Category Archives: Lovecraftian arts

Cthulhu in the Library?

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, New discoveries

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From William Gerold’s b&w photobook College Hill; a photographic study of Brown University in its two hundredth year (1965). Gerold seems unaware of Lovecraft — and anyway couldn’t have photographed 66 College St. circa 1960-65, H.P. Lovecraft’s old house, as it had been moved from the site in 1959. Though he photographed some of the architectural details and sculpted animals and suchlike, and along the way managed to record this Cthulhu-idol like detail from the John Carter Brown Library (1904) at Brown University.

“My aunt is well acquainted with Mr. Champlin Burrage, an Oxford man, who is librarian of the John Carter Brown library at Brown. (I hope to meet him very soon.)” — letter from Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, April 1917.

Circa 1910 postcards of the Library frontage…

“Exhibitions to which the public are welcome are held throughout the year [at the JCB Library]” (1916).

And how it looked by the 1940s, becoming grow-over…

Update: Another photo has surfaced. This ironwork Cthulhu was not inside but outside the Library.

Sargasso #2 and #3

11 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works

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I see that Sargasso #2 and Sargasso #3 have appeared since I noted #1 in summer 2013. Sargasso: journal of William Hope Hodgson Studies, is the quality scholarly journal devoted to Hodgson.

A scholarly article in #2 may be of tangential interest to Lovecraft scholars. A full review of #2 usefully summarises…

Scott Conner’s ‘Dust and Atoms: The Influence of William Hope Hodgson on Clark Ashton Smith’. The long-held belief that ‘The Night Land’ [1912] was a major influence on Smith’s Zothique stories is more or less conclusively disproved by the evidence that he hadn’t read any Hodgson books until two years after the first Zothique tale [1932] was published. On the other hand, Scott Conner provides very convincing evidence that ‘The House on the Borderland’ [1908] was definitely a great influence on the writing of Smith’s story, ‘The Treader in the Dust’ [1935].

Lovecraft himself only made… “the discovery, in the summer of 1934, of the forgotten work of William Hope Hodgson.” (I Am Providence, S.T. Joshi) and felt the work was rather conventional in terms of the philosophy it worked in. Lovecraft considered that…

He is trying to illustrate human nature through symbols & turns of idea which possess significance for those taking a traditional or orthodox view of man’s cosmic bearings. There is no true attempt to express the indefinable feelings experienced by man in confronting the unknown. … To get a full-sized kick from this stuff one must take seriously the orthodox view of cosmic organisation — which is rather impossible today.

Mascara Lovecraft

09 Wednesday Jan 2019

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From Peru, and presumably intended for Carnival time there, the Mascara Lovecraft (a life-sized Lovecraft mask, for wearing). The price seems to convert from the Peruvian Peso P to U.S. $ at about $40. I didn’t go looking but I’m guessing they might be importing from the larger Carnival market in Brazil, so you may also be able to find them available elsewhere in Latin America?

They also have a Poe mask…

New for my patrons

05 Saturday Jan 2019

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Now available to my Patreon patrons, a picture of Marblehead at sunset, in my cleaned and adjusted b&w version. It should be printable at large size, such as a 12-inch wide print. The technical details are: 3,700 pixels at 300dpi, as a .JPG, saved at 100% with no compression.

Lovecraft was of course greatly enamoured of Marblehead at sunset, and while there are some postcards this is perhaps the best artistic picture of such and dates from Lovecraft’s time. The seagulls even resemble night-gaunts! Patrons also get the colour original public domain version (partially cleaned by me), which they can tweak and sharpen to their own tastes. Artists may even want to have a go at replacing the sail boat with a newly-risen Tentacled One. There’s a white dot in the sky on the left which I’ve left uncleaned, as I think it’s a star emerging from the sky.

New book: L’antre de l’horreur

05 Saturday Jan 2019

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I see that Richard Corben’s recent Poe and Lovecraft horror adaptations are set to be collected in French translation as L’antre de l’horreur, with a “large format” print book due for publication by Panini on 9th January 2019. According to one blurb this edition…

Contains the U.S. comics Haunt of Horror: Edgar Allan Poe #1-3 and Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft #1-3, previously published in a Marvel collection [Haunt of Horror, 2008] and three unreleased comics.

An Amazon review usefully explains that his Lovecraft strips were only very loose and basic adaptations…

Contains a [comics] story loosely ‘inspired by’ Poe or Lovecraft in the comic medium followed by the original text [of Poe or Lovecraft].

Useful to know, as it’s the Lovecraft art that many will probably be buying this for rather than for the potted stories, which they’ll already know well. In that case you might be looking at the 112 pages stated for the 2008 book by Amazon, and expecting to get 112 pages of Corben art. But it sounds like you might get a lot less art.

I see that Amazon currently has Marvel’s collected Lovecraft English-language volume of 2008 as a $10 used print hardcover, or individually as $2 Kindle ebook downloads: #1, #2 and #3.

Lovecraft and Borges

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

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A new blog article on “Borges, Lovecraft, and Metaphysical Horror”. Be warned, there are huge plot-spoilers for Borges, in so far as he has plots.

Borges actually explores hidden knowledge [and its implications] … Borges’ horror is [thus] the culmination of Lovecraft’s program

Previously on Tentaclii:

“Lovecraft to Borges: cities in deserts”; “Borges leitor de Lovecraft”; “The Necronomicon seen from the Aleph: pseudo-intertextuality in Lovecraft and Borges”; and “Mathematical Monstrosity: Lovecraft’s geometry, Borges’s infinity, and beyond”.

Yes! We Have Bananas!

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings

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The sheet music for the song “Yes! We Have No Bananas” by Robert King and James F. Hanley slips out-of-copyright in America at the start of 2019, having been held up for 20 years by the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

One H.P. Lovecraft once crept (rather naughtily) up to the organ loft of the Providence First Baptist church and tried to play this tune to liven things up a bit. Now it can be played whenever and wherever one spots a handy organ loft, royalty free.

In terms of being a 1923 publication one assumes that the Lovecraft revision story “The Horror at Martin’s Beach” (1923), written with Sonia, is affected by this? His other 1923 fiction is already in the public domain. His 1924 collaborations “The Loved Dead” and “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” also seem likely to be affected at the start of 2020, as the annual conveyor-belt of releases now starts up again after the 20 year hiatus.

The 1923 Harry Clarke edition of Poe’s Tales of mystery and imagination also seems of interest for its outstanding illustrations by the Irish artist. It appears to be a New York first edition, but is actually a reprint from 1919 but with new illustrations including new colour plates.

This 1923 Life cover is also rather good…

Wladyslaw T. Benda died 1948, so presumably his art also comes out of copyright under the 70 years rule?

In terms of “70 years” literature from authors who died in 1948, and likely to be of interest to readers of this blog, see this post. Canada and New Zealand have life plus 50 years, and so get Mervyn Peake’s work (Gormenghast).

New books from Modiphius

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books, REH, Scholarly works

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A new 120-page book claims to catalogue all the monsters of Robert E. Howard. Conan: Horrors of the Hyborean Age appears to be one of those PDF books for gamers that that give them the monster ‘stats’, but which are also rather useful for the reference shelves of writers.

Not sure about the cover, though. I recently re-read the Howard Conan stories in audiobook and I don’t quite remember Wonder Woman fighting a T. Rex, as per this book’s cover. Nor the distinctly LOTR orc who flanks Conan.

As a gamebook it needs to be interflipped with the Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed core rule-book. There appear to be other catalogue-like guide books to Conan’s world in the same series, one on Ancient Ruins & Cursed Cities and a guide to Nameless Cults, Cosmology and Gods. Apparently they all have inspiring art inside, and I’d guess also some maps.

Gloom Number

30 Sunday Dec 2018

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As we say goodbye to an irrationally gloom-shrouded year, it seems surprisingly fitting that I stumble on the newly-posted cover of Life magazine’s “Gloom Number” from July 1914. One imagines Lovecraft must have noticed this in the Reading Room of the Public Library, and on the magazine racks, at the start of July 1914.

Presumably the death of John Barleycorn, dated to 1st July 1919 on the central tombstone, had some relevance to the anticipated legal and political moves toward prohibition of alcohol? The cartoonist would thus be implying that the planned prohibition of alcohol would not work. If that’s the case then he also implied that those who promoted prohibition were gloomy killjoys, long past the age at which fun might be had.

London Lovecraft Festival returns in 2019

29 Saturday Dec 2018

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The London Lovecraft Festival Returns…

“This year [2019] the festival is one day longer and many productions will be larger, with several one-off performances especially created for the festival. These include: a staged reading of “Cool Air” originally done at the 2005 Seattle Lovecraft Festival; a production of “Shivers”, the cult favourite spooky tales and music event; and a first-ever “Night of a Thousand Tentacles: Lovecraft” burlesque evening on opening night, co-produced with the Clocktopus Cabaret. There is also an interactive production “Patient 4620” which will place over all seven days of the festival, off-site at the Royal Museum of Contemporary Art. […] Two brand new, fully-realized productions will make their world premiere at the festival: “Late Night with Cthulhu”, a look at life after the Old Ones take over; and “Lovecraft After Dark”, an expansion of story-teller Jonathan Goodwin’s excursion into weird fiction. […] two nights of the show “Providence”, a blending of Lovecraft’s life and stories; a reading of “Pickman’s Model” by master storyteller Robert Lloyd Parry; two nights of a puppet-enhanced version of “The Lurking Fear”; and a sound-effects/radio play presentation of “The Colour out of Space. The festival also has a new writing strand…”.