Dorian Gray – Page 6 – { feuilleton }

More from the Decadent Dutch

Illustration by Otto Verhagen from Yolanda – Het Boek van Bloei (1931) by Nan Copijn.

Would-be Decadents is perhaps a better label, the Decadent ship having set sail across an absinthe-tinted sea by the time these artists were putting pen to paper. Their drawings are another set of scarce images forwarded by Sander Bink who maintains the Rond1900 site. (See this earlier post for further examples.) Sandor also sent artwork details which I’ve quoted below. In addition to yet more overt Beardsley influence (the Verhagen above and René Gockinga’s woman with a candle) there’s also a striking Harry Clarke influence in the second Gockinga drawing which is closer to Clarke’s idiosyncratic style than (for example) these later drawings by Cardwell Higgins. Seeing one artist borrow the mannerisms of another is a common thing; far less common is finding an artist who adopts different styles the way Gockinga does. Incidentally, the Couperin novel mentioned below was published with a typically elegant cover design by Symbolist artist Jan Toorop.

(Thanks again Sander!)

Otto Verhagen. Illustration (not used as such) for Couperus’ Psyche (1898). Engraving, ca 1913. Collection Sander Bink. This is a personage from the story but to me it looks somewhat like an Oscar Wilde portrait!
Illustration for the very popular fairy tale for adults Psyche by Louis Couperus (1863–1923). You might have heard of Couperus: Oscar Wilde appreciated his decadent, somewhat homosexual, novel Noodlot (1890), translated as Footsteps of fate. Some letters were exchanged. Couperus’ wife Elisabeth translated Dorian Gray in 1893. (First Dutch translation.)

Sortie (1904) by Carel de Nerée tot Babberich. Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem (from De Neree catalogue, 1986). Verhagen’s Dorian Gray seems to be influenced by this.

Woman with candle by René Gockinga, ca 1916. Current location unknown.

Indonesian lady dancing [as I call it—SB] by René Gockinga. From the Indonesian satirical-political periodical De Zweep [The Whip] 1922.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Further echoes of Aubrey
• A Wilde Night
• Echoes of Aubrey
• After Beardsley by Chris James
• Illustrating Poe #1: Aubrey Beardsley
• The art of Karel de Nerée tot Babberich, 1880–1909
• Beardsley’s Rape of the Lock
• The Savoy magazine
• Beardsley at the V&A
• Merely fanciful or grotesque
• Aubrey Beardsley’s musical afterlife
• Aubrey by John Selwyn Gilbert
• “Weirdsley Daubery”: Beardsley and Punch
• Alla Nazimova’s Salomé

Further echoes of Aubrey

Dorian Gray (1924) by Otto Verhagen (1885–1951).

If you need an idea of the colossal impact Aubrey Beardsley’s drawing had on the art world of the 1890s consider that the entirety of his career—from his first public exposure in The Studio in 1893 to his very untimely death in 1898—lasted a mere five years. Decades afterwards artists around the world were still imitating his style. The later disciples are so numerous and so widespread it’s no surprise if some have yet to be fully acknowledged by subsequent generations. Sander Bink who maintains the Rond1900 site sent copies of these drawings (from Lopende Vuurtjes, Verloren Publishers, 2012) and provided some information about the artists:

Verhagen was a government official for most of his life and seems to have led a very respected life and made his Beardsley-esque work privately, no expositions as far is I know. Gockinga appears to have led a more interesting life: born in Indonesia, lived in Holland 1908–1922, the Indonesia (Java) again, then New York, and the Indonesia and after wwii Amsterdam, probably homosexual. Had one exposition of his work in 1917.

Sander’s site has further examples of Verhagen’s drawings, and he says that both artists were probably inspired by Carel (or Karel) de Nerée, some of whose work was featured here a while back. Always good to have the dots joined. Verhagen’s Dorian Gray is a curious piece; in style it’s a little like the angular drawings that Beresford Egan was producing in the 1920s, while the subject can’t be Dorian himself unless it’s a rendering of his aged portrait. As for Gockinga’s drawing, it’s a lot more faithful to Beardsley’s early style (complete with phallic extrusions) than the poor Nichols fakes that appeared in 1919. If you want a successful forgery it’s always best to find someone with talent.

(Thanks Sander!)

Old lady with ghost (c.1916) by René Gockinga (1893–1962).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Aubrey Beardsley archive
• The illustrators archive
• The Oscar Wilde archive

Rex Ingram’s The Magician

The Magician (1926), Rex Ingram’s curious occult horror film, receives a rare screening with live music accompaniment at the Brighton Fringe Festival on Tuesday, 22nd May. The film is notable for being based on the 1908 Somerset Maugham novel of the same name whose modern-day magus character, Oliver Haddo, was modelled on Aleister Crowley. The screening will feature an introduction by Gary Lachman, and a live soundtrack by the fabulous Ragged Ragtime Band, featuring members of Blondie, Indigo Octagon, Raagnagrok and Time. Booking details and other information here.

Maugham’s book has always been easier to find than Ingram’s film, more’s the pity when the film—despite some flaws—is the superior article. Read today, the novel comes across as a template for the standard Dennis Wheatley tale of middle-class innocents imperilled by grandiloquent villainy. A young couple, Arthur Burdon and his fiancée, Margaret, are pitted against Haddo’s extravagant diabolisms; for assistance they have a friend, Dr Porhoët, a Van Helsing type, older than the couple and with a convenient (but purely intellectual) interest in the occult. Haddo kidnaps Margaret and forces her with hypnosis into an unconsummated marriage. Haddo’s goal is to create artificial life—homunculi—and for that he requires a virgin’s blood. Maugham later described his novel as “lush and turgid”, an honest and accurate appraisal. Aleister Crowley was amused at being portrayed as a “Brother of the Shadows” but pretended to be scandalised by Maugham’s alleged plagiarism which he condemned in a Vanity Fair review that he signed “Oliver Haddo”. The best parts of the novel certainly owe something to other authors, usually the scenes concerning the sinister magus and his occult activities; the rest of the characters are lifeless by comparison. Some of the better passages read like HP Lovecraft writing Dorian Gray, and Maugham not only quotes from Walter Pater but also (uncredited) from Wilde’s Salomé.

Paul Wegener as Oliver Haddo.

Continue reading “Rex Ingram’s The Magician”

Henry Keen’s illustrated Webster

More gorgeous work from elusive British illustrator Henry Keen (1871–1935). These are some of the ink drawings Keen provided for a 1930 edition of John Webster’s Jacobean tragedies The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil. In addition to eleven full-page illustrations there are decorative embellishments, and as usual it’s a shame there isn’t anywhere with a complete set of the artwork. I’m tempted to track down some of Keen’s books myself, this one seems especially good. That crowned skull is not only worthy of Carlos Schwabe, it makes me wonder why Webster wasn’t given more attention from earlier artists. Probably because the plays were too strong for 19th century tastes, violent revenge drama wasn’t what anyone wanted on stage at the time. Swinburne admired Webster’s work but then Swinburne wasn’t exactly a typical Victorian.

Thanks to ~Wunderkammer~ for the tip!

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Henry Keen’s Dorian Gray

Weekend links 95

Seven Songs (1982) by 23 Skidoo. Sleeve by Neville Brody.

The first volume of The Graphic Canon will be published in May by Seven Stories Press, a collection of comic strip adaptations and illustrations edited by Russ Kick. The anthology has already picked up some attention at the Guardian—Western canon to be rewritten as three-volume graphic novel—and Publishers’ Weekly—Graphic Canon: Comics Meet the Classics. I know someone who’ll bristle at the lazy use of “graphic novel”. The Graphic Canon isn’t anything of the sort, it’s a three-volume voyage through world literature presented in graphic form with a list of contributors including Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, Molly Crabapple, Rick Geary, and Roberta Gregory. My contribution is a very condensed adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray that will appear in volume 2. More about that closer to the publication date.

• LTM Records announces a vinyl reissue for Seven Songs (1982) by 23 Skidoo, an album produced by Ken Thomas, Genesis P Orridge & Peter Christopherson that still sounds like nothing else. Related: an extract from Tranquilizer (1984) by Richard Heslop, cut-up Super-8 film/video with audio collage by 23 Skidoo.

• New exhibitions: Another Air: The Czech–Slovak Surrealist Group, 1991–2011 at the Old Town City Hall, Prague (details in English here), and Ed Sanders – Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts 1962–1965 at Boo-Hooray, NYC.

• “…we have a situation where the banks seem to be an untouchable monarchy beyond the reach of governmental restraint…” Alan Moore writes for the BBC about V for Vendetta and the rise of Anonymous.

• Announcing Arc: “a new magazine about the future from the makers of New Scientist“. Digital-only for the time being, as they explain here. Their Tumblr has tasters of the contents.

• From another world: Acid Mothers Temple interviewed. Also at The Quietus: Jajouka or Joujouka? The conflicted legacy of the Master Musicians.

• More from Susan Cain on introverts versus extroverts. Related: Groupthink: The brainstorming myth by Jonah Lehrer.

• Ten Thousand Waves, an installation by Isaac Julien.

• Afterlife: mouldscapes photographed by Heikki Leis.

• The book covers of Ralph Steadman. And more.

• “James Joyce children’s book sparks feud”

• Arkitypo: the final alphabet.

• Book Aesthete

• Kundalini (1982) by 23 Skidoo | Vegas El Bandito (1982) by 23 Skidoo | IY (1982) by 23 Skidoo