{surrealism} – Page 90 – { feuilleton }

The art of Stephen Aldrich

Take Me to Your Leda (2000).

The City at the End of Time (2005).

I wrote about the history of the engaving collage in Sandoz in the Rain: the Life and Art of Wilfried Sätty, an article for Strange Attractor #2 (2005). I hadn’t come across Stephen Aldrich’s work at the time, if I had I would have mentioned him as being one of the artists continuing in this style after Sätty. You can see more of Aldrich’s work at the Foley Gallery, New York, and on Artnet.

Stephen Aldrich was born in Westfield, MA in 1947. In 1989 Aldrich began to explore the possibility of making collages from 19th Century illustrations and (Fredrick) Sommer, always one to “master the advantages”, asked Aldrich to cut engraved illustrations from text books in anatomy. This made it possible for Sommer to create hundreds of collages, and the medium became his principle form of artistic expression throughout the last decade of his life. During that time Aldrich continued to make his own collages with Sommer’s enthusiastic support and encouragement, and joined in a collaborative partnership with photographer Walton Mendelson to produce “collagraphs” (collages photographed) which were first exhibited at Turner/Krull Gallery in 1992. The partnership with Mendelson ended in 2002.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Shinro Ohtake

The art of Rudolf Hausner, 1914–1995

Die Arche des Odysseus (1948–1956).

Adam Bei Sich (1969).

A major Austrian painter and printmaker, Rudolf Hausner studied art at the Academy in Vienna from 1931 to 1936, under Fahringer and Sterrer. Many of his early paintings were confiscated and branded as ‘degenerate’ by the ruling Nazi party in 1938. In 1941 Hausner was drafted by the German army and remained a soldier until the war’s end in 1945. After the war he returned to Vienna and immersed himself in studies dealing with the unconscious and with the art of Surrealists, particularly that of Max Ernst. Along with Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden, Rudolf Hausner founded the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism in 1947. During the 1950s and 1960s this became one of Austria’s most important movements and Hausner was its most influential artist. During this time he also held principal teaching posts at the academies of Vienna and Hamburg.

Equally gifted as a painter, lithographer and etcher, Hausner’s complex art is based upon potent symbols and imagery. Primary among these is the constantly recurring image of the first man, Adam, who is part autobiographical and part archetype. Another compelling image is that of the man or boy in a sailor’s cap. Hausner claimed that this image symbolized the myth of Odysseus and his epic voyages on the seas. It also, however, is representative of the artist’s own boyhood and the integrated relationships of youth and age within the self.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux

La Rue du Tramway (1938) by Paul Delvaux.

Taxandria (1994) is a feature-length fantasy film by Belgian animator Raoul Servais that’s received little attention outside his native country, possibly because it failed in the marketplace and has been deemed too weird or uncommercial to export. You only have to compare the export version of Harry Kümel’s Malpertuis with his original cut to see how inventive Belgian films are treated by US distributors.

Servais had previously made an acclaimed animated short, Harpya, using a combination of live actors and painted backgrounds. Taxandria elaborates on this process (called Servaisgraphy by its inventor) using settings designed by one of my favourite comic artists François Schuiten, creator (with Benoît Peeters) of Les Cités Obscures. Taxandria intrigues for a third reason, the inspiration of Surrealist master Paul Delvaux whose paintings served as the origin of the project. And it also contains a remarkable detail in the screenplay credit for Alain Robbe-Grillet, a man better known for making Last Year at Marienbad with Alain Resnais, and the kind of fierce intellectual one imagines would usually run a mile from this kind of extravagant whimsy.

Continue reading “Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux”

The Codex Seraphinianus

It had to happen…the entirety of Luigi Serafini’s masterpiece (US edition, 1983) scanned and Flickr-ised for your viewing pleasure.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Tressants: the Calvino Hotel
• Surrealist cartomancy

The art of Yves Doaré

Ange (1981).

Le réservoir (1979).

Yves Doaré is well known for his paintings and drawings but better known for his haunting etchings, drypoints and wood engravings. Doaré began exhibiting his art in France in 1966 and since that time his art has been the subject of one man exhibitions at the Gallery Sumers, New York (1975), the Gallery Michele Broutta, Paris (1982), the House of Culture, Orleans (1985), the Gallery Dom Quichotte, Rome (1987), Workshop of Arts, Douarnenez (1993) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chamalieres, Belgium (1994). His art is now included in such public collections as the Museum of Annecy, the Museum of Morlaix, the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco, and the National Library of Paris.

Many of Doaré’s original etchings and engravings explore the theme he has termed, “a kind of geological memory.” Using as his starting point the actual etching plate or engraving block, Doaré explores the surface’s capacity to reveal its own forms and figures. Much like a sculptor, Doaré thus orchestrates the emergence of the random forms which the surface suggests.

More pictures at the Fitch-Febvrel Gallery, Galleria del Leone and the artist’s own site.

Update: more reproductions at Velly.org.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive