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L’art dans la décoration extérieure des livres

Back at the fin de siècle with this study by Octave Uzanne of book cover design in the 1890s. L’art dans la décoration extérieure des livres is over four hundred pages of very varied designs, from covers for popular novels to the state of the art by usual suspects Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Ricketts et al. Léon Rudnicki provides the cover and some interior illustrations. The examples below include pieces by Symbolist artists Félicien Rops and Franz Stuck, as well as one of Alphonse Mucha’s designs for Judith Gautier’s Mémoires d’un Éléphant blanc. The complete book may be browsed here or downloaded here.

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Weekend links 111

The Fox (1968). Design by Bill Gold, art by Leo & Diane Dillon.

Mark Rydell’s The Fox may be regarded unfavourably now for its retrograde idea of a lesbian relationship but that’s still a great poster by the Dillons. Equally retrograde (well it was 1957) is Anders als du und ich, a film about wayward German youth directed by ex-Nazi propagandist Veit Harlan:

Klaus is a young man in post-war Berlin. He is drawn to his friend Manfred and, under the encouragement of their acquaintance, Dr. Winkler, explores the underground world of gay clubs and electronic music. His family begins to learn of his other life and do everything they can to set him straight.

A saving grace is the conspicuous deployment of Oskar Sala’s Trautonium. They’re deviants—of course they like weird electronic music! Sala’s instrument was his own invention which means it has a unique pre-Moog sound, famously used by Alfred Hitchcock in the score for The Birds. YouTube has a collection of the electronica moments from Anders als du und ich. Wait for the wrestling scene…

• Netherwood: Last Resort of Aleister Crowley by A Gentleman of Hastings. Related: Jimmy Page’s Lucifer Rising sessions part 1 and part 2.

• “This coming 16 June, [BBC] Radio 4 will be a wall-to-wall Joycefest, kicking off at 9am and running until midnight.”

• A World Where Architecture is the Driving Force Behind Society, Core77 on the Cités Obscures of François Schuiten.

• At The Hooded Utilitarian an examination of the thorny problem of adapting Lovecraft for the comics medium.

• Plates from La Plante et ses Applications Ornementales (1897–1900) by Eugene Grasset.

• Coilhouse found a rough copy of Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

• Three Quick Ways to Introduce Yourself to the Work of Harlan Ellison.

• Daniel Buren’s Monumenta 2012 at the Grand Palais, Paris.

• Our Sorrows, a new video from Julia Holter.

• I, Cyclops: Monocularity in a 3-D World.

• JG Ballard: The Concordance.

• RIP Pete Cosey.

• Pete Cosey with Miles Davis et al, November 1973: Ife | Turnaroundphrase

Weekend links 102

Flannery O’Connor with one of her many peacocks.

When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing haloed suns. This is the moment when most people are silent.

Flannery O’Connor

Essay of the week was without a doubt Living with a Peacock by the great Flannery O’Connor, originally published in Holiday magazine in September 1961. I’d heard about Flannery’s peacocks before but had no idea she was such a pavonomane. Thanks to Jay for the tip!

• “‘He’s chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature.’ But he was more like the very hungry caterpillar, munching his way through every musical influence he came across…” Thomas Jones reviews two new books about David Bowie for the LRB.

• In June Mute Records release The Lost Tapes by Can, a 3-CD collection. Here’s hoping this doesn’t merely repeat the outtakes that’ve been circulating for years as the Canobits bootlegs. This extract is certainly new.

• Animator Suzan Pitt, director of the remarkable Asparagus (1979), discusses her new film, Visitation, inspired, she says, by reading HP Lovecraft in a cabin while wolves howled outside.

• Night Thoughts: The Surreal Life of the Poet David Gascoyne, a biography by Robert Fraser reviewed by Iain Sinclair.

The Dangerous Desire (1936) by Richard Oelze (1900–1980) at But Does It Float.

• Making the Mari: the stuff of nightmares brought into the world by Jefferson Brassfield.

• The Background to the Moorcock Multiverse: Karin L. Kross reviews London Peculiar.

• Orson Welles’s lost Heart of Darkness screenplay performed for the first time.

• The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome: the new BFI DVD collection reviewed.

• Page designs by Alphonse Mucha for Ilsée, Princess de Tripoli (1897).

• A Slow-Books Manifesto by Maura Kelly.

• Tim Parks asks “Do we need stories?”.

• Musical table by Kyouei Design.

• Horror Asparagus Stories (1966) by The Driving Stupid | Peacock Lady (1971) by Shelagh McDonald | Peacock Tail (2005) by Boards of Canada.

The weekend artists

Flower Me Gently (2010) by Linn Olofsdotter.

Yes, this is one of those lazy end-of-year retrospectives, a look back at all the artists whose work was highlighted in the weekend posts for 2011. Thanks to BibliOdyssey, Form is Void and 50 Watts for so often pointing the way.

Blasphemous Rumours (2009/2010) by Ryan Martin. The artist now has a dedicated site for his paintings.

DG-2499 (1975) by the fantastic (in every sense of the word) Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929–2005). See the Dmochowski Gallery for a comprehensive collection of the artist’s work.

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Koloman Moser posters

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Secession poster (1899).

Since I’ve been delving over the past year into the fin de siècle culture of Germany and Austria, the name of Koloman Moser (1868–1918) has kept recurring. This is partly because of Moser’s associations with the Viennese Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, of course, but I’ve made a point of drawing attention to his work since it’s struck me as some of the most remarkable being produced anywhere in Europe during the period 1895–1910. Moser’s poster designs are a good example of his authority as an artist and graphic designer who quickly evolved from Mucha-derived Art Nouveau flourishes to a degree of stylisation that was incredibly advanced for the early 1900s. The graphics of Moser and fellow artist/design Alfred Roller point the way to Art Deco twenty years later, and also to the psychedelic era whose poster artists eagerly borrowed motifs, figures and lettering designs from Moser, Roller, Mucha and others.

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Frommes Kalender poster (1899).

Wikimedia Commons has a generous sampling of Moser’s work that shows his incredible versatility in a variety of media. The Secession designers, and Moser in particular, and memorialised in Paul Shaw’s typeface design, Kolo.

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Illustrierte Zeitung poster (1900).

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