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The purple book : symbolism & sensuality in contemporary art & illustration PDF

225 Pages·2013·244.03 MB·English
by  Lewis
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T H E P U R P L E T H E P U R P L E Symbolism & Sensuality in Contemporary Art & Illustration Angus Hyland & Angharad Lewis Laurence King Publishing C O N T E N T S Page 7 Pages 80–97 Page 147 F OREWORD WO RKS BY Szamota’s Mistre ss Angus Hyland Vania Zouravliov, Amelie Hegardt, Tim Hon Hung Lee, Izzie Klingels, Stefan Grabinski Page 9 Dan Hillier, Sam Wolfe Connelly INTRODUCTION illustrated by Andrzej Klimowski Angharad Lewis Page 99 JU LES J ULIEN Pages 156–173 Page 19 Interview & Portfolio WO RKS B Y LAURA LAIN E Yuko Shimizu, Natalie Ratkovski, Interview & Portfolio Page 107 Deanne Cheuk, Yuko Michishita, An extract from Dan Hillier, Daisy Fletcher, Page 25 Story of Kelly Thompson, Makiko Sugawa, Soey Milk Goblin Market the Eye Christina Rossetti Page 175 Georges Bataille MARTI NE JOHAN NA illustrated by Laura Laine Interview & Portfolio illustrated by Jules Julien Pages 42–61 Page 183 WORKS BY Pages 116–135 An extract from Laura Laine, Yuko Michishita, WO RKS BY Ulysses Miss Van, Deanne Cheuk, Izzie Klingels, Jules Julien, Daisy Fletcher, Tran Nguyen, Conrad Yukari Terakado, Miss Van, Roset, Tim Hon Hung Lee, Yuko Makiko Sugawa, Soey Milk, James Joyce Shimizu, Izzie Klingels Sam Wolfe Connelly, Amelie Hegardt, Jasper Goodall, Jesse Auersalo, illustrated by Martine Johanna Page 63 Yuko Shimizu VAN IA Pages 190–207 ZOURAVLIOV Page 137 WO RKS B Y Interview & Portfolio ANDR ZEJ Soey Milk, Martine Johanna, KLI MOWSKI Tran Nguyen, Conrad Roset, Page 71 Interview & Portfolio Ëlodie Nadreau, Tim Hon Hung Lee, Cho Kyuhyung, Yukari Terakado, Eleonora  Megan Pearce Edgar Allan Poe Page 209 illustrated by Vania Zouravliov BIOG RAPH IES FOREWORD When your dream of perfect beauty comes true Angus Hyland ‘Je te salue, ô très occulte, ô très profonde Luxure, étoile triste au ciel pourpre du monde.’ – Albert Samain ‘Pink begat mauve begat purple begat violet.’ – Derek Jarman If roses are red and violets are blue, then any fl ower that been credited with the idea of its yellow cover and thus its lies chromatically in between the two must be considered name. While The Yellow Book is more a touchstone than a one of the many variants of purple. Purple is an enigmatic direct ancestor, there is no doubt that it has inspired The non-spectral colour; it is absent from Newton’s colour Purple Book’s form as a lavishly illustrated marriage of art wheel, which moves directly from violet to red. There is and literature. Beneath the decorative detail inherent in no such thing as the ‘wavelength of purple light’; it exists much of the work, there is a surrealist undercurrent that only as a combination. Perhaps that is why this enigmatic weaves its way through these fantasies, connecting the colour has such a shifty reputation: it is a chimera. Partly texts, whether symbolist or gothic. It is the theme of a elitist, as in the priceless Tyrian, or imperial, purple which lucid and sensual dream, a vision of beauty imbued with in antiquity was made from the crushed shells of thousands mortality and on the point of decay, a vision at one with of purpura sea snails and was the vivid colour of the sails the dominant aesthetic of the Decadent Movement. on Cleopatra’s barge, purple is also seen as artifi cial, most notably in Mauveine, the fi rst industrialized aniline dye Many of the artists featured here share both a particular created in the 1890s. The name mauve was fi rst coined aesthetic vision and a commitment to the hand-drawn by Sir William Henry Perkin, the chemist who in 1856 image. It is as though the qualities of highly detailed and created the dye for cloth. So popular was the colour with decorative graphic art imbue a deeper sensuous emotional the late Victorians that the 1890s became known as the core. This is certainly true when one compares the work Mauve Decade. Not entirely respectable, however, mauve in this book with the more immediate and ephemeral (then much deeper in shade than our faded contemporary art forms that dominate our visual culture today. Such understanding of it) was identifi ed with decadence, intensity results in a powerful fetishism – in the original occultism and not unsurprisingly, artifi ciality. meaning of the term. The themes of sensuality and symbolism explored within Published at a time when the anodyne and standardized the art of The Purple Book have their origins in the period showcase of artwork has become something of an leading up to the fi n de siècle and the last fl owering of the anachronism, The Purple Book looks back to a tradition Aesthetic Movement retitled as the Decadent Movement. of the beautifully crafted publication; a book for book’s The most notorious periodical of the 1890s was The Yellow sake (art for art’s sake in the decorative spirit of la belle Book, a magazine whose literary content was as innovative époque). It is the only way forward for the printed book, as a as its graphic design. Aubrey Beardsley, its fi rst art editor tangible and sensual object of beauty and desire – anything and the most infl uential illustrator of his generation has else would be a waste of good material. 7 I N T R O D U C T I O N Angharad Lewis It might be possible to imagine a time when the printed book is a rarity, an anachronism, near obsolete, pursued only by collectors. The book you are reading, however, celebrates the still living, breathing heart of the printed book for its unique, enduring pleasures — as a tactile and intimate object, a place of private reverie, of concentrated attention and as an unparalleled vehicle for the transportation of the imagination. The Purple Book (purple for the colour’s association with sensory headiness, decadence, sexuality, mystery, faith and mortality) revisits the intimate language and fl ights of imagination of writers known for deeply sensual, almost hallucinatory storytelling, from Edgar Allan Poe to Georges Bataille. These texts and extracts are paired with the work of contemporary illustrators whose output is infl uenced by or still carries a fl avour of the Symbolists, Decadents and Surrealists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — movements in art and literature that tapped the far reaches of imagination and encouraged the intimate embrace between word and image, poetry and picture-making. Drawing as a medium has an immediacy that makes it a tool for accessing the furthest parts of the human psyche, as the Surrealists discovered through their experiments in automatic drawing and Andrzej Klimowski discusses in his interview in this book (page 137). ‘Drawing is complete invention, the closest to your imagination,’ he says, ‘it’s all coming completely from the mind.’ Illustration, then, can make a valuable addition to the text of a story, tuning in to the poetic imagery but also introducing moments, ideas and gestures teased from between the words. Polymath and compulsive draftsman Jean Cocteau recognised no boundaries between the use of words, outlines and colours across the regions of literary and visual arts, describing drawing as 1 Introduction, Erotica: Drawings simply a ‘different way of tying up the lines’1. by Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crossland, The immediacy and intimacy of drawing as a medium has long Peter Owen Publishers, 2003 made it a powerful tool for exploring sexuality. Through print-making and book illustration, drawings depicting physical intimacy and fl ights of erotic imagination have liberated ideas about sexuality from the artist’s personal sketchbook to wider — albeit sometimes esoteric — audiences. 9

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