A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
In honour of the overturning of Prop 8 in California—and because I haven’t posted one of these for a while—another piece of beefy weapon-handling. No idea who this fellow is but he can be seen a lot bigger (if not actually tumescent) at the Haunted Lamp, a place of assorted delights that you really ought to go and browse.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The men with swords archive
Frontispiece for Goethe’s Faust (c. 1843) by Eugène Delacroix.
Or a couple of pages from Les monstres dans l’art; êtres humains et animaux bas-reliefs, rinceaux, fleurons, etc., a study of aesthetic teratogenesis by Edmond Valton from 1905. The Delacroix frontispiece gives a better view than the one at the Davison Art Center but they have more of the Faust lithographs. Emmanuel Frémiet’s animals were created to adorn the restored medieval Château de Pierrefonds for Napoleon III. The artist had smaller ceramic copies of the statues made later, of which the lizard is an improvement on the stone version.
Fantastic animals (c. 1870) by Emmanuel Frémiet.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The House with Chimaeras
• Frémiet’s Lizard
Illustrations from De monstrorum natura, caussis, et differentiis libri duo (On the nature, causes and differences of monsters, 1616) by Italian scientist Fortunio Liceti who we’re told has a crater on the Moon named after him. Further images from Liceti and his contemporaries can be found at Les Monstres de la Renaissance à l’âge classique, an online exhibition of assorted teratisms, prodigies and abominations. Via Monsieur Peacay, no monster he.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
Madhav Reading Stories of Devi (2007) by Sakti Burman.
Dalí’s Elephant is a group exhibition at London’s Aicon Gallery that “traces the echoes of Surrealism in modern and contemporary art from the Indian Subcontinent.” The exhibition title refers to the gift ashtray which Salvador Dalí designed for Air India in 1967:
In 1967 Air India commissioned Salvador Dali to produce a limited edition ashtray which was to be given to a select group of lucky first-class passengers. Dali produced a small unglazed porcelain ashtray composed of a shell-shaped centre with a serpent around its perimeter. This was supported by three stands, two of which point in the same direction and resemble an elephant’s head. The third stand was inverted so that it resembled swan’s head. Dali was initially paid no more than a few hundred dollars for his design but when they received the design the airline bosses were so delighted that they made Dali the surprise gift of an elephant. Dali lived with the elephant for a few days at his Portligat home before donating the beast to the local zoo. (More.)
The Surrealist element is very much a trace in some of the works which seems surprising given the distinctive heritage of India’s religious imagery, as was demonstrated recently at A Journey Round My Skull. But I like the Sakti Burman paintings, especially the example shown here. Dalí’s Elephant runs to September 4th, 2010.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Marsi Paribatra: the Royal Surrealist
• Dalí in Wonderland
• Bollywood posters
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie revisited
• Dalí and Film
• The persistence of DNA
• Salvador Dalí’s apocalyptic happening
• Dalí Atomicus
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie
Delta-Wing (2009) by Chloe Early.
• “Feted British authors are limited, arrogant and self-satisfied, says leading academic”. Stating the bleeding obvious but it still needs to be said, apparently, especially when the announcement of the Booker list this year caused the usual confusion when Amis Jr. and McEwan weren’t included, as though the mere existence of their novels makes them prize-worthy. And as someone pointed out, the word “male” is missing from that headline.
• Hero of Comic-Book World Gets Real: Alan Moore again, in the NYT this time. Related: a review of Unearthing live.
• Announcing The Hanky Code by Brian Borland & Stephen S Mills, a 40-poem book to be published next year by Lethe Press. For an explanation of the Hanky Code there’s this, and there’s also an iPhone app.
• Folk—the ‘music of the people’—is now hip again, says (who else?) Rob Young who can also be heard on the archived podcast here. Related: the folk roots of Bagpuss. Related to the latter: The Mouse Mill.
An endpiece from The Firebird and other Russian Fairy Tales by Boris Zvorykin.
• ‘Yes’ to Catastrophe: Roger Dean, Prog and SF. A lengthy and thoughtful analysis of Roger Dean’s early work.
• Into the Media Web, the enormous Michael Moorcock book which I designed, is officially published this week.
• Cassette playa: in praise of tapes. I’ve complained about tapes in the past but people continue to find them useful. Some technologies die harder than others.
• Boy BANG Boy: “Quiet moments made suddenly very loud with the attitude and opinion of what it means to be a young male in an impossibly diverse world.” An exhibition opening at Eastgallery, London, on August 5th.
• Empty your heart of its mortal dream: Alfred Kubin’s extraordinary novel, The Other Side.
• Ghostly and Boym Partners devise a new way to deliver digital music.
• Besti-mix #27: a great selection by producer Adrian Sherwood.
• Agnostics are troublemakers. Amen to that.
• RIP Harry Beckett.
• Acousmata.
• Let Us Go In To The House Of The Lord by Pharoah Sanders (live, 1971): Part 1 | Part 2