So much for March's posts.
I'll shortly have to decide whether or not to continue this blog (which I wouldn't have started through choice) after finishing my degree. I think I will; the novelty of seeing places I'd never heard of on the Analytics map hasn't worn off yet.
Anyway, as you're probably aware if you're interested in this sort of thing,
Journal Four of the wonderful
Strange Attractor is out now, featuring contributions from Ken Hollings, Erik Davis, Alan Moore, Mike Jay and others. It also has very nice cover art by Julian House.
Coincidentally, I was using that same split eye image on an (abandoned, for now) cover for
The Atrocity Exhibition.
At the moment I'm also reading a novel by an author I discovered through Journal Two,
Foam of the Daze by Boris Vian. It looks like I was lucky to get hold of a cheap copy. Do people really pay
these prices? I then made up for it by spending an absurd amount on a
book about
Ikko Tanaka (although nothing like what they're asking for it now).
Tell you what,
Monster Brains has been on a roll lately. Check out the recent posts on
Alfred Kubin,
Jaroslav Panuska,
C.J. Pyle,
Carlo Somaschini,
Boris Zabirokhin and
A. Paul Weber, among others. And it was strange seeing Dougal Dixon's
Man After Man and
The New Dinosaurs again: I borrowed them from Chorley Library as a kid but I'd completely forgotten they existed.
Oh, and while I've been away A Journey Round My Skull has become
50 Watts. Does this guy ever sleep?
Alberto Martini (1876-1954) was an Italian artist and illustrator whose work has been described as "proto-Surrealism" (all roads seem to lead there on this blog), although he refused to join the Surrealist movement. He studied drawing and painting with his father, who was a professor of drawing at the Instituto Technico in Treviso and a portrait painter who copied the old masters (Martini absorbed the influenced of Bosch, Bruegel, Dürer and Cranach, among others). He produced numerous illustrations for the likes of Poe, Dante, Shakespeare, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Boccaccio and Mallarmé, and his work appeared in magazines such as Jugend and Dekorative Kunst. He also created a set of propaganda postcards during World War I. More Martini: 1, 2, 3.
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