{horror} – Page 132 – { feuilleton }

Two Brides

Ah, sweet serendipity… What are the odds, dear reader, of two blogospheric friends posting equally splendid pictures of everyone’s favourite hand-stitched and reanimated woman within days of each other? (It helps that Evan P and Monsieur Thombeau share a number of interests but let’s not spoil the moment.) The Gray’s-like dissection above is the work of illustrator Martin Ansin, while the painting below is by Michelle Mia Araujo, or Mia, as she prefers. Both artists have produced a quantity of other work which demands your attention. As for James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, it is, of course, one of the great cultural artefacts of the previous century; if you’ve never seen it there’s a Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester-shaped hole in your life which needs to be filled without delay.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Mask of Fu Manchu
• Berni Wrightson’s Frankenstein

Druillet’s vampires

Le Viol du Vampire (1968) or Rape of the Vampire (stay classy, Jean!); re-titled Queen of the Vampires for the Anglophone world.

We’re so inundated these days with vampires and—worse—fucking zombies, that I’ll be perfectly happy if I never see another bloodsucker or shambling corpse again. But let’s overlook the degrading of horror staples for a moment to consider Philippe Druillet‘s excursions into the art of the cinema poster.

La Vampire Nue (1969).

These pieces are for Jean Rollin‘s first three films, additions to the groovy-lesbian-vampire-with-false-eyelashes-and-bare-boobs sub-genre made at a time—the late 60s—when all the European film studios, Hammer included, were pushing the erotic content of their films more than had previously been dared. Rollin’s erotic comic strip from 1967, Saga de Xam, featured art contributions from Druillet, among others, which no doubt explains the choice of artist. As with David Palladini’s fantastic design for Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), these are further examples of how unique and distinctive film posters once were in a way they rarely are today. (Druillet, incidentally, produced his own adaptation of Nosferatu in 1989.)

Le Frisson des Vampires (1970).

Pages from the fabulously rare Saga de Xam feature in the Art Nouveau catalogue that was the subject of yesterday’s post. So too does Druillet’s poster for Le Frisson des Vampires although any of these pieces would have made suitable inclusions. Even more than in his comic strips Druillet’s work here shows the overt influence of Alphonse Mucha.

Most of Rollin’s films seem to be available on DVD should you be desperate for some fangs and boobs. I’d much rather see Saga de Xam be reissued; it’s been out of print since 1967 and the copies available go for upwards of £200. This site has samples of the pages and there’s a post about the book (in French) here. For more about Jean Rollin, see Fascination: the Jean Rollin Experience.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Art Nouveau dance goes on forever
• Salammbô illustrated
• Druillet meets Hodgson
• The music of Igor Wakhévitch
• Nosferatu

The Art Nouveau dance goes on forever

Catalogue for Art Nouveau Revival 1900 . 1933 . 1966 . 1974. Peacock feather not included.

Regular readers may recall my mention of the Musée d’Orsay exhibition Art Nouveau Revival which was launched late last year. I didn’t get to see the exhibition, unfortunately, but this week I finally ordered a copy of the catalogue, an expensive cloth-bound volume with essays (in French) by Philippe Thiébaut, Stephen Calloway, Irene de Guttry, Thierry Taittinger and Philippe Thieryre. Despite the ruinous postal charges incurred by the book’s weight this was worth every euro, it being the kind of polymorphous production which in solipsistic moments one can choose to believe was created solely for your own benefit.

Aubrey again, album covers from 1974.

Much of the subject matter has been explored here in various small ways, with the curators following the influence of Art Nouveau through Surrealism (mainly Dalí) to the psychedelic art of the 1960s and on into the Pop Nouveau (for want of a better term) which flourished in the first half of the 1970s. Among the familiar Aubrey Beardsley graphics and psychedelic posters there are also some pleasantly surprising inclusions, including illustrations by Philippe Jullian (yes, I’m still intending on writing about him at some point), yet more Beardsley album covers, film posters, and even some of the sillier films of the late-60s such as Casino Royale. Being a French exhibition there’s a section devoted to comic strips which includes work by Moebius, Philippe Druillet and Guido Crepax.

Sex and LSD, a spread from Playboy, 1967.

It’s common to see parallels drawn between the 1890s and the 1960s but the strange blooms of vulgarised fin de siècle style which burgeoned in the wake of psychedelia are seldom given much attention. One of the great things about this catalogue is the amount of ephemera the curators chose to include such as magazine ads and trend-chasing album sleeves. It was precisely this blend of 1890s + 1960s + 1970s I sought to capture in my recent cover for Dodgem Logic. As I said, it’s an expensive book but for anyone drawn to this aesthetic hothouse it’s also an essential purchase. Art Nouveau Revival can be ordered direct from the museum shop. Further samples follow.

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Mind the doors!

Russian artist Alexey Andreev populates the Moscow Metro with eldritch weirdness in a photo-collage series he calls Metronomicon. A couple of these pieces remind me of Clive Barker’s throat-grabbing story, The Midnight Meat Train, which was filmed a couple of years ago. For an earlier cinematic example of the horror inherent in underground transport systems there’s Gary Sherman’s Death Line, or Raw Meat as it was fatuously rebranded for the US, a very effective low-budget film from 1972. Fantastic Voyages reviews it here.

Andreev tip via MetaFilter.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Subterrania
• Tunnel 228

Gekko Hayashi: homoerotics and monsters

gekko1

Needless to say, it’s primarily the homoerotics which concern us here. Gekko Hayashi is the name under which Japanese artist Goji Ishihara (1923–1997) produced his gay erotica, and these examples are among a small handful to be found on the web. Far more common is his Ishihara work which included some spectacular grotesqueries for the Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters (1972) and the Illustrated Book of Hell (1975). Sate your appetite for the monstrous at Pink Tentacle.

gekko2

Hayashi/Ishihara’s work may be scarce but you can read about both his personas thanks to ComiPress, who posted an overview of the artist’s career, and Comics212, who examined the gay side of his output. There is a book collection of Hayashi’s gay art but that appears to be out-of-print. This Japanese page has many samples from the Ishihara work.

The dual career of Hayashi/Ishihara brings to mind another artist equally adept at commercial illustration and gay art, Oliver Frey. As “Zack”, Frey gained an enthusiastic audience in UK gay mags while he was also popular with quite a different audience for his illustrations in computer game magazines throughout the 1980s. He was also no slouch at painting monsters as I recall. A collection of Zack comic strips, Bike Boy, is published this month by Bruno Gmünder.

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