Behold Harry Clarke’s Hallucinatory Illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Story Collection, Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1923)

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As you’ve prob­a­bly noticed if you’re a reg­u­lar read­er of this site, we’re big fans of book illus­tra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly that from the form’s gold­en age—the late 18th and 19th century—before pho­tog­ra­phy took over as the dom­i­nant visu­al medi­um. But while pho­tographs large­ly sup­plant­ed illus­tra­tions in text­books, mag­a­zines, and news­pa­pers over the course of the 20th cen­tu­ry, works of fic­tion, which had been rou­tine­ly pub­lished in lav­ish­ly illus­trat­ed edi­tions, sud­den­ly became the fea­ture­less banks of words we know today. Though image-heavy graph­ic nov­els and com­ic books have thrived in recent decades, the illus­trat­ed lit­er­ary text is a rar­i­ty indeed.

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Why did this change come about? “I real­ly don’t know,” writes Christo­pher Howse at The Tele­graph, but he points out that the era of illus­trat­ed fic­tion for grown-ups end­ed “after the death of the big Vic­to­ri­an nov­el­ists,” like Dick­ens and Trol­lope. Before adult pic­ture-books went out of style, sev­er­al now-famous artists made careers as book illus­tra­tors. When we think of the big names from the peri­od, we think of Aubrey Beard­s­ley and Gus­tave Doré, both of whom we’ve cov­ered heav­i­ly here. We tend not to think of Irish artist Har­ry Clarke—a rel­a­tive latecomer—but we should. Of the many incred­i­ble illus­tra­tions from famous works of lit­er­a­ture we’ve fea­tured here, my favorite might be Clarke’s 1926 illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust.

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So out-there are some of his illus­tra­tions, so delight­ful­ly night­mar­ish and weird, one is tempt­ed to fall back on that rather sopho­moric expla­na­tion for art we find dis­turb­ing: maybe he was on drugs! Not that he’d need them to con­jure up many of the images he did. His source mate­r­i­al is bizarre enough (maybe Goethe was on drugs!). In any case, we can def­i­nite­ly call Clarke’s work hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, and that goes for his ear­li­er, 1923 illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion as well, of which you can see a few choice exam­ples here.

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Dublin-born Clarke worked as a stained-glass artist as well as an illus­tra­tor, and drew his inspi­ra­tion from the ear­li­er art nou­veau aes­thet­ic of Beard­s­ley and oth­ers, adding his own roco­co flour­ish­es to the elon­gat­ed forms and dec­o­ra­tive pat­terns favored by those artists. His glow­er­ing figures—including one who looks quite a bit like Poe him­self, at the top—suit the fever­ish inten­si­ty of Poe’s world to per­fec­tion. And like Poe, Clarke’s art gen­er­al­ly thrived in a seduc­tive­ly dark under­world filled with ghouls and fiends. Both of these pro­to-goths died young, Poe under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances at age 40, Clarke of tuber­cu­lo­sis at 42.

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Clarke’s illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Poe con­tained 8 full-col­or plates and 24 black and white illus­tra­tions. The Irish artist also notably illus­trat­ed edi­tions of the fairy tales of Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen and Charles Per­rault, with images that—as you might imagine—are like­ly to ter­ri­fy some sen­si­tive chil­dren. You can pur­chase your own edi­tion of the Clarke-illus­trat­ed Poe here, re-released in 2008 by Calla Press. And to see all 24 of Clarke’s black and white plates, head over to 50 Watts.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Macabre Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Aubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Sto­ries (1894)

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

Har­ry Clarke’s 1926 Illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic 60s

Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illus­trat­ed by Aubrey Beard­s­ley in a Strik­ing Mod­ern Aes­thet­ic (1894)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A 1933 Profile of Frida Kahlo: “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art”

Kahlo One

Wal­ter Keane—supposed painter of “Big Eyed Chil­dren” and sub­ject of a 2014 Tim Bur­ton film—made a killing, attain­ing almost Thomas Kinkade-like sta­tus in the mid­dle­brow art mar­ket of the 1950s and 60s. As it turns out, his wife, Mar­garet was in fact the artist, “paint­ing 16 hours a day,” accord­ing to a Guardian pro­file. In some part, the sto­ry may illus­trate how easy it was for a man like Wal­ter to get mil­lions of peo­ple to see what they want­ed to see in the pic­ture of success—a charis­mat­ic, tal­ent­ed man in front, his qui­et, duti­ful wife behind. Bur­ton may not have tak­en too much license with the com­mon­place atti­tudes of the day when he has Christoph Waltz’s Wal­ter Keane tell Mar­garet, “Sad­ly, peo­ple don’t buy lady art.”

And yet, far from the Keanes’ San Fran­cis­co, and per­haps as far as a per­son can get from Margaret’s frus­trat­ed acqui­es­cence, we have Fri­da Kahlo cre­at­ing a body of work that would even­tu­al­ly over­shad­ow her husband’s, mural­ist Diego Rivera. Unlike Wal­ter Keane, Rivera was a very good painter who did not attempt to over­shad­ow his wife. Instead of pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy, he had plen­ty of the per­son­al vari­ety. Even so, Rivera encour­aged Kahlo’s career and rec­og­nized her for­mi­da­ble tal­ent, and she, in turn, sup­port­ed him. In 1933, when Flo­rence Davies—whom Kahlo biog­ra­ph­er Ger­ry Souter describes as “a local news hen”—caught up with her in Detroit, Kahlo “played the cheeky, but ador­ing wife” of Diego while he labored to fin­ish his famous Detroit mur­al project.

That may be so, but she did not do so at her own expense. Quite the con­trary. Asked if Diego taught her to paint, she replies, “’No, I didn’t study with Diego. I didn’t study with any­one. I just start­ed to paint.’” At which point, writes Davies, “her eyes begin to twin­kle” as she goes on to say, “’Of course, he does pret­ty well for a lit­tle boy, but it is I who am the big artist.’” Davies prais­es Kahlo’s style as “skill­ful and beau­ti­ful” and the artist her­self as “a minia­ture-like lit­tle per­son with her long black braids wound demure­ly about her head and a fool­ish lit­tle ruf­fled apron over her black silk dress.” And yet, despite Kahlo’s con­fi­dence and seri­ous intent, rep­re­sent­ed by a promi­nent pho­to of her at seri­ous work, Davies—or more like­ly her editor—decided to title the arti­cle, “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art,” a move that reminds me of Wal­ter Keane’s patron­iz­ing atti­tude.

Kahlo Two

The belit­tling head­line is quaint and dis­heart­en­ing, speak­ing to us, like the unearthed 1938 let­ter from Dis­ney to an aspir­ing female ani­ma­tor, of the cru­el­ty of casu­al sex­ism. Davies appar­ent­ly filed anoth­er arti­cle on Rivera the year pri­or. This time the head­line doesn’t men­tion Fri­da, though her fierce unflinch­ing gaze, not Rivera’s wrestler’s mug, again adorns the spread. One sen­tence in the arti­cle says it all: “Fre­da [sic], it must be under­stood, is Seno­ra Rivera, who came very near to steal­ing the show.” Davies then goes on to again describe Kahlo’s appear­ance, not­ing of her work only that “she does paint with great charm.” Six years lat­er, Kahlo would indeed steal the show at her first and only solo show in the Unit­ed States, then again in Paris, where sur­re­al­ist mae­stro Andre Bre­ton cham­pi­oned her work and the Lou­vre bought a paint­ing, its first by a twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Mex­i­can artist.

And Mar­garet Keane? She even­tu­al­ly sued Wal­ter and now reaps her own rewards. You can buy one of her paint­ings here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly-Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

Fri­da Kahlo: The Com­plete Paint­ings Col­lects the Painter’s Entire Body of Work in a 600-Page, Large-For­mat Book

Fri­da Kahlo Writes a Per­son­al Let­ter to Geor­gia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Ner­vous Break­down (1933)

Pho­tos of a Very Young Fri­da Kahlo, Tak­en by Her Dad

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Wide-Ranging Creative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Discover His Films, Music Videos, Cartoons, Commercials, Paintings, Photography & More

Image by Sasha Kar­galt­sev via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

As every cinephile has by now heard, and lament­ed, we’ve just lost a great Amer­i­can film­mak­er. From Eraser­head to Blue Vel­vet to Mul­hol­land Dri­ve to Inland Empire, David Lynch’s fea­tures will sure­ly con­tin­ue to bewil­der and inspire gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of aspir­ing young auteurs. (There seems even to be a re-eval­u­a­tion under­way of his adap­ta­tion of Dune, the box-office cat­a­stro­phe that turned him away from the Hol­ly­wood machine.) But Lynch was nev­er exact­ly an aspir­ing young auteur him­self. He actu­al­ly began his career as a painter, just one of the many facets of his artis­tic exis­tence that we’ve fea­tured over the years here at Open Cul­ture.

Lynch stud­ied paint­ing at the Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in the mid-nine­teen-six­ties, and the urban decay of Philadel­phia at the time did a great deal to inspire the aes­thet­ic of Eraser­head, which made his name on the mid­night-movie cir­cuit a decade lat­er. When the MTV era fired up in just a few years, he found his sig­na­ture blend of grotes­querie and hyper-nor­mal­i­ty — what would soon be termed “Lynchi­an” — in demand from cer­tain like-mind­ed record­ing artists. It was around that same time that he launched a side career as a com­ic artist, or in any case a com­ic writer, con­tribut­ing a thor­ough­ly sta­t­ic yet com­pelling­ly var­ied strip called The Angri­est Dog in the World to the LA Read­er from the ear­ly eight­ies through the ear­ly nineties.

In 1987, the year after the art-house block­buster that was Blue Vel­vet set off what Guy Maddin lat­er called “the last real earth­quake in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma,” Lynch host­ed a BBC tele­vi­sion series on the his­to­ry of sur­re­al­ist film. That ultra-mass medi­um would turn out to be a sur­pris­ing­ly recep­tive venue for his high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic art: first he made com­mer­cials, then he co-cre­at­ed with Mark Frost the ABC mys­tery series Twin Peaks, which prac­ti­cal­ly over­took Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture when it debuted in 1990. (See also these video essays on the mak­ing and mean­ing of the show.) Not that the phe­nom­e­non was lim­it­ed to the U.S., as evi­denced by Lynch’s going on to direct a mini-sea­son of Twin Peaks in the form of canned-cof­fee com­mer­cials for the Japan­ese mar­ket.

Even Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, the pic­ture many con­sid­er to be Lynch’s mas­ter­piece, was con­ceived as a pilot for a TV show. Not long after its release, he put out more work in ser­i­al form, includ­ing the sav­age car­toon Dum­b­land and the har­row­ing sit­com homage Rab­bits (lat­er incor­po­rat­ed into Inland Empire, his final film). In the late two-thou­sands, he pre­sent­ed Inter­view Project, a doc­u­men­tary web series co-cre­at­ed by his son; in the ear­ly twen­ty-tens, he put out his first (but not last) solo music album, Crazy Clown Time. That same decade, his pho­tographs of old fac­to­ries went on dis­play, his line of organ­ic cof­fee came onto the mar­ket, his auto­bi­og­ra­phy was pub­lished, and his Mas­ter­Class went online.

Lynch remained pro­lif­ic through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic of the twen­ty-twen­ties, in part by post­ing Los Ange­les weath­er reports from his home to his YouTube chan­nel. In recent years, he announced that he would nev­er retire, despite liv­ing with a case of emphy­se­ma so severe that he could no longer direct in any con­ven­tion­al man­ner. Such are the wages, as he acknowl­edged, of hav­ing smoked since age sev­en, though he also seemed to believe that every habit and choice in life con­tributed to his work. Per­haps the smok­ing did its part to inspire him, like his long prac­tice of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion or his dai­ly milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, about all of which he spoke open­ly in life. But if there’s any par­tic­u­lar secret of his for­mi­da­ble cre­ativ­i­ty, it feels as if he’s tak­en it with him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demys­ti­fies It All

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Being a Mad­man for a Relent­less 8 Min­utes and 30 Sec­onds

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Mus­es About the Mag­ic of Cin­e­ma & Med­i­ta­tion in a New Abstract Short Film

David Lynch Tries to Make a List of the Good Things Hap­pen­ing in the World … and Comes Up Blank

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks’ “Love Theme”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting from Start to Finish: Every Episode from 31 Seasons in Chronological Order

Bob Ross the man died near­ly thir­ty years ago, but Bob Ross the arche­typ­al TV painter has nev­er been more wide­ly known. “With his dis­tinc­tive hair, gen­tle voice, and sig­na­ture expres­sions such as ‘hap­py lit­tle trees,’ he’s an endur­ing icon,” writes Michael J. Mooney in an Atlantic piece from 2020. “His like­ness appears on a wide assort­ment of objects: paints and brush­es, toast­ers, socks, cal­en­dars, dolls, orna­ments, and even a Chia Pet.” Here in Korea, where I live, he’s uni­ver­sal­ly called Bob Ajeossi, ajeossi being a kind of col­lo­qui­al title for mid­dle-aged men. It’s quite an after­life for a soft-spo­ken pub­lic-tele­vi­sion host from the eight­ies.

Ross quick­ly became a pop-cul­tur­al fig­ure in that era, star­ring in semi-iron­ic MTV spots by the ear­ly nineties. But over the decades, writes Mooney, “the appre­ci­a­tion of Bob Ross has mor­phed into some­thing near­ly uni­ver­sal­ly earnest.” It helps that he has “the ulti­mate calm­ing pres­ence,” which has drawn spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry: “More than a decade before most ther­a­pists were telling clients to be mind­ful and present, Ross was telling his view­ers to appre­ci­ate their every breath.” This med­i­ta­tive, pos­i­tive mood per­vades all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s more than 400 record­ed broad­casts, and they even deliv­er the sooth­ing effects of what YouTube-view­ing gen­er­a­tions know as “unin­ten­tion­al ASMR.”

Now you can watch almost all those broad­casts on a sin­gle YouTube playlist, which includes all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s 31 sea­sons, orig­i­nal­ly aired between 1983 and 1994. (The videos come from the offi­cial YouTube chan­nel of The Joy of Paint­ing and Bob Ross.) Despite hav­ing end­ed its run well before any of us had ever imag­ined watch­ing video online, the show now feels prac­ti­cal­ly made for the inter­net, what with not just its ASMR qual­i­ties, but also the paraso­cial friend­li­ness of Ross’ per­son­al­i­ty, the instruc­tion­al val­ue and sheer quan­ti­ty of its con­tent, and the high­ly con­sis­tent for­mat. Every time, Ross paints a com­plete pic­ture from start to fin­ish: usu­al­ly a land­scape fea­tur­ing mighty moun­tains, free­dom-lov­ing clouds, and hap­py lit­tle trees, but occa­sion­al­ly some­thing just dif­fer­ent enough to keep it inter­est­ing. And so the man Mooney describes as “prob­a­bly America’s most famous painter” lives on as a beloved YouTu­ber.

Relat­ed com­ment:

The Bob Ross Vir­tu­al Art Gallery: A New Site Presents 403 Paint­ings from The Joy of Paint­ing Series

What Hap­pened to the 1200 Paint­ings Paint­ed by Bob Ross? The Mys­tery Has Final­ly Been Solved

Expe­ri­ence the Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence: A New Muse­um Open in the TV Painter’s For­mer Stu­dio Home

The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mur­al on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Watch a Mas­ter Japan­ese Print­mak­er at Work: Two Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Relax­ing ASMR Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Last Supper: A Deep Dive Into a Masterpiece

When Leonar­do da Vin­ci was 42 years old, he had­n’t yet com­plet­ed any major pub­licly view­able work. Not that he’d been idle: in that same era, while work­ing for the Duke of Milan, Ludovi­co Sforza, he “devel­oped, orga­nized, and direct­ed pro­duc­tions for fes­ti­val pageants, tri­umphal pro­ces­sions, masks, joust­ing tour­na­ments, and plays, for which he chore­o­graphed per­for­mances, engi­neered and dec­o­rat­ed stage sets and props, and even designed cos­tumes.” So explains gal­lerist and YouTu­ber James Payne in the new Great Art Explained video above, by way of estab­lish­ing the con­text in which Leonar­do would go on to paint The Last Sup­per.

For the defin­i­tive Renais­sance man, “the­atre was a nat­ur­al are­na to blend art, mechan­ics and design.” He under­stood “not only how per­spec­tive worked on a three-dimen­sion­al stage, but how it worked from dif­fer­ent van­tage points,” and this knowl­edge led to “what would be the great­est the­atri­cal stag­ing of his life”: his paint­ing of Jesus Christ telling the Twelve Apos­tles that one of them will betray him.

This view of The Last Sup­per makes more sense if you see it not as a decon­tex­tu­al­ized image — the way most of us do — but as the mur­al Leonar­do actu­al­ly paint­ed on one wall of Milan’s Con­vent of San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, whose space it extends (and where it makes more sense for every­one to be seat­ed on one side of the table).

Payne goes in-depth on not just the visu­al tech­niques Leonar­do used to make The Last Sup­per’s com­po­si­tion so pow­er­ful, but also the untest­ed paint­ing tech­niques that end­ed up has­ten­ing its dete­ri­o­ra­tion. If you do go to San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, bear in mind that at best a quar­ter of the mural’s paint was applied by Leonar­do him­self. The rest is the result of a long restora­tion process, made pos­si­ble by the exis­tence of sev­er­al copies made after the work’s com­ple­tion. And indeed, it’s only thanks to one of those copies, whose mak­er includ­ed labels, that we know which Apos­tle is which. Unlike many of the cre­ators of reli­gious art before him, Leonar­do did­n’t make any­thing too obvi­ous; rather, he expressed his for­mi­da­ble skill through the kind of sub­tle­ty acces­si­ble only to those who take their time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

An Immac­u­late Copy of Leonardo’s The Last Sup­per Dig­i­tized by Google: View It in High Res­o­lu­tion Online

Is the Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint­ing “Sal­va­tor Mun­di” (Which Sold for $450 Mil­lion in 2017) Actu­al­ly Authen­tic?: Michael Lewis Explores the Ques­tion in His New Pod­cast

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

How Did the Mona Lisa Become the World’s Most Famous Paint­ing?: It’s Not What You Think

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Engineering of the Strandbeest: How the Magnificent Mechanical Creatures Have Technologically Evolved

Life evolves, but machines are invent­ed: this dichoto­my hard­ly con­flicts with what most of us have learned about biol­o­gy and tech­nol­o­gy. But cer­tain spec­i­mens roam­ing around in the world can blur that line — and in the curi­ous case of the Strand­beesten, they real­ly are roam­ing around. First assem­bled in 1990 by the Dutch artist Theo Jansen, a Strand­beest (Dutch for “beach beast”) is a kind of wind-pow­ered kinet­ic sculp­ture designed to “walk” around the sea­side in an organ­ic-look­ing fash­ion. Jansen has made them not just ever larg­er and more elab­o­rate over the decades, but also more sta­ble and more resilient, with an eye toward their even­tu­al­ly out­liv­ing him.

Improv­ing the Strand­beest has been a long process of tri­al and error, as explained in the Ver­i­ta­si­um video above. Jansen’s process espe­cial­ly resem­bles bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion in that the changes he makes to his cre­ations tend to be retained or dis­card­ed in accor­dance with the degree to which they assist in adap­ta­tion to their sandy, watery envi­ron­ment.

Get­ting them to walk upright in the sand was hard enough, and ulti­mate­ly required com­put­er mod­el­ing to deter­mine just the right angles at which to con­nect their joints. But the joints them­selves have also demand­ed improve­ment, giv­en that the rig­ors of a Strand­beest’s “life” neces­si­tate both flex­i­bil­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty.

We’ve fea­tured Jansen and his Strand­beesten more than once here on Open Cul­ture, but this new video reveals anoth­er dimen­sion of his life­long project: to keep them from walk­ing into the sea. This chal­lenge has led him to build “brains” that detect when a Strand­beest has drawn too close to the water. Con­struct­ed with sim­ple mechan­i­cal valves, these sys­tems are rem­i­nis­cent of not just the neu­rons in our own heads, but also of the col­lec­tions of bina­ry switch­es that, assem­bled in much greater num­bers, have tech­no­log­i­cal­ly evolved into the basis of the dig­i­tal devices that we use every day. While a com­put­er can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly last for­ev­er, a liv­ing crea­ture can’t — and nor, so far, can a Strand­beest. But now that Jansen has dis­cov­ered their “genet­ic code,” inven­tors all over the world have already begun their own work prop­a­gat­ing this diverse, cap­ti­vat­ing species world­wide.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold the Strand­beest, the Mechan­i­cal Ani­mals That Roam the Beach­es of Hol­land

Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

As Christ­mas­time approach­es, few nov­el­ists come to mind as read­i­ly as Charles Dick­ens. This owes main­ly, of course, to A Christ­mas Car­ol, and even more so to its many adap­ta­tions, most of which draw inspi­ra­tion from not just its text but also its illus­tra­tions. That 1843 novel­la was just the first of five books he wrote with the hol­i­day as a theme, a series that also includes The Chimes, The Crick­et on the Hearth, The Bat­tle of Life, and The Haunt­ed Man and the Ghost’s Bar­gain. Each “includ­ed draw­ings he worked on with illus­tra­tors,” writes BBC News’ Tim Stokes, though “none of them dis­plays quite the icon­ic mer­ri­ment of his ini­tial Christ­mas cre­ation.”

“Any­one look­ing at the illus­tra­tions to the Christ­mas books after A Christ­mas Car­ol and expect­ing sim­i­lar images to Mr Fezzi­wig’s Ball is going to be dis­ap­point­ed,” Stokes quotes inde­pen­dent schol­ar Dr. Michael John Good­man as say­ing.

Pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned less with Christ­mas as a hol­i­day and more “with the spir­it of Christ­mas and its ideals of self­less­ness and for­give­ness, as well as being a voice for the poor and the needy,” Dick­ens “had to cre­ate some very dark sce­nar­ios to give this mes­sage pow­er and res­o­nance, and these can be seen in the illus­tra­tions.”

Good­man’s name may sound famil­iar to ded­i­cat­ed Open Cul­ture read­ers, since we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his online Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery, whose dig­i­tized art col­lec­tion has been grow­ing ever since. It now con­tains over 2,100 illus­tra­tions, includ­ing not just A Christ­mas Car­ol and all its suc­ces­sors, but all of Dick­ens’ books from his ear­ly col­lec­tion of obser­va­tion­al pieces Sketch­es by Boz to his final, incom­plete nov­el The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood. And those are just the orig­i­nals: every true Dick­ens enthu­si­ast soon­er or lat­er gets into the dif­fer­ences between the waves of edi­tions that have been pub­lished over the bet­ter part of two cen­turies.

The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery has entire sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the posthu­mous “House­hold Edi­tion,” which have even more art than the orig­i­nals; the lat­er “Library Edi­tion,” from 1910, fea­tur­ing the work of esteemed and pro­lif­ic illus­tra­tor Har­ry Fur­niss; and even the 1912 “Pears Edi­tion” of the Christ­mas books, put out by the epony­mous soap com­pa­ny in cel­e­bra­tion of the cen­te­nary of Dick­ens’ birth. But none of them quite matched the lav­ish­ness of that first Christ­mas Car­ol, on which Dick­ens had decid­ed to go all out: as Good­man writes, “it would have eight illus­tra­tions, four of which would be in col­or, and it would have gilt edges and col­ored end­pa­pers.” Alas, this extrav­a­gance “left Dick­ens with very lit­tle prof­it” — and with an unusu­al­ly prag­mat­ic but nev­er­the­less unfor­get­table Christ­mas les­son about keep­ing costs down. Enter the Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Pre­sent­ed in a Dig­i­tal Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Édouard Manet Illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edition Translated by Stephane Mallarmé (1875)

Manet's Raven

Edgar Allan Poe achieved almost instant fame dur­ing his life­time after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Raven (1845), but he nev­er felt that he received the recog­ni­tion he deserved. In some respects, he was right. He was, after all, paid only nine dol­lars for the poem, and he strug­gled before and after its pub­li­ca­tion to make a liv­ing from his writ­ing.

Raven_Manet_B2

Poe was one of the first Amer­i­can writ­ers to do so with­out inde­pen­dent means. His work large­ly met with mixed reviews and he was fired from job after job, part­ly because of his drink­ing. After his death, how­ev­er, Poe’s influ­ence dom­i­nat­ed emerg­ing mod­ernist move­ments like that of the deca­dent poet­ry of Charles Baude­laire (who called Poe his “twin soul”) and his sym­bol­ist dis­ci­ple Stéphane Mal­lar­mé.

Raven_Manet_C2

Mal­lar­mé would write of Poe, “His cen­tu­ry appalled at nev­er hav­ing heard / That in this voice tri­umphant death had sung its hymn.” To bring that hymn of death, the raven’s cry of “Nev­er­more,” to French read­ers, he made a trans­la­tion of The Raven, Le Cor­beau, in 1875 at age 33.

Raven_Manet_D2

Poe also had a tremen­dous influ­ence on the visu­al arts in France. Illus­trat­ing the text was none oth­er than Édouard Manet, the painter cred­it­ed with the gen­e­sis of impres­sion­ism. The result­ing engrav­ings, ren­dered in dark, heavy smudges, give us the poem’s unnamed, bereaved speak­er as the young Mal­lar­mé, unmis­tak­able with his push­b­room mus­tache.

Sad­ly, the New York Pub­lic Library tells us, “the pub­li­ca­tion was not a com­mer­cial suc­cess.” (See Manet’s design for a poster and the book cov­er at the top of the post.)

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The book also illus­trates the rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship between Poe and French art and lit­er­a­ture. Chris Semt­ner, cura­tor of a Rich­mond, Vir­ginia exhib­it on this mutu­al influ­ence, remarks that Poe “read Voltaire among oth­er French authors”—such as Alexan­dre Dumas—“in col­lege” and found them high­ly influ­en­tial. Like­wise, Poe left his mark not only on Baude­laire, Mal­lar­mé, and Manet, but also Paul Gau­guin, Odilon Redon, and Hen­ri Matisse.

You can read Le Cor­beau here in a dual lan­guage edi­tion, with all the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions. View and down­load high-res scans of the engrav­ings here. And just above, lis­ten to The Raven read aloud in Mallarmé’s French, cour­tesy of the Inter­net Archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Aubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Sto­ries (1894)

Har­ry Clarke’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions for Edgar Allan Poe’s Sto­ries (1923)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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