The angel bent his gaze severe
Upon the Tempter, eye to eye,
Then joyful soared … to disappear
Into the boundless, shining sky.
The Demon watched the heating wings
Fading triumphantly from sight
And cursed his dreams of better things,
Doomed to defeat, venting his spite
And arrogance in that great curse
Alone in all the universe,
Abandoned, without love or hope

– from The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov

Long ago I promised to return to one of my favorite subjects: madness.  Currently I’m fueled by days of non-stop drawing, surviving on coffee and deviled eggs alone. In other words – the time is right. We’re looking at the madness of prolific Russian painter Mikhail Vrubel. When we left off some months ago, Vrubel was living in Moscow with his beloved wife and son. His massive works in oil, based mostly on Russian folklore, had earned the prolific painter a fair degree of fame and success. The illustrations to Lermontov’s poem The Demon that launched Vrubel’s career receded into the past. Mikhail was working in the theater alongside his wife, painting and designing costumes for her operas, immortalizing the beautiful singer as each of her fairy tale characters. His life was the epitome of creative and family bliss. His new paintings were glowing, as well, due in part to the subject matter and in part to iridescent bronze powder Vrubel mixed into the paint.

The Seated Demon

Nevertheless, Vrubel was compelled to return to the enormous portrait of the Demon. Slowly he began reworking the brooding features, even after the work had been exhibited. Painting thick layers upon layers in an attempt to convey the demon’s pure despair drove Mikhail further away from life, deeper inside himself and his work. The poem’s nihilistic themes seem to have struck the very heart of the artist. Despite his success and marriage, was there a sense of ultimate loneliness permeating Vrubel’s reality? Did the poem reveal a world as he secretly saw it, confirming his latent misery? Was he never genuinely happy, resenting his family life and fame? Perhaps, instead, there was an overwhelming fear of losing what he treasured most, triggered by the loss of his siblings as a child and fermenting inside ever since. Or was it The Demon‘s contempt for the Church that struck a chord? Vrubel’s obsession grew, taking over his body of work and eventually producing a dozen paintings and sculptures dedicated to The Demon. So much paint has been compulsively applied and re-applied that many details of these paintings are nearly indistinguishable, but the Demon’s large, restless eyes and dark features stand out, thoroughly spellbinding. Burning through the viewer, this is Vrubel’s best work, stunning, unhinging and unforgettable.

Details of Demon In Flight and Demon, Downcast

in 1902 Vrubel was briefly hospitalized due to failing emotional and physical health. The Demon had had left him powerless against reality and he was beginning to crumble. Home from the hospital, his health was improving, but recovery was short-lived. Just a year later Savva, Mikhail’s beloved son, died. With grief aggravating an already fragile mind, Vrubel continued his slow decline. He also continued to work, finally abandoning the demon that caused so much agony and returning to portraits and fantasy. I’m particularly fond of this drawing – the concerned visage of the artist’s psychiatrist.

Portrait of Psychiatrist Fiodor Usoltsev

Several years passed until the first signs of every artist’s worst nightmare showed themselves: Vrubel was losing his sight. This was the final blow to his health and spirit. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel, one of the greatest Russian painters, met his end in the clutches of pneumonia at the age of 54. He purposely made himself sick by standing in cold spring air earlier that year, the Demon, surely, at his side. If you visit Moscow’s Tretyakov gallery, be certain to complete the tour – at end, after halls upon halls of classic Russian art, in Vrubel’s room he waits.

• Lermontov’s The Demon poem, in Russian and English
• Our set of Vrubel’s Demon work on Flickr
• In-depth thoughts on The Demon theme and variations
• Excellent rare Vrubel gallery and print shop

Photo via GETTY.

Oh, Artichoke and La Machine, how do we love thee? Let us count the ways. First, you brought the Sultan’s Elephant and the Little Girl Giant to London. And at this very moment, to the delight and terror of all, you’ve set a 50 foot-high, 37 ton mechanical spider rampaging through the streets of Liverpool. Incredible.

Despite being mortally afraid of arachnids, I wish more than anything that I could be there right now to see “La Princesse” coming to life. I’m sure many of you do as well. Is any of our UK readership getting a chance to witness this? Please, drop us a line!

Photo by Exacta2a via their wonderful Flickrstream.

Autumn is upon us, so I’m busting out all of my favorite fall records. First up: anything and everything Jill Tracy has ever touched with her long, thin, alabaster hands.

As can be plainly seen from this gorgeous music video for “Haunted by the Thought of You”, Madame Tracy is one classy dame. Cool as a cucumber. Who else do I know who could maintain such an unflappable air of poise and elegance as reanimated hearts, levitating chairs, creepy humanoid automata, and even the arse of Satan himself loom directly behind her? No one!

Jill Tracy performing live in NYC. Photo by Don Spiro.

I’ve been swooning over the Victorian parlor pianist/netherworld chanteuse ever since a video for her seminal song “The Fine Art of Poisoning” was released a few years back, but she’s been casting her Ghostly Gloom Glam Queen spell for well over a decade (since long before this latest incarnation of the “dark cabaret” movement picked up speed), always with unparalleled grace and sincerity.

The songs collected on her latest album The Bittersweet Constrain (two in particular: “Sell My Soul” and “Torture”) do indeed invoke a delicious sort of pleasure/pain, not unlike the burn of real wormwood absinthe trickling down the gullet; unsettling and exhilarating as receiving a languorous tongue bath from a black cat at midnight on some foggy, windswept moor. Highly recommended.

Also see:

• Kurt Weill: September Songs
• Jacques Brel: “Ne Me Quitte Pas”
• Nico: “No One is There”
• Edith Piaf: “No, je ne regrette rien”
• Tiger Lillies: “Bully Boys”
• Dresden Dolls: “Sing” (alternate cut)
• Reverend Glasseye: “Seventeen Lashes”
• Nicki Jaine: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
  
• 2007 Edwardian Ball (Rosin Coven, Vau de Vire)
• Vermillion Lies: “No Good” live
  
• The Ditty Bops: “Wishful Thinking”
  
• World Inferno Friendship Society: “Tattoos Fade” live
• HUMANWINE: “Wake Up” live
• Sepiachord Magazine: “Music of a Past that Never Was”
  

Take a look at Cheval Noir [Black Horse] – artist Aya Kato’s portfolio site, especially if you’re familiar with her work. I was just reminded of her by Ashbet and noticed a significant change in her work’s direction. Aya Kato made herself a name with eye-drowning elaborate technicolor illustrations, influenced in equal parts by Ukiyo-e and Art Nouveau. More than half of her 2008 work borders on minimal, with subdued colors and more negative space. After years of churning out ornate psychedelic panels it’s an understandable step for the young artist. It’ll be curious to see whether she’ll push herself even further in this direction.

Spider, 2008

Aya Kato has been featured in countless magazines and her designs adorn everything from chocolate boxes to T-shirts to Hitachi adverts. At such a young age she’s had international success, and I’m eager to see whether her new work’s look will catch on commercially. Compare the image above, created in 2008, to Akazukin, from three years ago, below. Patterns and transformation are featured in both, but the similarities end there. Personally, as much as I love the clean and minimal, I miss the vivid landscapes and superabundance of Aya’s older work.

Akazukin, 2005

• Aya Kato T-shirts
• Tori Amos music video based on Aya Kato’s work
• Murakami on Coilhouse
• Yana Moskaluk on Coilhouse

More from Aya Kato below the jump.

Another Soviet cartoon awaits below! A favorite in my childhood household, Very Blue Beard was released in 1979 and tells an alternate tale of the famed wife-killer and three of his objets d’amour. This particular version places all the blame directly on the wives and identifies the beard as symbol of male essence, constantly oppressed by scissor-happy women. Nonetheless, the Modigliani-meets-Peter Chung look of the figures and the background treatment are worth a peek. No subtitles, so I’ll summarize below each of the two parts.

Part 1

A modern day detective sets out to learn the truth about Blue Beard upon finding a piece of blue hair. He calls his wife to tell her of this discovery, only to be nagged half to death about the possibility of coming home late. The investigation must continue! Soon Bluebeard is found alive and well, just beyond the borders of alternate reality. [In Soviet Russia, alternate reality can be entered through the subway, by the way.] He admits his guilt but requests the detective’s ear for a chance to explain his reasons.

Blue Beard’s first wife is Marianna, an ultra-modern English fashionista who isn’t interested in Blue’s old-fashioned ways. She redecorates his palace to her own liking, then drives him mad with her weaves and pet dragon. As the rage wells up inside Blue Beard, his beard grows back, signaling that he’s had enough of this free-willed lady!

Part two below the jump.

What’s Natalie Shau been up to? Last we checked, the Lithuanian-based digital artist was creating sepia images based on Greek mythology. More recently, she’s completed a sumptuous new set of illustrations for French jewelry designer Lydia Courteille. On Courteille’s site, Shau’s dreamy Ray Caesar-esque illustrations serve to introduce each of the seven ranges: My Secret Garden, Vanities, Bestiary, Esoterism, Cameos & Glyptics, Cassandra’s and Cabinet of Curiosities.

The prices for Courteille’s diamond-encrusted bijoux range in the average of $10,000. Why use real diamonds? Gross! Nevertheless, there are a couple of baubles on Courteille’s site that I covet, and I include them here for your viewing pleasure.

Above is Kenneth Anger‘s 1954 film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in its entirety. A film critic friend pointed me to it, with the simple statement “it’s weird, you’ll like it.” This came up along with news that Anger, 81, is terminally ill.

In some ways this seems a film out of time. It presages ’60s psychedelica (and would be re-released in a “sacred mushroom” version in 1966), yet the style is enmeshed in the occult revival of the fin de siècle. Watching it the first time, I couldn’t but see it as a glimpse into an alternate universe where the silent film era never ended and Aleister Crowley took the world by storm instead of dying in a flophouse.

With its lush array of images and allusions, Pleasure Dome is made to be unraveled – and indeed, there’s plenty of theories about it out there. Filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain sees communion, and writes “the movement of the film is essentially the passing of the gifts from one guest to another as they advance into a state of transpersonal ecstasy.” But film critic Doug Pratt perceives a hollow heart in the same revels: “an appropriately decorated Hindu-like myth re-enactment, with its spiritual core utterly rotted away; a disturbed revelry of desperate souls clinging to the outdated fashions and orgiastic memories of their lost time.”

Which is it? The absurdity’s there. Yes, that’s Anais Nin with a birdcage on her head. Yes, the Scarlet Woman gets her cigarette lit in the middle of the damn thing. Yes, jewelry gets guzzled in copious amounts.

But like any good ritual experience, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Turn the lights off, watch deeply, let the images pile up and hear Janá?ek’s Glagolitic Mass swell in the background: the whole scene takes on a strange, unexpected power.

The works of Kenneth Anger on Amazon

Post-Nerd Prom portrait of your pitiful narrator, afflicted with the dreaded Con Plague, or perhaps some form of eyeball-displacing orbital tumor.

Apologies for not updating in “real time” on Sunday, but I’ve been slimed. That is to say, I have succumbed to the dreaded Con Crud, and could not muster the strength to lift my fingers (blackened, trembling, tumescent with pus) to type this missive until now. Tonight (scabby, delirious, drowning in my own phlegm) I’d like to share a consolidation of ComicKAAAAAHHHHN postcards, and quite possibly my death rattle, with you.

To start things off, here’s a chick straddling a seahorse monster:

This cover image of The Fabulous Women of Boris Vellejo & Julie Bell is fabulous indeed. It would be even more fabulous with the addition of some strategically placed tiny bubbles, don’t you agree?

A comely consortium of Slave Leias gathered at Gentle Giant‘s booth this morning to pose with GG’s larger (and droolier)-than-life Jabba statue. Not pictured: legions of mouth-breathing Frito-eaters with cheap instant cameras and sweatpants boners.

With the evening of the Fantastic Contraption reception approaching this weekend, it’s time to introduce another participant of this wondrous exhibit.

Two pieces from the Dark Peculiar Toys series

Viktor Koen is a Greek-born artist specializing in digital illustration. He’s a professor at Parsons in New York and has his work regularly published in Time, Newsweek, Esquire, Money and Forbes among others.

Two pieces from Koen’s Damsels in Armor series

The body of Viktor’s work is huge, but my favorite of his series remains Transmigrations.

“Transmigrations, Cases of Corporate Reincarnation” is 24 portraits of high executive title holders that return to life as insects. It’s a series that combines theories and research on social insects, traditional and contemporary corporate structures, job descriptions and reincarnation scriptures (more specifically the controversial teachings of Pythagoras on transmigration of souls). They personify symbols and weapons of their trades in a number of levels, some instantly visible and other hidden, avoiding the obvious and the expected.

Beyond the Kafka aspect of this project I love the actual shapes these creatures take on in their transformed states. Imagine these human-sized insects buzzing among the rest of us, brandishing their tools and being very, very busy.

A few more human insects beyond the jump.