A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
The Temptation of St Anthony (1883) by Fernand Khnopff. This should really be more Symbolist Temptations since Odilon Redon belongs among these artists. Redon may have devoted more of his time than anyone else to the saint’s travails but other artists also took up the theme. Fernand Khnopff seldom depicted religious subjects but his painting—an … Continue reading “Symbolist Temptations”
My Easter weekend was profitably spent watching True Detective again, a series I enjoyed even more the second time around. For the past year I’ve been pondering off and on the connections the series makes with the suite of weird tales that Robert Chambers published in 1895 as The King in Yellow, and also the … Continue reading “In the Key of Yellow”
Though Shadowgraphy has been known from time immemorial, and as ’twere a thing of bye-gone days, Trewey’s practice of the art comes as a novelty, and is highly entertaining alike to the schoolboy and the lean and slippered pantaloon. Thus the overwrought prefatory note in this small book of hand-shadow exercises by Felicien Trewey. In … Continue reading “The Art of Shadowgraphy”
Going through some of my loose copies of Man, Myth and Magic recently turned up this article by Kenneth Grant that I’d forgotten about. I have two separate sets of Man, Myth and Magic: a complete edition in binders, and a partial collection of loose copies of the weekly “illustrated encyclopedia of the supernatural”. The … Continue reading “Dreaming Out of Space: Kenneth Grant on HP Lovecraft”
Edmund Dulac’s illustrated edition of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales was published in 1910, and like John Austen’s version this is another one I hadn’t seen before. The adaptation by Arthur Quiller-Couch drops many of the less familiar stories such as Riquet of the Tuft and The Ridiculous Wishes to leave only Sleeping Beauty, Blue Beard, … Continue reading “Edmund Dulac’s Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales”