Piranesi – Page 6 – { feuilleton }

Salon Futura #1

It’s been a pleasure this week seeing my 1999 portrait of Cthulhu’s rotting domicile, R’lyeh, used as the cover image for Salon Futura, a new online magazine edited by Cheryl Morgan. Cheryl describes SF as “a new and hopefully somewhat different magazine devoted to the discussion of science fiction, fantasy and other forms of speculative literature.” Among the contents there’s a podcast interview with Gary K Wolfe, Nnedi Okorafor and Fábio Fernandes (the latter is a contributor to the steampunk book I’m currently designing for Tachyon); there are video interviews with writers Lauren Beukes and China Miéville, and the Guardian‘s Sam Jordison writes an appraisal of EL Doctorow’s 1994 novel The Waterworks (about New York City’s minatory Croton Reservoir) which stimulated my interest enough to make me want to search out the book. And speaking of minatory architecture, {feuilleton} approves of the presence of Taschen’s fat volume of Piranesi works spied on China Miéville’s bookshelf. China always has interesting things to say; go and see for yourself.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Le horreur cosmique

La Tour by Schuiten & Peeters

La Tour (1987) by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters is the third story in the Cités Obscures series, although it’s the fourth volume if you want to be strictly canon about things, L’archivist, a guide to places in the Obscure World, having preceded it.

Carcere Oscura by Piranesi (1750).

This is another book where Schuiten and Peeters’ interests tick a list of my own obsessions, being a tale which seems to originate in the question “What would it be like if you crossed Piranesi‘s Prisons etchings with Bruegel’s Tower of Babel?” The protagonist of La Tour, Giovanni Battista, has his name borrowed from Piranesi’s forenames and his appearance taken from Orson Welles’ Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight. The story owes something to Kafka, although it lacks Kafka’s drift towards paradox, concerning a colossal building referred to throughout as The Tower, a structure we only ever see in close-up—and then mostly from the inside—but whose height must reach several thousand feet.

Battista (above) is one of the Keepers, a group of men charged with maintaining small sections of the Tower whose structure suffers continual decay and collapse. Tired of years spent in complete isolation, and concerned that other Keepers aren’t doing their job, Battista goes in search of the Tower’s feared Inspectors, only to discover that the lack of maintenance is endemic and few of the Tower’s scattered residents have any idea of the origin or purpose of the vast building where they’ve spent their lives, never mind a concern for its upkeep. There are no Inspectors, and while Battista is worried at the beginning about vines in the stonework, we later see small forests growing among the ruins. Kafka resonances come with the mention of the mysterious Base, and the equally mysterious Pioneers, those builders and engineers who went ahead years or even centuries before, climbing skyward.

Continue reading “La Tour by Schuiten & Peeters”

False perspective

Satire on False Perspective by William Hogarth (1753).

Whoever makes a Design without the knowledge of Perspective will be liable to such absurdities as are shewn in this Frontispiece.

More eye-deceiving art for All Fools’ Day. Everyone knows MC Escher‘s pictures which continually played with the rules of perspective. Hogarth’s satire is less well-known and may even be the first of its kind. I haven’t seen any examples earlier than this.

A few contemporary equivalents follow, all of which can be found at Impossible World, a site devoted to visual disjunction.

Continue reading “False perspective”

Czech film posters

I wouldn’t be surprised if these have been linked all over but I hadn’t come across this site before, Czech posters from the Cold War period when promotional material for Hollywood films was home-produced. This makes for some surprising results as with the psychedelic confection for Dumbo shown above. Elsewhere there’s a Piranesian collage for Raiders of the Lost Ark, a peculiar mangling of Richard Amsel’s poster for Hello Dolly, something for Death in Venice which seems to have nothing whatever to do with the film, and plenty of good solid design such as this piece for Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex.

In a similar vein there’s the extensive Polish Posters site which features some really great work from artists like Franciszek Starowieyski.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The poster art of Richard Amsel
• Bollywood posters
• Lussuria, Invidia, Superbia
• The poster art of Bob Peak
• A premonition of Premonition
• Perfume: the art of scent
• Metropolis posters
• Film noir posters
• Czech book covers

Set in Stone

Urban Chiaroscuro 6: Paris (after Piranesi) (2007) by Emily Allchurch.

Pitzhanger Manor-House in Ealing, London, hosts an exhibition with architecture as its theme, a suitable subject given that the house was designed by notable 18th century architect (and friend of Piranesi) Sir John Soane. Artist Emily Allchurch has some meticulous and clever photo-collage reworkings of Piranesi on display while painter Stefan Hoenerloh—whose work I hadn’t seen before—is worthy of a dedicated post here seeing as he produces exactly the kind of imaginary architectural renderings I love. Some of his paintings could be colour views of similar scenes by Gérard Trignac.

Via Subalterna (1990) by Stefan Hoenerloh.

Set in Stone runs from 28 March–26 April 2008.

Artists: Emily Allchurch, Stephen Carter, Michael Durning, Stefan Hoenerloh and Ben Johnson.

PM Gallery present the work of five artists who share a fascination in the power and importance of architecture, as an inspiration for works in paint and photography.

Emily Allchurch makes collages from many photographs to create a seamless new ‘view’, creating imaginary buildings or recreating buildings that no longer exist. A series of works, inspired by the 16th Century (sic) artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s ‘Carceri d’Invenzione’ (Imaginary Prisons), seamlessly constructs Piranesi’s original work but shows buildings constructed in a mass of architectural styles, complete with warning signs, CCTV cameras, razor wire and security mirrors to give a sense of foreboding and claustrophobia. In ‘Crystal Palace, (recomposed)’, she took what remains of the platform as a basis to recreate the palace, using architectural details of the period, such as at the Palm House at Kew Gardens and Paddington Station.

The detail of London’s Westway has been examined by Stephen Carter, with a series of paintings taken from photographs shot beneath the huge concrete flyover. Carter sees the Westway as representing both an escape for city dwellers to the beauty of the countryside and for country dwellers to get to the exciting heart of the city. But this optimism is tempered by the fact that the perspective is often viewed from below the Westway in a forgotten, uncelebrated and polluted part of the city.

Michael Durning’s beautiful paintings of neglected and broken monuments and buildings, question attitudes to Scottish heritage and culture. Often buildings are shown in relation to Scotland’s grand landscapes and unforgiving weather, reducing their prowess in the face of the natural environment.

German painter Stefan Hoenerloh creates monumental buildings with accurate, detailed architectural features, in oil and acrylic. The works appear photographic, but in fact are all invented by Hoenerloh. The buildings loom, often so large that the viewer is only able to see part of them within the frame of the picture. There is little sign of life in these structures, which appear old and weather-beaten, but solid in the face of everything they have withstood over the years since they were built.

Ben Johnson paints calm, often majestic interiors and large city panoramas. Although painted in meticulous detail, Johnson ‘ investigates’ the built space, to create far more than simple photo-realism, allowing the viewer to gain an intense experience of the presented space. Here we show work dating from 1973 to 2007.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Gérard Trignac
• Aldous Huxley on Piranesi’s Prisons