A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Asteridae.
Jennifer Maestre is another artist who claims Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature as an influence. Asteridae is part of a series of works made from pencils, while Dreaming comprises part of another series using nails and other materials to create what might be organic forms.
Dreaming.
• An interview with Jennifer Maestre
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Kirsten Hassenfeld’s paper sculptures
• Darwin Day
• The glass menagerie
Dans la Lune (2007).
Dans la Lune (2007).
“Il est dans la lune” can be translated as “He’s got his head in the clouds,” or “He’s on another planet.” Dans la Lune is a perfect title because in my work I try to create an imaginary place that relates to our longings for a better, grander existence.
Gorgeous paper sculptures inspired by Fabergé eggs and that favourite fetish object of mine, Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature. These are from a show at the Rice University Art Gallery, Texas. The Bellwether Gallery has an overview of Hassenfeld’s work back to 2001. Via Kimberly Brooks.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Darwin Day
• The glass menagerie
“Mirage in time—image of long-vanish’d pre-human city.”
A couple pieces of news to catch up with here, both Lovecraft-related which is very apt for the month of Halloween. The first is the work I gave a teaser view of in August, a commission for Maison d’Ailleurs, the Museum of Science Fiction, Utopia and Extraordinary Journeys in Yverdon-Les-Bains, Switzerland. The brief for An Exhibition of Unspeakable Things: Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book was to choose an entry from HP Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book, his source of story ideas. The entry I chose implies some of the alien architecture which is a feature of At the Mountains of Madness although I’ll admit that the final result is debatable as architecture.
One of my works graces the cover of an American institution this month with the appearance of my HP Lovecraft portrait on the August issue of FATE magazine (volume 60, number 8, issue 688, if you must know). This is for an article about Lovecraft’s occult connections and I believe they’ve also used one of my views of R’lyeh for the article itself although I can’t confirm this just now.
This is the third time my work has appeared in FATE (like TIME, the magazine prefers to see its name in caps). The first occasion was for another Lovecraft feature about Cthulhu in (I think) 1999. Then in 2000 I was commissioned to produce the illustration above for an article on “sky predators” which led me to plunder once again Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature, a wonderful book I’ve frequently swiped from when in need of organic weirdness.
A couple of years later this picture was featured in a Fox TV documentary of all things, part of a post X-Files series called Conspiracy Theory. The subject was “flying rods”, one of the less convincing manifestations of cryptozoological phenomena, and the program needed some antique pictures to back up their thin veneer of evidence. They rather scurrilously used my picture to illustrate flying rod history as though this was a Victorian illustration, not a piece of Photoshop work. Fox documentaries, like their news channel, seem to have a flexible approach to the truth.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• New things for June
• Le horreur cosmique
Octopi and squid from Kunstformen der Natur (1899–1904) by Ernst Haeckel.
Celebrate Darwin’s birthday by looking at Ernst Haeckel’s wonderful prints.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The glass menagerie