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Tentaclii

~ News & scholarship on H.P. Lovecraft

Tentaclii

Category Archives: Lovecraftian arts

Tavik Frantisek Simon

18 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts

≈ 1 Comment

Tavik Frantisek Simon (1877-1942)

Brooklyn Bridge, New York (1927)

“I had seen it in the sunset from a bridge, majestic above its waters, its incredible peaks and pyramids rising flowerlike and delicate from pools of violet mist to play with the flaming clouds and the first stars of evening. Then it had lighted up window by window above the shimmering tides where lanterns nodded and glided and deep horns bayed weird harmonies, and had itself become a starry firmament of dream, redolent of faery music, and one with the marvels of Carcassonne and Samarcand and El Dorado and all glorious and half-fabulous cities.” — “He” (1925) by H.P. Lovecraft, based on a longer description given in a letter, of sitting with Loveman watching the sunset after a long day of walking in May 1922.

Under the Brooklyn Bridge, New York (1927)

“… the lapping of oily waves at its grimy piers and the monstrous organ litanies of the harbour whistles.” — “The Horror at Red Hook” (1925)

New York Public Library (1927)

The library now has a notable archive of letters by Lovecraft.

“Lovecraft began reading Providence in Colonial Times at the very end of July 1925. Since he could not check the book out of the New York Public Library [he] had to read it in the genealogical reading room during library hours” — S.T. Joshi, H.P. Lovecraft: a life (1996).

New York at Night (1927)

“the horror tales of deep and dark chasms have their realistic counterpart in descriptions of the cavernous streets of Manhattan.” Unknown article including some commentary on Lovecraft in Landscape: Volumes 15-16 (1965).

Seventh Avenue at Night, New York (1929)

“Loveman, Howard and FBL dropping in at a cafeteria on Seventh Avenue for coffee and doughnuts, a rather stocky figure arising from a table near the door. “Howard, how are you? Sam didn’t tell me you were in New York!” — Marginalia, 1944.

The Dunwich Horror theatre show, London

16 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

≈ 1 Comment

New theatre production of “The Dunwich Horror”, set to be staged this Autumn in London England…

“This production has been in development for over a year, from a script completed after extensive work-shopping. The premise was to keep extant as much of the text from the original story as possible, while opening up the piece to an engaging theatrical experience. The production will take place as part of the London Horror Festival at the Courtyard Theatre [Hoxton, London UK]”

No dates or box office yet, but the Festival dates are 25th Oct – 27th Nov 2011.

Why did 1990s Cthulhupunk fail?

13 Saturday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

≈ 3 Comments

Ross. E. Lockhart, over at Night Shade blog, muses on Cthulhupunk, in which a short-lived attempt was seemingly made to fuse SF cyberpunk with Lovecraftian tabletop RPG games in the 1990s.

I can see the many points of connection with Lovecraft’s original fiction: isolated alienated semi-powerless not-really-heroes with a mystery to solve; underground routes in the cultural landscape that lead to forbidden knowledge when hacked; blurring at the boundary of the real/unreal; a ‘reality’ that is outside the code of language; alternate/multiple planes of existence; flying around through weird multi-coloured glowing geometries; a degraded contemporary society stratified by class and race; mind transfer and personality augmentation; unknowable artificial intelligences pulling the strings behind the scenes and projecting their avatars into the real world. Throw in some bio-engineering and gene-splicing ‘gone wrong’ for sea-dwelling humans… could be awesome. Lots of literary potential for crossovers and mash-ups there, I’d say.

Perhaps the failure was more of a market failure on the side of the RPG game marketeers in their rather constricted “durh, Lovcraft iz black magik?” market, than a failure of the imagination on the part of writers? Correct me if I’m wrong (I’ve been away from literary SF for a while) but literary writers have never really had a go at such a melding?

A new message from beyond…

11 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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It lurketh here…

Necronauts

11 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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I’ve found a interesting-looking 64-page comic novelette featuring Lovecraft as a character. Necronauts (2007, Rebellion) is by Gordon Rennie and Frazer Irving…

“In 1926, while practising a new trick, Houdini has a near-death experience, awakening the mysterious Sleepers. Meanwhile, Lovecraft is visited by a talking raven, and a seance that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is attending is attacked by a strange force that possesses the medium.”

Sounds groovy, although the used print edition has become rather pricey in just a few years. The art looks fabulous, like Berni Wrightson on speed…

Christian Salomonsen

10 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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Christian Salomonsen captures the cosmic, in the form of the Northern Lights (charged particles streaming into the Earth’s atmosphere from space, and which hit the north pole more than the south)…

All pictures © Christian Salomonsen. More at his website.

‘… an unearthly cast which made him feel like an intruder on an alien planet. […] he knew of the northern lights, and had even seen them once or twice.’ — H.P. Lovecraft, “The Mound”.

From the penguin-fringed abyss

10 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

A penguin made by Jeremy Mayer from an old antique mechanical typewriter. Those who know At The Mountains of Madness will get the joke…

that nighted, penguin-fringed abyss, whence even now a sinister curling mist had begun to belch pallidly

Neonomicon hardback now on pre-order

08 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, New books

≈ Leave a comment

Alan Moore’s Neonomicon is now on pre-order as a graphic novel from Titan/Avatar Press, set for release in Oct/Nov 2011. Presumably it’ll be fronted by The Courtyard, then will run through the four issues of Neonomicon to make up a 140-page graphic novel. The hardback, currently listed for pre-order on Amazon, states “176 pages”, so presumably there’ll be a couple of new text-only introductions and maybe even a new Moore essay on Lovecraft. The ending of Neonomicon sets up a sequel, so it would great to think that Moore is going to spring a Lovecraftian novelette on us as a concluding part. The story starts in a modern-day Red Hook in New York, and is sexually very graphic. So much so that I wonder if it’ll even be banned or released only in censored form in the UK.

Cover for Neonomicon #3.

Bruce Pennington exhibition in London

07 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

Bruce Pennington (1944-), there’s a name that’s a blast from the past. He did a great many British paperback covers in the 1970s, which I collected from the second-hand book stores as a youngster in the 1980s, although no non-Derleth Lovecraft as far as I can see. He has an exhibition on now in London (ends 27th Aug 2011). There are originals and also A3-sized digital prints at just £25 each.

He published the book collections Eschatus (Paper Tiger, 1976) and Ultraterranium (Paper Tiger, 1991).

The Vault to be prepped for a movie pitch

06 Saturday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Films & trailers, Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Johnny Depp had bought the film rights to The Vault…

the underwater sci-fi story centers on a group of divers who, off the coast of Nova Scotia, uncover a sarcophagus with unusual remains and inadvertently unleash an ancient evil.

Said evil apparently has links to the Great Pyramid, Stonehenge, and the Easter Island statues, etc. Nostrodamus gets a name check, rather than the Necronomicon. But in general it sounds fab and rather Lovecraftian and reminds me of Lovecraft’s story “The Temple” (1920). Apparently it’s out now as an ongoing comic-book series…

A great looking and believable [comic] series, it creates a real sense of danger and is the kind of adventure we rarely see in today’s spandex-epic driven market. — Broken Frontier.

The concluding third comic-book installment is due in October 2011 (don’t read the promo blurb for #3, if you don’t want a huge plot spoiler landed on you by the marketing idiots). Let’s hope the Hollywood machine doesn’t twist a movie version into just another forgetable Alien vs. Predator, or some dumb non-cosmic “it’s the Devil!” stuff.

Night in New York, Martin Lewis

04 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

Night in New York, pictures by Martin Lewis from The Smithsonian — which has more by Lewis.

“The Great Shadow”, 1925.

“Tree, Manhattan”, undated.

“Arch, Midnight”, 1930.

“Glow of the City”, 1929.

“H’anted”, 1932.

“Spring Night, Greenwich Village”, 1930.

Night Shadows

04 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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Edward Hopper, “Night Shadows” (1921). New York.

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