the Ellen Datlow-edited anthology Lovecraft’s Monsters for The Gothic Imagination (with passing reference to my illustrations but no credit for the artist).
• One for completists or those who were there on the night: Earth playing There Is A Serpent Coming at the Columbus Theatre, Providence on 22nd August. I’d almost given up hope that someone might have recorded anything from this event so thanks to Mr Beast Rebel of the Hellscape for the upload. There’s also a song by Elder from earlier in the evening.
• A Rose Veiled in Black: Art and Arcana of Our Lady Babalon edited by Robert Fitzgerald and Daniel A. Schulke.
• Robin the Fog on Spectral Spools, Amplified Olympia and XPylons.
• Mix of the week: BerlinSchool Mix-A [Beginnings] by Headnoaks.
• At AnOther: Leonor Fini: Female Libertine
• The lost tunnels of Liverpool
• Some Weird Sin (1977) by Iggy Pop | It’s So Weird (1983) by Bush Tetras | The Smallest Weird Number (2002) by Boards of Canada
A post last year about Arthur Machen’s masterpiece of weird fiction, The White People, ended with mention of a comic-strip adaptation by Ibrahim R. Ineke. At the time the strip was only available on Ineke’s website but this month the story is being published in a hardcover edition by Dutch comics imprint Sherpa. There’s a preview here (the dialogue is in English), and further details (in Dutch) about the publication here. Thanks to Ibrahim for the tip!
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The White People
• The Bowmen by Arthur Machen
• Rex Ingram’s The Magician
• The Great God Pan
Presenting the best of the architectural shots from the Providence trip. Regular readers will know how much I enjoy an arcade so it was a thrill that the public headquarters of NecronomiCon—Lovecraft Arts & Sciences— was located in the oldest arcade in the United States.
I’ve been working all day to get multiple things finished before leaving for Providence so here’s a handful of Druillet covers pulled from Noosfere. Philippe Druillet must be one of the first artists—possibly the first—whose work is Lovecraftian at core. Artists had been illustrating Lovecraft’s stories since their first publication but Druillet’s work from the late 60s to the mid-70s often seems like a series of reports from Lovecraft’s imagination. This is most evident in two of the artist’s graphic novels, Yragaël (1974) and Urm le Fou (1975), which I find to be more convincingly Lovecraftian than much of the imitative fiction being produced at the time. For more along these lines, see this post about Druillet’s portfolio series, Lovecraft: Démons et Merveilles.
