Chimei Hamada

Soaring, 1958

Irritating B, 1975

Dead End, 1981

Decorative work for the poetry of Hiroshi Osada II, 1973

Ghost Brought Back to Life, 1956

Landscape, 1953

A-re-re, 1974

The Japanese artist Chimei Hamada (b.1917) studied at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts before serving in the army in China during World War II. In 1950 he began a series of etchings, Elegy for a New Conscript, in which he translated his experiences of war into grotesque, satirical and hallucinatory monochrome images, some of which remind me a little of the work of Alfred Kubin or even Goya, although others are something else entirely. There isn't a great deal of his work to be seen online, but there's a few more images here, here, and here.

More Quay covers

My copy of Suzanne Buchan's The Quay Brothers: Into A Metaphysical Playroom arrived yesterday, and it includes a page of book covers designed by the Quays (see this post). Unfortunately the images are tiny black and white thumbnails, but these are the few I've managed to track down online.

Op-ed

Anita Siegel

Fons Van Woerkom

Edward Gorey

Anita Siegel

Mel Furukawa

Murray Tinkelman

Michaela Barasky

Roland Topor

Tomi Ungerer

Please excuse the infrequent updates for the time being; I'm trying to get as much art and music done as possible while I have the chance.

Above are a few New York Times Op-ed illustrations found in two issues of Graphis (158 and 180). Unfortunately I didn't have time to make a note of any more information before I returned them. I've always found this kind of black and white, mostly pen and ink work appealing and infinitely preferable to the slightly twee, 1950s-retro look that's so prevalent in editorial illustration nowadays. I'm also intrigued by what little I've seen of Anita Siegel's collage pieces.

The Drowned World & The Cage of Sand

Karel Vaca

These are the work of Czech artist and designer Karel Vaca (1919-1989). According to Terry Posters, Vaca designed 289 film posters, and many of the examples on the site look fairly rushed and/or pedestrian, but the above selection includes some of the more inspired ones. A few of his paintings can be seen here and here.

Eugene Mihaesco

Op-Ed art by the Romanian-born illustrator Eugene Mihaesco. There appears to be next to nothing by or about Mihaesco online, other than this:

Ceausescu was enraged at the drawings. In early 1989 Mihaesco's 79-year-old father Nicolae, who lives in Bucharest, was sacked from his job, isolated from his friends and ordered to rein in his "seditious" son. "I'm crushed if you go on," Nicolae told Eugene by telephone. "They will destroy me, destroy your mother." Grasping for a solution, the artist screamed at his father -- and the eavesdropping police -- "Don't tell me what to do. I disinherit you!" Children do not disinherit parents; this artist is crazy. Or so Mihaesco hoped the Securitate would think. Soon after, his father got his job back. But Nicolae Mihaescu did not understand his son's vehemence. They have not spoken since.