A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Design
Semyaza (2007).
Witch Banner (2006): Witch South x Southwest banner.
Eyehategod NYC (2005): NYC show poster.
Arik Roper produces much band artwork and design (including for Boris who I’ve been listening to a lot this week). He’s also part of the splendid Arthur posse. Go thou to his work and marvel.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Underground history
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer
“If you look at what’s transpired in Iraq, Chris, we’ve made enormous progress.”
US Vice President Dick Cheney, Fox News interview, January 14th, 2007.
A visual depiction of the continuing human cost of the Iraq war,
by Adriana Lins de Albuquerque and Alicia Cheng. From the NYT.
In January more than 1,900 people—soldiers, security officers and civilians—were killed in the insurgency in Iraq, up from 800 in January 2006. Many corpses showed signs of torture, meaning the victims were probably killed by religious and tribal death squads. This map, based on data from the American, British and Iraqi governments and from news reports, shows the dates, locations and circumstances of deaths for the first month of the year. Given the vast size of Iraq and the communications difficulties inherent in war, the information may be incomplete. Nonetheless, it is our effort to visually depict the continuing human cost of the Iraq war.
Adriana Lins de Albuquerque is a doctoral student in political science at Columbia.
Alicia Cheng is a graphic designer at mgmt. design in Brooklyn.
Update: Seems like The Independent was taken with this as well.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Liberty 2006
It’s lunar, it’s serpentine, it’s grandly thaumaturgical. Cover design by yours truly.
Via Top Shelf:
Splendid news for boys and girls, and guaranteed salvation for humanity! Messrs. Steve and Alan Moore, current proprietors of the celebrated Moon & Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels (sorcery by appointment since circa 150 AD) are presently engaged in producing a clear and practical grimoire of the occult sciences that offers endless necromantic fun for all the family. Exquisitely illuminated by a host of adepts including Kevin O’Neill, Melinda Gebbie, John Coulthart, José Villarrubia and other stellar talents (to be named shortly), this marvelous and unprecedented tome promises to provide all that the reader could conceivably need in order to commence a fulfilling new career as a diabolist.
Its contents include profusely illustrated instructional essays upon this ancient sect’s theories of magic, notably the key dissertation “Adventures in Thinking” which gives reliable advice as to how entry into the world of magic may be readily achieved. Further to this, a number of “Rainy Day” activity pages present lively and entertaining things-to-do once the magical state has been attained, including such popular pastimes as divination, etheric travel and the conjuring of a colourful multitude of sprits, deities, dead people and infernal entities from the pit, all of whom are sure to become your new best friends.
Also contained within this extravagant compendium of thaumaturgic lore is a history of magic from the last ice-age to the present day, told in a series of easy-to-absorb pictorial biographies of fifty great enchanters and complemented by a variety of picture stories depicting events ranging from the Paleolithic origins of art, magic, language and consciousness to the rib-tickling comedy exploits of Moon & Serpent founder Alexander the False Prophet (“He’s fun, he’s fake, he’s got a talking snake!”).
In addition to these manifold delights, the adventurous reader will also discover a series of helpful travel guides to mind-wrenching alien dimensions that are within comfortable walking distance, as well as profiles of the many quaint local inhabitants that one might bump into at these exotic resorts. A full range of entertainments will be provided, encompassing such diverse novelties and pursuits as a lavishly decorated decadent pulp tale of occult adventure recounted in the serial form, a full set of this sinister and deathless cult’s never-before-seen Tarot cards, a fold-out Kabalistic board game in which the first player to achieve enlightenment wins providing he or she doesn’t make a big deal about it, and even a pop-up Theatre of Marvels that serves as both a Renaissance memory theatre and a handy portable shrine for today’s multi-tasking magician on the move.
Completing this almost unimaginable treasure-trove are a matching pair of lengthy theses revealing the ultimate meaning of both the Moon and the Serpent in a manner that makes transparent the much obscured secret of magic, happiness, sex, creativity and the known Universe, while at the same time explaining why these lunar and ophidian symbols feature so prominently in the order’s peculiar name. (Manufacturer’s disclaimer: this edition does not, however, reveal why the titular cabal of magicians consider themselves to be either grand or Egyptian. Let the buyer beware.)
A colossal and audacious publishing triumph of three hundred and twenty pages, beautifully produced in the finest tradition of educational literature for young people, The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic will transform your lives, your reality, and any spare lead that you happen to have laying around into the purest and most radiant gold.
A 320-Page Super-Deluxe Hardcover, co-written by Alan Moore and Steve Moore, and illustrated by various luminaries from the comic book field.
Cover design by John Coulthart.
A 2009 RELEASE!
ISBN 978-1-60309-001-8
Continuing the George Barbier theme from the Nijinsky post, his work reminded me I’d had Artdecoblog bookmarked for some time. Searching there turned up some more of his pictures including this mythological scene done in his post-Beardsley style. The men in the picture below are hilariously effete for rugby players, they look more like a couple of costumiers casting aspersions on the poor woman’s outfit.
Artdecoblog is a great resource for pictures from this period and well worth a browse. The woman responsible has an equally excellent blog devoted to Belle Époque art and design.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
The incomparable Culture Archive presents an embarrassment of riches in scanned form; if only there were more sites as good as this. Easier for you to go and look for yourself than waste time reading a poor description of the place.
Random browsing turned up pages from the Earl of Birkenhead’s study of the state of the world a century from 1930. But it’s not the Earl’s prognostications that concern us here, rather the book’s airbrush illustrations by E McKnight Kauffer, an artist and designer better known for his Art Deco poster designs like Metropolis (1926) below.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Metropolis posters
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s future city