A fine art, film, history and literature site oriented to, but not exclusively for, the gay community. Please be aware that there is mature content on this blog. Information on images and links to sources will be provided if known. Enjoy your visit and please subscribe.
Magical Staves from Iceland
Icelandic magical staves (sigils) are symbols credited with magical effect preserved in various grimoires dating from the 17th century and later. According to the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, the effects credited to most of the staves were very relevant to the average Icelanders of the time, who were mostly substitence farmers and had to deal with harsh climatic conditions.
Reblogged with thanks to http://chaosophia218.tumblr.com
Various Artists, King Kong Artwork
“To understand King Kong, you need to know Merian Coldwell Cooper. Nearly every story element of the original film is reflective of some aspect of Cooper’s life leading up to his creation of the iconic movie. His passions—aviation, exploration, adventure filmmaking—are all incorporated into King Kong. You can argue about the extent to which the final screenplay evolved through contributions by Edgar Wallace, James Creelman, Ruth Rose, as well as a host of uncredited RKO scribes, but it’s clear that virtually everything in Kong got there by way of Cooper. (There’s a great memo from James Creelman to Cooper, in fact, where the overworked scribe—he was also writing The Most Dangerous Game—laments that Cooper’s suggested addition of a giant wall, island tribe and sacrificial rites were just too much for the plot to handle. Cooper “relieved” him soon after.)
Kong´s effects, music, sound; none of these aspects of the film were the direct work of his hands, but Cooper’s force of personality, bullheadedness and sheer refusal to take no for an answer ultimately made Skull Island a real place in the minds of film lovers across multiple generations.” -John Mitchlig, The Kong Files, kingiskong.net
Artist Unknown, (The Attack!)
The kraken is a enormous mythical cephalopod-like sea monster in Scandinavian folklore. According to Norse sagas, the kraken terrorized sailors off the coasts of Norway and Greenland. It has been a staple of superstitions and legends through the centuries, becoming a common ocean-dwelling monster in fictional works.
The word ‘kraken’ comes from the Swedish and Norwegian language, the definite form of the word “krake’ denoting an unhealthy animal or smoething twisted. ‘Krake’ (plural) and ‘kraken’ (singular) in modern German means ‘octopus’. ‘Kraken is also an old euphemism in Swedish for whales, a word once believed that would summon whales.
Artist Unknwon, (Merging of Spirit)
Artist Unknown, (The Danger and the Red Hood)
Advertising the Future: Illustrations by Arthur Radebaugh
Arthur Radebaugh was born in Coldwater, Michigan in 1906. He developed his interest in art and briefly attended the renowned Art Institute in Chicago. It was there that Radebaugh first began experimenting with airbrush painting, a technique he helped popularize and used throughout his career.
One of his first clients in 1935 was MoToR Magazine, which purchased a painting for $450 and used it for the highly coveted cover of the Annual issue through 1957. With the exception of years 1941-1946, he designed covers for every Annual issue through 1957. Radebaugh’s artistic vision of the future fell in line with the forward-thinking nature of the automotive trade shows that the Annual issues were published to coincide with.
His paintings drew heavily upon the art deco movement of the 1920s through the 1940s, though his style would evolve with the passage of time. His renderings of the future were inspired by the context of his present.
Radebaugh’s work with MoToR garnered him widespread attention, and his list of clients grew to include several big-name brands including the Saturday Evening Post, Fortune, Coca-Cola, and United Airlines. The automotive industry also took note, with Chrysler contracting him to do artwork for their 1939 Dodge Luxury Liner sales literature and advertisements. For the marque’s 25th anniversary, Radebaugh blended the present with the future by painting the 1939 model year cars in front of lush science-fiction-inspired cityscapes. These are shown in images two and three of this blog post.
Victoria Topping, “Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders”
Victoria Topping has worked with designing the identity of an independent record label; designed and made many bespoke wallpapers; hand painted murals; been an interior designer and designed and installed a record shop, club and created the artwork for several festivals. Her work has found its way on to a successful greetings card range and even on to a nice bottle of french wine. Above all her favorite thing is to create and sell prints and original works through her online shop
She draws inspiration from her passion for music, specifically Jazz, Soul, Funk, Disco and World music. This vibrant scene has given her an everlasting source of joy and focus. She collects records and any visual snapshots she can find of the musicians and dancers she admires, from her favourite avant jazz composer Sun-Ra right through to her favorite disco star Sylvester, and even dipping in to the colour palette of Soul train.
Shaun Tan, “Never Eat the Last Olive at a Party” from His Graphic Novel “Rules of Summer”
Shaun Tan is an Australian artist, writer and film maker. He won an Academy Award for “The Lost Thing”, a 2011 animated film adaptation of a 2000 picture book he wrote and illustrated. Other books he has written and illustrated include Red Tree” and “The Arrival”.
Tan was born in Fremantle, Western Australia, in 1974 and grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. In 2006, his wordless graphic novel The Arrival won the Book of the Year prize as part of the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards. The same book won the Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year award in 2007, and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards Premier’s Prize in 2006
“In a book that reads like an homage to The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, Lindgren award-winner Shaun Tan offers a sequence of paintings that represent a boy’s cumulative summer knowledge, framed as rules and populated by Tan’s now-familiar menagerie of one-eyed robots, malevolent rabbits, and windup dinosaurs. The rules appear on the left, while lavish, brilliant paintings of the accompanying disasters light up the opposite pages.
An older boy yanks his younger brother away from a platter at a soiree full of glaring raptors (“Never eat the last olive at a party”); frowns when bats, lizards, and sea anemones move into the living room (“Never leave the back door open overnight”); and, after a fistfight, bundles the younger boy into a locomotive and sends him off through Siberian wastes (“Never lose a fight”).” – Publishers Weekly
Raoul Pene Du Bois, “Nudes Stepping Forth”, Theatrical Sketch, Painted Gouache, circa 1945, 40 x 30 Inches
Du Bois was born on Staten Island in New York City, the son of René Pène Du Bois, a banker. He started his career as a costume designer when he was 14, by designing four showgirl costumes for the Ziegfeld Follies. He went on to design the costumes for the Broadway revues “Ziegfeld Follies of 1934″, his first show and “Ziegfeld Follies of 1936″.
Du Bois designed the costumes and/or the scenery for some 48 Broadway shows, starting in 1934 with the “Ziegfeld Follies of 1934″ and his last, “Reggae” in 1980; his designs were used in Jerome Robbins’ “Broadway” in 1989. Among his work was “Gypsy””(1959) and many other musicals starring Ethel Merman. He worked on Billy Rose’s Aquacade for the New York World’s Fair (1939–40).
He won the 1971 Tony Award and Drama Desk Award, Best Costume Design for “No, No, Nanette” and the 1953 Tony Award, Best Scenic Design, for “Wonderful Town” and was nominated for the Tony Award, Costume Design, for “Sugar Babies” (1980), “Doctor Jazz” (1975) and “Gypsy” (1960), and for scenic design for “The Student Gypsy” (1964).
https://www.1stdibs.com Reference Number LU86512102682
N.C. Wyeth, “The Battle at Glens Falls”, from “The Last of the Mohicans” by James Fenimore Cooper, NY: Scribner’s First Edition, 1919
“Each of the combatants threw all his energies into that effort, and the result was, that both tottered on the brink of the precipice.”
“The Last of the Mohicans” is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War, when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by the more numerous British colonists.
The novel is primarily set in the upper New York wilderness, detailing the transport of the two daughters of Colonel Munro, Alice and Cora, to a safe destination at Fort William Henry. Among the caravan guarding the women are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo (known as Hawkeye), Major Duncan Heyward, and the Indians Chingachgook and his son Uncas. These characters are sometimes seen as a microcosm of the budding American society, particularly with regards to their racial composition.
The Three Men on the Moon
“He showed it to me with all the confiding zest of a man who has been living too much alone. This seclusion was overflowing now in an excess of confidence, and I had the good luck to be the recipient.”
― H.G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon
Illustrations by Eric Petersen
Eric Petersen was born in Santa Monica, California. His style is influenced by instructional graphics, video games and the look of vintage comics of the 1940s. He is interested in the combination of a purely functional illustration style with an emotional scene. Since he began illustrating in 2012, his work has been seen in Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, New York Times, Fortune, and The Guardian.
Lithographs by Ernst Haeckel
“Kunstformen der Natur”, or “Art Forms in Nature”, encapsulates biologist Ernst Haeckel’s response to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Haeckel published these exquisitely rendered depictions of flora and fauna in ten installments of ten illustrations from 1899 to 1904, aiming to widen the general public’s understanding of naturalism.
Haeckel also clearly saw his illustrations as more than just scientific documentation. In introducing one of his plates, he wrote that its patterns would not be out of place in embroideries or on urns and bottles. Haeckel’s elaborate forms have been called a precursor to art nouveau, and his influence even stretched to architecture.
Five Illustrations by Ritchelly Oliveira
Ritchelly Oliveira is a visual artist from Brazil. Since his teen-age yeas, Oliveira has been working with the portrait, which began as an outlet of his personal experiences with relationships, family, and his insecurities.
“The photo becomes part of my work process. Until recently I was always looking for images that somehow had a dialogue with my artistic process, but it was very difficult, because I did not always find relevant images with my narrative. And over time I felt the need to produce my own images. I always try to photograph close friends, or people who inspire me in some way, and from this photo, I build the image that gives voice to my works.” – Ritchelly Oliveira
The artist’s site: https://ritchellyoliveira.tumblr.com
