A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
top left: Gordon Ertz; top right: George M Richards.
bottom left: Constance Wheeler; bottom right: Boris Artzybasheff.
Covers from an American adventure story magazine which ran from 1925–1935. Very lavish designs compared to the pulps it was competing against. From the excellent selection at MagazineArt.org.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Boris Artzybasheff, 1899–1965
A couple of examples of fetish and bondage art by American artist Taylor Buck. An interesting technique is always welcome in gay art and I like the the stylised quality of these pictures. Bondage art especially lends itself to black-and-white renderings. Taylor Buck is open to commissions and also requests any photos from interested parties that might provide inspiration.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
In a similar vein to the work of Gilles Rimbault and other erotic fantasists is Ran Akiyoshi, a Japanese artist and illustrator. Akiyoshi’s work manages to be even more obscure than the Europeans, being virtually undocumented outside Japanese websites, hence the absence of titles and dates for these examples. This is surprising given the quasi-Surrealist nature of his paintings which place buxom goddess types in phantasmagoric settings with subtle or not-so-subtle erotic qualities. Akiyoshi follows the pattern of much of this kind of personal fantasy whereby most of the women share similar features. The book cover immediately below is from a recent Japan-only collection of his work. The Illusion cover at the end is another book collection some of whose fascinating pages can be seen here. As always, if anyone turns up a gallery of further pictures, please leave a comment.
The relaxing of constraints in the 1960s produced a breed of artist which hardly seems to exist any more, invariably male and equally at home illustrating generic fantasy as producing delicately-rendered and frequently weird erotica. French artist Gilles Rimbault is one such, as was British underground artist Jim Leon, and another Frenchman, Raymond Bertrand. Unlike Leon and Bertrand, Rimbault’s work and information about the artist is frustratingly scarce. The first examples here are from covers of French science fiction magazines—also a source of work for Bertrand—while the samples below are a pair of intriguingly androgynous pieces of erotica from this page which gathers a number of similar Hans Bellmer-like works. If anyone turns up more of Rimbault’s drawings, please leave a comment.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Jim Leon, 1938–2002
• The art of Sibylle Ruppert
• The art of Bertrand
An Eruption of Vesuvius, Seen from Portici (c.1774–6) by Joseph Wright of Derby.
Joseph Wright of Derby captured the eruptions of Vesuvius in several pictures of which this is one of the more spectacular examples. The painter enjoyed spectacle as he also the rendering of chiaroscuro effects so it’s no wonder he was attracted to an apocalyptic night view such as this. Wright is one of the artists featured in a new exhibition at Compton Verney in Warwickshire, Volcano: Turner to Warhol, which presents the depiction of volcanoes in art through the ages.
The exhibition ranges from early engravings, showing imagined cross-sections of the fiery centre of the earth, to an explosive series of paintings by Joseph Wright, JMW Turner and Andy Warhol. It is a chance to examine the presence of volcanoes as geological phenomena and their power and influence, through an exciting range of historic and recent works of art. (More.)
The gallery site doesn’t have a complete list of the featured works but there’s some additional detail in a Telegraph preview from a couple of months ago. Volcano: Turner to Warhol opens on July 24th and runs to October 31st, 2010.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Chiaroscuro II: Joseph Wright of Derby, 1734–1797
• Chiaroscuro
• Shadows at Compton Verney
• Death from above
• The apocalyptic art of Francis Danby