In Japan stierf illustrator Toshio Saeki.
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RIP Ken Kelly (1946 – 2022)
Ken Kelly was an American fantasy artist in the style of Frank Frazetta.
Kelly is best-known for his rock and heavy metal album cover artwork, as well as his illustrations for American horror magazines.
RIP Edmond Kiraz (1923 – 2020)
Edmond Kiraz was a French-Armenian cartoonist and illustrator.
He is best known for his Parisiennes, his post-war Parisian wafer-thin model girls which first appeared in print in 1966.
RIP Shusei Nagaoka (1936 – 2015)
This happened five years ago.
Shusei Nagaoka was a Japanese illustrator. He was known for his music album cover art in the 1970s and 1980s.
He designed album covers for Electric Light Orchestra, Earth, Wind & Fire, Deep Purple, Space, Maze, George Clinton, Kitaro and Rose Royce.
Wikipedia fails to mention the computer-like torso of Giorgio Moroder on E=MC2 and the dancing robots on the Munich Machine albums.
His style was similar to that of sexy robot designer Hajime Sorayama (born 1947) and his work reminiscent somehow of Luigi Colani.
RIP Tomi Ungerer (1931 – 2019)
Tomi Ungerer was a French illustrator known for his children’s books, as well as his satirical and erotic work for adults.
I attended an interview with Ungerer in 2014 and wrote this small piece in Dutch after the occasion and also did a post on Tumblr[1].
I’ll never forget the moment at he end of the interview when he started singing “Die Gedanken sind frei” and many of the German-language invites joining in.
Fornicon (1969) [above] is a collection of 60 prints of scenes of funny machine-aided sadomasochistic male domination. When I say machine-aided, think Rube Goldberg machine. Box sets of these prints are being sold for as high as 3,000$. Books can be had for as little as ten dollars.
Ungerer’s humor is quite like that of Roland Topor.
The red splodge representing the reign of Ivan the Terrible
Via via I discover Gustave Doré‘s The Rare and Extraordinary History of Holy Russia (1854), an illustrated book with 500 drawings executed by Doré when he was just 21.
Doré was a genius, perhaps only equaled by Grandville (thirty year’s Doré’s senior).
The History of Holy Russia features a number of experimental and metatextual elements which are as surprising as the black page in Tristram Shandy.
The red splodge above represents the reign of Ivan the Terrible.
The caption reads:
- “Suite du règne d’Ivan le Terrible. Devant tant de crimes, clignons l’oeil pour n’en rien y voir que l’aspect général.”
English translation:
- “Continuation of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Faced with such crimes, let’s blink our eyes to not see anything than the broad picture.” (tr. J.W. Geerinck)
There is another world, but it is in this one
Aquatic plants, seashells and madrepores (Aquatic plants, seashells and madrepores) is a plate from Un autre monde by French illustrator Grandville (1803 – 1847).
The illustration alludes to man copying the patterns of nature, like crystallization and petrifaction.
The title of this post “There is another world, but it is in this one” is attributed both to W. B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) and French poet Paul Éluard (1895 – 1952) (as “Il y a un autre monde mais il est dans celui-ci”).
Previously on Tumblr: Crystallised Minerals by Alexandre Isidore Leroy de Barde.