Category Archives: Lovecraftian arts

Chats et Autres Betes (1933)

07 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts

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My continuing reading of the Barlow letters, now about half-way, has led me to discover a fine Lovecraftian artwork. Its excellence causes my ‘Kittee Tuesday’ feature to make a brief return.

In early 1934 Lovecraft was in New York and, having just put young Barlow on the bus, he sauntered over to the public library to peruse the new books with Belknap Long. He was rewarded by the sight of a new cat book. Steinlen’s Chats et Autres Betes had been published in Paris in 1933, and was presumably freshly catalogued and on display among the new artbooks. It has 19 black and white etched plates, seemingly very conventional, but with a tipped-in end-paper which is magnificent. Here is a good look at the whisker-twirling work, which we can only imagine had Lovecraft emitting a rare out-loud chuckle when he saw it…

It there’s ever to be a proper Lovecraft Museum in a physical building, this must surely be a prime candidate for one of the giant wall murals at the Cat Cafe.

There’s no Archive.org or other free edition of the book. While the French Gallica site does have the book’s more mundane kitties, it does not have a scan of the ensemble end-paper — presumably prised out and stolen long ago.

The faint lines on the scan are perhaps archival preservation tape applied to prevent cracking. It would be rather fab if a talented DeviantArt artist were to faithfully re-make this at 8k, perhaps with the additional of faint moonlight colour.

What was Steinlen’s inspiration? One wonders if he might have encountered Lovecraft’s story “The Cats of Ulthar” by around 1932, and if so this would be an early Lovecraft illustration. “Ulthar” had been published in Weird Tales in 1926, and presumably such things were known in the Surrealist circles of Paris in the 1920s and 30s. But possibly there were other “king o’ the cats” stories or fairy-tales in France. Can French readers offer any evidence, for a supposition that the Paris Surrealists knew of Weird Tales? Or offer a well-known source in French folk-tale or nursery-rhyme?

Fungi From Yuggoth

30 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works

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A clear look at the cover for Fungi From Yuggoth: An Annotated Edition (2017), via the scan for a copy currently for sale on AbeBooks.

The tight crop on the seller’s scan makes it look vaguely like it might be a booklet. But it was in fact a limited edition 288-page hardcover, copiously annotated. With fine illustrations by Jason C. Eckhardt. 300 copies were issued at $45 each, and a paperback or ebook edition has yet to appear.

David E. Schultz, one of the leading authorities on Lovecraft, has spent decades preparing this annotated edition of the Fungi. He meticulously discusses the origin of the poem (including the influence of Donald Wandrei’s similar cycle, Sonnets of the Midnight Hours), its connections with Lovecraft’s fiction, Lovecraft’s changing thoughts on natural expression in poetry, and the complex history of the poem’s publication — both as individual sonnets and as a unity. Schultz also provides penetrating annotations on every poem.

Whispers from the Ghooric Zone bagged a copy in 2018, and kindly offered potential readers a peep inside.

Guns, Love, and Tentacles

28 Saturday Mar 2020

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The real-time-comic styled sci-fi AAA vidogame Borderlands 3 has a new strongly Lovecraftian makeover, in the form of its major “Guns, Love, and Tentacles” premium DLC. On release now, it’s apparently it’s a great success and even strongly improves a vital aspect of the game.

Kotaku’s review sums it up (partial spoilers)…

The scenery on Xylourgos is […] a massive (and dead) monstrosity known as Gythian serves as the centerpiece, and inhabitants have built a town directly under its corpse. Gythian is an ever-present aspect of the environment and storyline, with tentacles stretching both literally and metaphorically across the planet’s vast wastelands. [The alien planet] Xylourgos is also cloaked in darkness thanks to a perpetual solar eclipse, the thin glimpses of light that manage to escape casting an eerie blue-green hue over the icy landscape.

Gythian is an obvious homage to Lovecraftian deities like Cthulhu [with] a cult that worships Gythian’s heart as part of some bizarre love ritual. There’s also an NPC [non-player character] who believes himself to be a fishman a la “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and asks the player to lower him into a frozen lake to commune with his fish queen.

Borderlands 3 isn’t a game known for its incredible boss fights. They usually go a little something like this: a giant bad guy appears [at the end of the game’s level] and you shoot them until they die. [Yet here the player at last gets] a boss fight that actually feels difficult, compelling, and rewarding […] it makes a nice change from defeating Borderlands bosses through brute force.

[…] one of the most enjoyable romps I’ve had with the Borderlands series since it debuted in 2009.”

Sounds great. Doubtless there will be a gazillion play-throughs on YouTube before the weekend is out, so go there if you want to see more of what the game looks and plays like.

“English dreams and memories”

27 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings

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Seen below are some good photo-reference pictures for an 18th century suit, and these may be useful for artists seeking to depict H.P. Lovecraft as an 18th century Englishman of letters. Interestingly, if Lovecraft had ever acquired the financial means to purchase a steam-heated English mansion in Devonshire, complete with semi-tropical glass-houses, then he could have settled in England. Since he knew of…

… the legal provision which makes me still able, as the grandson in direct male line of a true-born Englishman, to call myself a rightful British subject.

… but otherwise one imagines that our climate would have dampened his ardour for England, even on a summer visit of a few months.

Lovecraftian Anime

24 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast veers off the ancient track and dives into a survey of Japanese animation, in the new “Lovecraftian Anime” episode.

Along similar lines is the new “Reading the Bible with Horror” podcast, interviewing the author of a book-length survey of all the ‘monster horror’ bits of the Bible. The blurb for this also reveals a new project, The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters.