Tagged: 50 Watts

05/01/2013

Le Fils du Roi

A guest post by Bill Kartalopoulos on Le Fils du Roi by Eric Lambé
Wordless, drawn entirely in ball-point pen, and composed of images that dissolve the mystical into the everyday, Eric Lambé’s Le Fils du Roi (Frémok, 2012), is the most astonishing work to date in an already distinguished career.

Eric Lambé is a pioneering figure in the modern Franco-Belgian movement towards a more poetic expression of the comics form, drawing from broader traditions of drawing, painting and printmaking. Active since the 1990s, Lambé has produced a number of books, both alone and in collaboration, for publishers large and small. His masterpiece Le Fils du Roi (“The King’s Son”) was published by Frémok last year. The book refers to pieces by Balthus, Picasso, and other high art touchstones, but their inclusion here seems to be as personal to Lambé as the highly specific objects, gestures and dreamlike images that constitute this jaw-dropping and mesmerizing work. The original artwork for this book was exhibited at Paris’s Galerie Martel this past winter, and Lambé will make a rare North American tour this spring. Lambé will appear at the following events, where copies of the book will also be available: Continue reading →

05/01/2013

Vintage Safety

Fifty years of workplace safety posters courtesy of Geheugenvannederland.nl (Memory of the Netherlands)

1925-1926, illus. Willem Papenhuyzen via Memory of the Netherlands

1925-1949, poster by Evert Möllenkamp via Memory of the Netherlands

1925-1949, poster by W. J. v.d. Werf via Memory of the Netherlands

1926-1927, poster by Albert Hahn via Memory of the Netherlands

1927-1928, poster by Albert Hahn via Memory of the Netherlands

1939, poster by E. Luk

03/01/2013

Mapmaker

from Mapmaker by Trevor Naud (tumblr / flickr)

I’m very happy to own a Mapmaker box from Trevor Naud.Each set contains 28 graphic images printed on 285-gram watercolor paper. The box is made from solid walnut and brass with a curly maple inlay. Dimensions: 6.5” x 5” x 1.75.”

All artwork by Trevor Naud. Box design by Matthew Tait.
I get really amazing mail!

from Mapmaker by Trevor Naud (tumblr / flickr)

from Mapmaker by Trevor Naud (tumblr / flickr) Continue reading →

02/21/2013

Pierre Ferrero

Illustrations and comics by Pierre Ferrero (website / tumblr)

Pierre Ferrero (website / tumblr)

Pierre Ferrero is an illustrator/comic designer from France and a member of Arbitraire Editions.. I just bought a bunch of stunning Arbitraire anthologies and hope to feature more artists who appear in them.

Pierre Ferrero (website / tumblr)

(Via 50 Watts)

01/28/2013

Nitrate Nocturne 2

Decomposed nitrate film frame clippings from the Turconi Collection
Clip #15726: Red Eagle (di. Lawrence Trimble, Vitagraph, 1911)

These frames are from the Davide Turconi Project, which is a record of the 35mm nitrate film frame clippings collected by Italian film historian Davide Turconi (1911–2005) from the Josef Joye Collection in Switzerland and from other unidentified sources. Housed primarily at George Eastman House, the collection consists of 23,491 clippings in total (usually two to three frames each). The vast majority of the frames cover the early years of cinema (from ca. 1897 to 1915)… [continue reading the history behind these images].

Joshua Yumibe has again provided the selection. Whereas the majority of the images in our first posting from the collection were largely pristine samples, this time the focus is on clips that contain advance stages of nitrate decomposition. Joshua says that “such frames make up a relatively small yet remarkable portion of the collection. As these shapes and hues have tragically faded in disintegrating emulsion, we are left with fragments that, through the workings of time, have transmuted into breathtaking images akin to abstract works of art.” Continue reading →

01/23/2013

Interstellar Overdrive

Infographics from Astronomic Picture Atlas by Ludwig Preyßinger (Germany, 1851)

From the collection of Michael Stoll (flickr / @mstoll)

I featured Michael Stoll’s collection way back in May 2009 and since then it has grown considerably. His flickr page is definitely one of the richest sites for imagery around. He’s outdone himself reproducing this book, which appears to glow in the dark. The photos make me want to toss my scanner in the trash.
Read a recent interview with Prof. Stoll at SND.

View all posts tagged “science”

(Via 50 Watts)

01/15/2013

Kenojuak’s Birds

The great Cape Dorset printmaker Kenojuak Ashevak died on January 7 at age 85. I’ve been meaning to feature her work since 2010 (my trips to Canada have resulted in a stack of Inuit art books). Here’s a selection of her “birds” from the last fifty years. I learned of her death today from Bouwe van der Molen.”One of the best known and most acclaimed Inuit artists of the last 50 years, Kenojuak Ashevak, is being remembered by many across Canada this week….Ashevak began contributing to the famed Cape Dorset print collections in 1959, and [...] contributed to them every year since, right up until the fall 2012 release.” [continue reading at Canadian Art] Continue reading →

01/03/2013

Barrel of Monkeys

Bill Kartalopoulos’ new publishing venture Rebus Books (website / tumblr) has just launched with Barrel of Monkeys by Ruppert & Mulot.Winner of the Prix Révélation at the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême. The first book of comics in English by Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot, easily among the most important cartoonists to emerge in a generation. This translated edition has been hand-lettered by Jérôme Mulot for maximum fidelity. Strong, innovative, provocative work. See the preview video.
Here’s a random selection of images from the book — the book you need to buy immediately so we can get more books from Ruppert & Mulot and Rebus: Continue reading →

12/21/2012

Illustrations for An Asteroid Novel

Alfred Kubin’s illustrations for Paul Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel (1913)

“Slowly, Lesabéndio floated into the depths, with his suction-foot still tucked behind his head.”Posted to coincide with Matthew Jakubowski’s profile of Paul Scheerbart on my other blog Writers No One Reads.
The scans in this post came from archive.org, though note that the new English translation of Lesabéndio includes much better reproductions.
For more of Alfred Kubin’s work from this time, check out my posts on Der Orchideengarten. (These yellow-with-age illustrations in fact make me nostalgic for the weeks in 2009 I spent scanning the Orchid Garden.)
Wakefield Press copy for their edition:First published in German in 1913 and widely considered to be Paul Scheerbart’s masterpiece, Lesabéndio is an intergalactic utopian novel that describes life on the planetoid Pallas, where rubbery suction-footed life forms with telescopic eyes smoke bubble-weed in mushroom meadows under violet skies and green stars. Amid the conveyor-belt highways and lighthouses weaving together the mountains and valleys, a visionary named Lesabéndio hatches a plan to build a 44-mile-high tower and employ architecture to connect the two halves of their double star. A cosmic ecological fable, Scheerbart’s novel was admired by such architects as Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius, and such thinkers as Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem (whose wedding present to Benjamin was a copy of Lesabéndio). Benjamin had intended to devote the concluding section of his lost manuscript The True Politician to a discussion of the positive political possibilities embedded in Scheerbart’s “Asteroid Novel.” As translator Christina Svendsen writes in her introduction, “Lesabéndio helps us imagine an ecological politics more daring than the conservative politics of preservation, even as it reminds us that we are part of a larger galactic set of interrelationships.” Continue reading →

11/09/2012

In the shadow of tomorrow

Paintings from the upcoming exhibition, In the Shadow of Tomorrow: Neo-realism in the Netherlands, at the MMKA (November 18 2012 through February 17 2013)

Edgar Fernhout (1912–74), Schedel (Skull),1935

I found this exhibit when searching for work by Edgar Fernhout at the suggestion of Antonia Flowerville. Fernhout is the grandson of Jan Toorop (and son of Charley Toorop, also a painter).
I plan to research all of these artists. Stay tuned.

Raoul Hynckes (1893–1973) , Ex-est, 1940

Raoul Hynckes (1893–1973) , De ijzeren hand (The iron hand), 1935

Johan Mekkink (1904–91), Stilleven met houtduif (Still-life with wood pigeon), 1943/44–1947

Johan Mekkink (1904–91), Zelfportret in spiegel (Self-portrait in mirror), 1940 Continue reading →