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Fortean Art

Art by A Sudo Wu:
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Art by Jeroen jongeleen:
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From Twitter:
In Oct 2020, an extraordinary collection of over 400 erotic sketches by British artist, Duncan Grant (1885-1978), came to light. The collection was thought to have been destroyed but had secretly been passed from lover to lover, friend to friend, for over 60yrs.

Grant was a painter, a textile designer, theatre designer & pottery artist. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group &, although most of his love affairs were with men, he did have well as a relationship with Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf’s sister), with whom he had a child

He had many lovers - his cousin, the writer Lytton Strachey, Arthur Hobhouse (a politician) and the economist John Maynard Keynes. It’s thought many of the men in the pictures were also his lovers.

Grant had a daughter with Vanessa Bell, who was married to Clive Bell, with whom she had two sons. Shortly before WW1, Vanessa, Clive, Duncan Grant & Duncan's lover David Garnett all moved in to Charleston Farmhouse together .

The writer Dorothy Parker is said to have quipped that the 'Bloomsbury paints in circles, lives in squares and loves in triangles.'

It was thought that Le Bas’ sister had destroyed them after he had died, but she hadn’t. The collection had secretly been passed to from lover to lover, friend to friend, until they wound up in the hands of theatre designer Norman Coates, who kept them under his bed for 11 years

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1451251392526659585
 
https://www.theoldwaterworks.com/an-english-garden

An English Garden is the Estuary 2021 iteration of How to Make a Bomb, the durational gardening project by artist Gabriella Hirst. The project is centred on the propagation and redistribution of a nearly-extinct species of garden rose which was created and registered under the name Rosa floribunda ‘Atom Bomb’ in 1953. The project charts the various attempts by Hirst to produce new specimens of the ‘Atom Bomb’ rose through grafting and cuttings. Propagated plants are to be distributed throughout gardens in the UK parallel to the resurgence of long-dormant cold war-era public fear mongering in the media and political rhetoric.
 
Posted by Cristian Bok, experimental poet:

AFTER THE FALL #101 by @mikkel_hartmann (who not only shows "the remains of a civilization, which has long since left for the stars," but also tells such a story in one comic frame, doing so in a style reminiscent of Martin Vaughn-James—what a treasure): https://t.co/s2LggAIy3C https://t.co/nPJyTQl7gj

That's a series of NFT's.

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Visited one of my favourite galleries. First time since corona. Hooray!
I love those artworks that are a total mystery until you read the booklet.

Clare Noonan, Paperweight and Stories, 2012

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Sven Johne, Trelleborg II, 2014

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A webpage with "real" Fortean art. Interesting throughout:

Don’t Call Them Witches: Your Guide to the Séance Photographers, Psychic Visionairies, and Occultists of the Venice Biennale
"The Milk of Dreams" spotlights artists engaged in alternative, anti-rational ways of knowing.

Milly Canavero, Italian Psychic Who Channeled Extraterrestrials
In 1973, the Genoese artist Milly Canavero (1920–2010) met with a spiritual medium who revealed to her that she, too, had innate psychic abilities. Though Canavero knew nothing about the world of parapsychology, after the encounter, she began to experiment with a planchette, spelling out messages that were sent to her from the beyond. After several years, Canavero progressed into automatic drawings, composed of energetic, zigzagging lines and spirals. These drawings are on view at the Biennale in “The Milk of Dreams” in the Central Pavilion. Canavero considered the drawings, which are sometimes marked by ciphers or hieroglyphic marks, to be messages from extraterrestrial intelligence.

And more:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/guide-to-the-witches-of-the-venice-biennale-2101401/amp-page
 
@vibekemascini - 10kWh of electricity generated from burning cocaine, lithium batteries, transformer, battery management system, cables.

In collaboration with customs, Vibeke was given access to a power facility that commonly destroys illegal items, om the occasion of a large siege of cocaine. From this process electricity was harnessed on site to charge the battery that is currently powering the only light source in the space. #stellar #vibekemascini #rijksakademieopen2022
#amsterdam @vibekemascini

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Today I read that Lovecraft was influenced by Nicolas Roerich:

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Roerich believed that World War I had been the apocalypse that signaled the end of the Hindu Kali Yuga and the start of the next phase of human evolution and civilization. He claimed that this new world age would be directed by a mysterious cult of Mahatmas living in isolated splendor deep in Shambhala in Central Asia. These, of course, answer to the “deathless Chinamen” who live in Central Asia in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu,” and they derive from Theosophical traditions, as appropriated from Buddhism, in turn derived from the Hindu belief that Vishnu’s incarnation as Kalki will rule the millennial kingdom of Shambhala thousands of years from now.

Roerich, for his part, opened a museum in New York City in 1930 to display his dramatic paintings, including some of Buddhist monasteries clinging to the snowy sides of the Himalayas. H. P. Lovecraft visited the museum shortly after its opening, and he was inspired by these strange vistas. “Surely Roerich is one of those rare fantastic souls,” Lovecraft wrote in a 1930 letter, “who have glimpsed the grotesque, terrible secrets outside space & beyond time & who have retained some ability to hint at the marvels they have seen.”[148] He modeled the Old Ones’ frozen mountain city in At the Mountains of Madness on Roerich’s paintings, which he explicitly cited in the story: “Something about the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich, and of the still stranger and more disturbing descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng which occur in the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.”[149]

From this great book:
Jason Colavito

Faking History: Essays on Aliens, Atlantis, Monsters, and More​

https://www.amazon.com/Faking-History-Essays-Atlantis-Monsters/dp/1482387824
 
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Some NFT's collected by Christian Bök, experimental poet. In principle I don't like NFT's but he has very good taste and convinces even me:
https://twitter.com/christianbok - Not bad for computer generated art!
Or ... That new telescope is working great! :)

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This story of a homeless man commissioned and sponsored to serve as a living artwork appeared in Fortean Times, issue #92.
LIVING ART

Roger Powell, 47, a former labourer from Porthcawl, south Wales, can be bought for £850,000. He has been designated "a work of art" by Tony Kaye, a British artist-cum-philanthropist who now lives in California. Mr Kaye, once homeless himself, discovered Mr Powell sleeping rough near Waterloo Station in London and persuaded him to sign a contract guaranteeing him a home and living expenses for as long as he was prepared to be a work of art. Both men assume the deal will last until one of them dies.

Mr Kaye is hailed as the man who put "art" into TV commercials and commands fees of up to £100,000 a day. He discovered Mr Powell, a former labourer, a year ago and has exhibited him outside galleries in America and France, including the Louvre and the Washington National Gallery, in a small steel frame inscribed Roger. There are upcoming exhibitions of Roger in Moscow and Israel. Mr Powell visits Mr Kaye's London office every Friday to pick up £75 expenses. His £60 rent, for a room in Maida Vale, north London, is paid by the office.

D.Telegraph, 17 June; D.Mirror, 18 June 1996.
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SALVAGED FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE: https://web.archive.org/web/19980216123745/http://www.forteantimes.com/artic/92/shorts.html
 
EnolaGaia said:
This story of a homeless man commissioned and sponsored to serve as a living artwork appeared in Fortean Times, issue #92. ...
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Update ... Powell and Kaye eventually fell out of touch. Powell died in 2002.
Roger Powell, Human Work of Art

In 1995 Roger Powell was 46 years old and living homeless on the streets of London after the failure of his taxi business. And then, by a strange twist of fate, his life changed and he became a work of art.

Film director Tony Kaye had decided to display a homeless person as a work of art at the Saatchi Gallery. ...

Powell sat in the gallery beside a sign explaining that he was for sale as a "human work of art." The price: £1000.

As far as I know, no one offered to buy Powell. Nevertheless, Kaye continued to display Powell at various museums for the next two-and-a-half years, but most of the time not as an official exhibit. Powell would simply walk around the museums while wearing a t-shirt that said "For Sale, Roger, By Tony Kaye, Four Million Pounds." (The sale price had inflated quite a bit.) In return for doing this, Kaye paid Powell a small weekly allowance and gave him some money towards rent. ...

Eventually Kaye lost touch with Powell. Then, in 2002 Powell died. Kaye paid for Powell's cremation and received his ashes. He said he planned to use them to create a painting that would say "Dead Homeless Man." I don't know if he ever completed this work.
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FULL STORY (With Photos): https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/roger_powell_human_work_of_art
 
TWITTER:
The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor
This painting is from 1833.
It's by Thomas Cole, an artist of extraordinary imaginative power.
But The Titan's Goblet isn't even his masterpiece...
Thomas Cole was born in England but later moved to America and became a citizen.
There he was inspired by the sheer size and beauty of the American landscape.
In keeping with the Romantic Age of art, which focussed on drama and high emotion, he set to work painting it...
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The world of Quentin Smirhes.
Quentin Smirhes​


My name is quentin, my jumper is mustard and my hair is combed nicely. I'm not so keen on trousers as they chafe the thigh. I have many friends which include Comfrey, Ludwig, Geisel and Alvin although I'm not so keen on Alvin as he is mean. My favourite food is lunction meat with broad bean cases and wobbly blancmange for afters. Good day!

Video Art at Link:
https://thewrong.tv/27
 
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Frideswide said:
Are you going to sell them @MercuryCrest ?
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I did, briefly, but I no longer sell artwork, sorry.

I also did a couple of map pieces (again, sold as coasters) for the Bennington Triangle and the Bridgewater Triangle. I got Coleman's and Citro's permission to do those, as they were the ones who coined the terms. Apparently, those coasters are in the International Cryptozoology Museum, as I gave Loren Coleman a set for that purpose (Hehehe, he even asked me to sign them; made me giddy at the time).
 
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I recommed all of these mini-lectures from the National Gallery, but this one on Bartolomé Bermejo's Saint Michael Triumphs over the Devil is likely of interest here:


As to symbolism, I would suggest:
  • The disguised nature of the 'demons within a demon' teach that the true depths of evil are seldom apparent at first glance.
  • The fact that snakes and tails slither outward even on the very verge of defeat and show how the threat of contagion is present until evil has been extinguished absolutely.
  • The demon being an unnatural union of disparate species nods towards the notion that evil cannot truly create; it can only contort, combine and corrupt that which has been made by God.
 
This is a very interesting article. You really need to see the images to get the point:

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Demons, monsters and witches: The surprising power of horror stories​

By Emily Steer
15th May 2023

Artist Lydia Pettit's latest exhibition uses horror tropes to confront PTSD and sexual trauma. Emily Steer looks at the visual artists using grotesque and terrifying images in surprising ways.

Horror films and stories confront us with the darkest parts of life. For the visual artists who use them in their work, horror tropes can provide a route to healing and empowerment. Some subvert culturally entrenched clichés, such as stigmatised female bleeding and demonised witchcraft. For others, the horror of lived experience is conveyed through grotesque imagery.

"Horror has given me the strength and language to discuss trauma and things I'm ashamed of in a way that distances me from them," says Lydia Pettit. The London-based artist has just opened a solo exhibition, In Your Anger, I See Fear at Berlin's Galerie Judin, in which she inhabits the roles of terrorised victim, knife-wielding killer and formidable witch. She confronts sexual trauma and PTSD through painting, addressing not just the victimised parts of herself, but also her sense of vengeance.

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Continues with illustration:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article...itches-the-surprising-power-of-horror-stories
 
I saw this post last night but I thought it wasn’t wise to look at the pictures during the night. I was correct, much better in day light.
 
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