{ feuilleton }

Ash

Cover art by Clayton Welham.

I’ve been doing the design duties on albums and singles by Emptyset since their first self-titled release in 2009. The latest album from the electronic duo, Ash, is also the 50th release on the Subtext label for which I’ve once again provided a minimal layout. I’ve no idea how the images by Clayton Welham were created, and I’m quite happy not knowing. Ash is available for pre-order ahead of its release next month.

Work announcements here have been rather scarce of late, in part because I’ve been working on a major project which is nearing completion and will no doubt be announced soon. Watch this space.

The art of Jordan Belson

Target (Spectrum) (c.1953).

The static art, that is. When you read about Jordan Belson’s abstract films there’s occasionally some mention of his artworks but these haven’t always been easy to see. This situation has changed recently thanks to a dedicated Belson website which includes a gallery section for drawings, pastels, paintings and his collage landscapes. Landscapes aside, most of these are also abstract pieces, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise, and very good they are too. In addition, the site has seven of Belson’s films available for viewing which may not be everything but it’s an improvement on the sole Belson DVD which only features five films. This is all very positive, here’s hoping the site stays around. (Thanks to Stephen for the tip!)

Nebula (1965).

Thoughtform (2001).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive

Rudiments of Curvilinear Design

George Phillips’ Rudiments of Curvilinear Design (1839) belongs among a subset of books about historic design in which the desire to provide a faithful record of various styles competes with the imagination of the artist creating the illustrations. The artist in this case is Phillips himself who runs through the catalogue of decoration and ornament in a series of beautiful full-page plates, the engravings being credited to publisher Shaw and Sons. Each plate is a tableau of different architectural features—windows, wall decoration, columns, and so on—which Phillips embellishes in a manner that avoids outright fantasy while also deviating from the more accurate renderings you’ll find in similar volumes. The notes at the beginning of the book describe the author’s aesthetic philosophy, a process which involves “engrafting upon that which may be considered as already excellent, some feature enhancing its value, and extending its usefulness to larger or more opulent classes of the community.”

Acanthus leaves abound here, inevitably when so many of the plates feature designs based on Classical styles. The acanthus is a common feature in design books from the 19th century, with some books even showing the correct (ie: Grecian) way to draw or sculpt the leaves if you’re having to create Corinthian columns. Mr Phillips seems to have taken such lessons to heart. For more acanthus, and many fine engravings which aim for greater historical accuracy, see Ornamenti di Tutti Gli Stili (1882) by Camillo Boito.

Continue reading “Rudiments of Curvilinear Design”

Weekend links 690

The Voice of St. Teresa (1928) by Oskar Sosnowski.

• The House is the Monster: Roger Corman’s Poe Cycle forms “a body of work not only deeply coherent but uniquely inspired,” says Geoffrey O’Brien.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Amberwood, while at The Daily Heller there’s a profile of Otto Bettmann, “an unsung visionary of commercial art”.

• At Public Domain review: The Works of Mars (1671), plans for military architecture by Allain Manesson Mallet.

The “underlying oneness of all things,” the conviction “that everything is connected” (Gravity’s Rainbow 703), is a thesis that appeals to many mystics and even to some scientists, but Fort complains that the latter too quickly dismiss unexplainable coincidences, or feebly explain them away. Scorning “scientific procedure” and inept police investigations, Fort turns for answers to denizens of the occult—poltergeists, invisible people, vampires, werewolves, miracle healers, fakirs, psychic criminals, dowsers—and to such notions as teleportation, human-animal metamorphoses, spontaneous combustion and pyrokinesis, “psychic bombardment,” telekinesis, animism, “secret rays,” telepathy, spirit-photography, clairvoyance, and modern instances of witchcraft.

Steven Moore in a perceptive essay about the overlooked connections between Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and Charles Fort. Having discussed Fort’s preoccupation with coincidences, the author notes that he shares a name with the late Steve Moore, former editor of Fortean Times magazine

• Pynchonesque headline of the week: The Paradox of the Radioactive Boars.

• James Balmont’s guide to the masterworks of New Taiwanese Cinema.

• New music: Solo for Tamburium by Catherine Christer Hennix.

• Winners of Bird Photographer of the Year 2023.

• Idris Ackamoor’s favourite music.

• Radio-Active (1984) by Steps Ahead | Radioactivity (William Orbit Remix) (1991) by Kraftwerk | Radioactivity (1998) by Hikasu

Mass

In the post this week, Mass, the first collection of paintings by John Harris in a hardback edition published by Soleil in 2000. The text is in French throughout but that’s okay, I wanted this for the pictures. It was also cheaper and in better condition than other options. I like a bargain. Having looked at a lot of Harris’s work on various web pages over the past few weeks it’s immediately evident how much better the paintings look here: there’s a lot more detail which, in Harris’s case, includes visible brushstrokes and the grain of the canvas. You’d expect as much from a book but it’s a further reminder that art books in particular aren’t threatened by the existence of ebooks, especially now that so many people view web pages on small screens. There’s still no substitute for seeing the paintings themselves, as Robert Hughes was always insisting, but you can only do this if the works are on display somewhere. When illustration ranks so low in the art-world hierarchy some kind of mediation is unavoidable.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The sublimities of John Harris