UFC LEGEND RANDY COUTURE CAST IN COMIC BOOK ADAPTATION!

UFC LEGEND RANDY COUTURE CAST IN COMIC BOOK ADAPTATION!

Randy Couture conjures up the image of flexing muscles, the smell of blood, and the taste of… salt water?  Because this time, in addition to “fighter”, “champion” and “actor”, Randy Couture adds “pirate” to his resumé.

Thomas Negovan coaches Randy Couture on the art of piracy for Cursed Pirate Girl.

 

Reading the role of the vicious henchman “Sharky” in the cast recording of Jeremy Bastian’s comic Cursed Pirate Girl wasn’t that far of a stretch for the three-time heavyweight champion.  In the story, his character is the pirate muscle who causes serious trouble for Cursed Pirate Girl, played by Stephanie Leonidas (Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s cult film MirrorMask, BBC’s Dracula).  Couture is the second voice actor to be named in the audio drama.

This Cast Recording of the book will not be for sale, but will be played at select library and bookstore events this Fall.

Adapting a book to a cast recording isn’t a new idea, but it is something unseen in comics in America since the Superman serials in the Golden Age of Radio, and is the first time it’s being developed specifically with the intention to inspire new comic readers.  “This really is the first time something like this has been done,” says Olympian Publishing’s Thomas Negovan.  “Cursed Pirate Girl is a rare book that appeals equally to children and adults, and we’re thrilled that this cast recording will be an opportunity for long-time comic readers to experience a book alongside newer ones, and help to get a new generation excited about comics!”

Randy Couture laughs during the recording of Cursed Pirate Girl

 

Cursed Pirate Girl is one of the most talked-about books in the comic industry:  Mike Mignola (Hellboy) exclaimed the book to be “truly original… Jeremy Bastian is a genius!”; David Petersen (Mouse Guard) calls it “classic storytelling that any age can enjoy… (it) makes other artists jealous- and comic readers drool!”  Gerard Way (The Umbrella Academy, and singer for the rock band My Chemical Romance) says “Cursed Pirate Girl is totally ahead of its time.  I wish I’d thought of it!” 

And most succinctly, summed up by award-winning Symbolist painter Gail Potocki: “Cursed Pirate Girl is our generation’s Alice in Wonderland.”

The complete three issue storyline of Jeremy Bastian’s Cursed Pirate Girl is available online at http://www.olympianpublishing.com or ask your local retailer to contact Haven Distribution at http://www.havendistro.com

For more information contact media@centuryguild.net .

Cursed Pirate Girl #1 (of 3), third printing, available online from Olympian Publishing.

STEPHANIE LEONIDAS (MIRRORMASK, DRACULA) IS CURSED PIRATE GIRL!

STEPHANIE LEONIDAS (MIRRORMASK, DRACULA) IS CURSED PIRATE GIRL! (Press Release 2 March 2010)

Stephanie Leonidas, star of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s film for the Jim Henson Company MirrorMask and the BBC’s award-winning production of Dracula, adds a new role to her resumé this fall: the title character in a cast recording of Jeremy Bastian’s comic book Cursed Pirate Girl.  This cast recording is not for sale, but will be played at select library and bookstore events this Fall.

Cursed Pirate Girl #1 (of 3), third printing

 

Adapting a comic book to a cast recording isn’t a new idea, but it is something unseen in comics since the Superman serials in the Golden Age of Radio, and is the first time it’s being developed specifically with the intention to inspire new comic readers.  “This really is the first time something like this has been done,” says Olympian Publishing’s Thomas Negovan.  “Cursed Pirate Girl is a rare book that appeals equally to children and adults, and we’re thrilled that this cast recording will be an opportunity for long-time comic readers to experience a book alongside newer ones, and help to get that next generation excited about reading comics!”

Stephanie Leonidas is the Cursed Pirate Girl

 

Cursed Pirate Girl is one of the most talked-about books in the comic industry:  Mike Mignola (Hellboy) exclaimed the book to be “truly original… Jeremy Bastian is a genius!”; David Petersen (Mouse Guard) calls it “classic storytelling that any age can enjoy… (it) makes other artists jealous- and comic readers drool!”  Gerard Way (The Umbrella Academy, and singer for the rock band My Chemical Romance) says “Cursed Pirate Girl is totally ahead of its time.  I wish I’d thought of it!” 

And most succinctly, summed up by award-winning Symbolist painter Gail Potocki: “Cursed Pirate Girl is our generation’s Alice in Wonderland.”

Stephanie Leonidas reading Cursed Pirate Girl

 

The entire three-issue story arc of Jeremy Bastian’s Cursed Pirate Girl is now available online at http://www.olympianpublishing.com or ask your local retailer to contact Haven Distribution at http://www.havendistro.com

For more information contact media@centuryguild.net .

Stephanie Leonidas

CENTURY GUILD Featured On Newest Doctor Who DVD!!!

All right, not really, but I finally watched “The End of Time” last night, and was thrilled that our booth of 19th Century and Symbolist Art showed up in the bonus features on the Complete Specials DVD!

You can clearly see the Dave McKean and Gail Potocki paintings, and Stuart for a few seconds (easily recognized as the only man to attend San Diego Comic Con every year since 1979 in a Gordon Gekko costume- he’s quite excited about Wall Street 2!) and as shown in my highly pixellated screencaps (sorry, best I could do), a couple of choice seconds of Jeremy Bastian (1st), and Jack and Sioux Sinner (2nd):

We meet the most talented people in the world at San Diego Comic Con- last year’s highlights were, for Gail Potocki, Billy Mumy (she always wanted to be a member of his family on Lost in Space!), for Sioux, Colin Baker (“He was MY Doctor!”), and- for me- John Barrowman, who might just be the most charming man I’ve ever met.  (And I’ve met a lot…)  Check out the photos where he and Gail Potocki talk about their mutual appreciation of mesocephalic sideshow Freaks here.  This is clearly shaping into a full-on Doctor Who fan post.  

When John said that Gail should paint his portrait, she joked that she should portray him with two heads- a personification of his high energy- for her Circus Freaks series.

 

A funny story about Sioux’s Dalek tattoo… when she took her coat off at Dave McKean‘s signing at Soap Plant in Los Angeles, Dave leaned forward, grabbed her arm and asked incredulously, “Please tell me that washes off…?” The next day, I offered to pay for all of us get Doctor Who tattoos as we drove past a parlor (to needle Dave’s comment the night before), and Dave commented, “I shudder to think what I would have chosen as a permanent artwork when I was in MY twenties… I think I’d have a giant YES logo across my chest today.” (But Jack and I aren’t sure that that’s a bad thing…)

Sioux Sinner and her Dalek tattoo, back when she was still sporting short hair; and her pet Jack-a-lope

 

 

Tractator

 

Then, last weekend, I was interviewed by androzani.net about my unhealthy addiction to clutter. Well, that’s not exactly how THEY phrased it, but that’s how Gail Potocki is going to describe it when she reads this: http://androzani.net/archives/732. (I really wanted to wait until she showed up in Chicago and saw that drippy snail guy hanging out next to my bed, but the news must go on. BOB- don’t tell her!!! There is still a chance for surprise!)

“I bought one of the Tractators from the Peter Davison episode Frontios, and a Plasmaton costume. God knows what I’m going to do with THAT.”

Plasmaton, or Thomas answering the door to collect the post.

 

The only thing I’ll add is that I obviously DO know what I’ll do with a Plasmatron costume… (my mail lady doesn’t know what she’s in for).  Plus, I think it’s funny that the way that I said it was as though the Tractator costume was not ridiculous at all- in my sentence there is a very clear delineation between that and the of-course-it’s-useful-to-have Tractator, haha!  I did think about using the costumes to scare the neighborhood children, but I’d probably get beaten unconscious, what with kids today and their rap music and video games.  My generation?  We knew how to be scared by a snail-man and a rock-guy!

"My" Tractator in its previous home in the travelling museum exhibition, "Doctor Who Up Close"

 

Peter Davison and a Tractator

 

ARE YOU FOLLOWING US ON TWITTER ?

Potocki, McKean, Bastian updates, and Michael Zulli- The Fracture of the Universal Boy: part one.

TWO posts in one night?!?!?!

I’ve decided to get nothing else done tonight and get these things out in the world where they belong.

Four of the twenty acres of the Century Guild Farm have organic blueberry bushes...

Gail Potocki has moved her studio to a gorgeous, secluded farm, and is working (hard? or hardly?) on a series based on the Freak shows of the early 20th century.

Jack and I are preparing a book collaboration with Jim and Bébé Rose of circus sideshow fame and Mr. Cursed Pirate Girl himself, Jeremy Bastian, and spending a lot of personal time sculpting it (because we love Bébé so much!!!) while Cursed Pirate Girl blazes through printings and can’t keep up with demand- the third printing of #1 is officially all gone, and watch for a new Haven Distribution Exclusive second printing of #2- with an all new “the other side of the mirror” cover- in stores November 11!  (Retailers- contact havendistro.com for orders.)

Even when appearing to- as they say- sit still, Dave McKean vibrates at an intense frequency, making capturing him in a detailed photograph quite impossible.

I’m hard at work on the book on Silent Films for the Dave McKean show at Billy Shire Fine Arts in February, and back in England, Dave is as busy as ever and getting ready to spend the winter on the Nitrate paintings for the show- if we could devise a machine to follow him around and harness a fraction of what he radiates, we could power a second world country, quite easily.

If you’re not following Dave on Twitter, visit http://www.twitter.com/davemckean and add him- he posts lots of great photos and work-in-progress photos!  (Fans of Mirrormask will be happy to know that a recent tweet mentions that Dave’s second full-length film LUNA may be one step closer to completion…)

……….

What else is there to update?  I’ve been decimated by this new invention of the 22st century called “Acid Reflux” which I am currently deconstructing by maintaining a paleolithic diet of meats, fruits, and vegetables while I undo decades of bad (i.e., American) eating habits and try to rebuild my healthy flora.  I actually saw more improvement AFTER I threw away the prescriptions for acid suppressors and started the more holistic approach.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal (or so I would have been the first to say BEFORE I experienced the hospital stays), but it’s made me pretty incommunicado for the last season.  The good news is that I’m learning a lot about being responsible for my health in a way that I never have, and it’s making sense in all parts of my life.  I suspect this- if it doesn’t in fact kill me- will reveal itself to have been a massive learning experience about what we are “fed”- the propaganda of consumption– for the next phase of my life, and will improve my productivity and focus a thousand fold.  Plus- at long last- the analog recording studio here will be finally tweaked with the final install touches next week.  (That’s ten weeks in fewer than ten sentences!  Whew!)

……….

Speaking of focus, the kind of focus that makes electrons shudder, imagine being at the top of your game for decades.  Say, being one of the go-to artists on something as seminal and powerful as Neil Gaiman‘s epic graphic novel cycle The Sandman.  Imagine at the close of that era professional and personal difficulties decimating that ledge overlooking the valley, and as you fall down, hitting every rock and branch on the way down- no, the rocks weren’t leaping out of their way to break skin, it only felt like it- and reaching a point creatively where you were forced to examine the root, the core of what you believed in as an artist.

Now imagine living in seclusion for three harsh years of constant self-examination, painstakingly scripting, curling lines and tiny crosshatches with pen and ink on paper, each page never quite done for weeks on end…  And at the end of three years of determination and dedication, with over two hundred pages, twenty or so not making that final culling of the scythe.  Imagine THAT kind of focus.

Michael Zulli, foreshadowing...

What Michael Zulli has crafted with his masterpiece The Fracture of the Universal Boy is- and I say this without the slightest hesitation- more aligned with Symbolist literature such as Joris-Karl Huysman‘s 1891 novel Le Bas (“Down There” or “The Damned”) than anything else I can think of.  The poet Stéphane Mallarmé articulated the scope of the term Symbolism, stating “Suggestion, that is the dream”, and the dream/awake//surreal/hyper-real elements that make up The Fracture of the Universal Boy have absolutely NOTHING to do with anything I’ve ever seen happen in comics.

I don’t know yet how to sum it up in a brief passage, but the random fragments in my head are this:

(1) People- “comic readers” especially- will generally hate this book.  Angel raping?  Check.  Drug fiends under the swamp water?  Check.  False “happy” endings, and eviscerated eye sockets?  Oh, yes…  Seriously, it’s commercial suicide.

(2) Like Schiller said (and Klimt repeated), it is the artist’s duty to RAISE and EXPAND the consciousness of the public, not to feed them whatever smooth flavors they order.  See #1.

(3) This is not an easy read.  It’s harsh, melodramatic, overbearing, passionate… and captures in crystalline fashion EXACTLY the experiences of the artist- saying everything, while revealing nothing.  In short- this is, by definition, a perfect piece of ART.  Its sentiments are literally timeless, but it could only have been created today.  Its message would be equally as potent in 1810, 1910, 2010, and 2110.

Zulli has done a rare thing, which is brought the elements that made Symbolism an important movement, and found a way to make it relevant and contemporary.  Even if you feel the Pre-Raphaelite leanings of his commercial stories with Neil Gaiman are too saccharin, if you are honest with yourself when you read The Fracture of the Universal Boy you will be forced to admit that in this book the ink brush has cut completely past the velvet, through the twitching muscle, cracked the bone, and gone down to the very marrow of the artist-

And THAT is a RARE and PRECIOUS thing.

I know that was a bit of a ramble, but even though I’ve read the book a half dozen times, I still don’t have my head around it.  It’s like reading Carlos Castaneda, or like the Anti-Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  (It’s almost The Holy Mountain of graphic novels, if H. P. Lovecraft channelling Oscar Wilde had scripted Jodorowsky‘s film.)  It’s venom on a curved blade, and dandyism, and fear, and surrender and transcendence- and it is literally palpable.

Buy it.  Read it.  You’ll likely hate it.  And like strong medicine, that should tell you something- this is good for you.  Read it again.  One day a light bulb will click- and you’ll THANK him.

Coming this Spring:

THE FRACTURE OF THE UNIVERSAL BOY.  From Olympian Publishing, and Century Guild.

Damn.

Yes. That is a newborn baby with hookah pipes as umbilical cords.

Harpies, shrieking downward-

The nature of Dreams.

Falling through Earth; a poppy field.

Heart, torn from a ribcage- and a primal scream.

... the Universal Boy, about to learn something about Fractures.

Be careful what you wish for...

Because, sometimes...

The Thing You have wished for is thrust upon You.

Meditation, prayer, fasting- whatever it takes.

Start getting ready.

ps- the captions are my own, and are not meant to suggest the storyline in more than the most general of means.

July recap, part 2 of 2: San Diego Comic Con!

I feel as though there should be some celebration for post number 13.  A party around a cauldron, perhaps?

We are getting ready for the LA exhibition, things aren’t slowing down a bit, and I have to get something up about San Diego Comic Con so that I can write a post before leaving for California again- we are all racking up the frequent flyer miles, that is certain.

Crowds begin to form at the San Diego Convention Center, from Dave McKean's hotel window

Ummm… what do I remember?  Setup was long but not too difficult, opening night was upon us before we could blink.  The big news opening night?  Kildanny.

I have footage somewhere of Jeremy Bastian‘s expression of surprise when he saw his character come to life thanks to my friend Lex Rudd of Primal Visions.  We publish Jeremy’s book Cursed Pirate Girl, and Kildanny is a character in a tale that Cursed Pirate Girl weaves to scare some young boys.  (Cursed Pirate Girls are known to like to scare boys.  For fun.)  Cameras were flashing NONSTOP all weekend, and the amount of photos online are wonderful.  Here’s one:

The dreaded pirate Kildanny, from Jeremy Bastian's Cursed Pirate Girl

Jeremy Bastian, comparing moustaches with Kildanny-come-to-life

So as you can imagine, he was very happy, which made me very happy!

The rest is a bit of a blur.  We’ll make a formal announcement soon about our new artists, but in brief: Lisa Black’s sculptures were a massive hit and everything sold, with them entering some pretty impressive collections.  Boingboing.com and Wired put them in their Comic Con review, and io9.com listed them under “The 17 most expensive things at Comic Con“…

Lisa Black's Fawn, from her Fixed series. Taxidermy, metal and clockwork parts, 2007

I was very happy that my sister/sweetheart/partner-in-crime Sioux Sinner drove in from Las Vegas to help out.  Her Doctor Who-related tattoos of a Dalek and an Adipose were quite the conversation starters for the boys.  Something that happens a lot at these shows is that pretty girls get hired to be “booth babes” and pass out postcards for whatever crap someone is promoting, so the ongoing joke with how successful our show was that obviously all we needed was a booth babe.  (Just to be clear, that was a joke.  Sioux is very smart and was there for non-booth babe reasons.)

Reason number one being David Tennant, current lead in the legendary BBC programme Doctor Who, who was at the show, along with producer Russel T. Davies and cast members from the fantastic spin-off Torchwood, which has become massively successful in the US.

Doctor... Tennant? Not really. (Notice the girl in the back pointing at him?)

I am one of the people who has come to like Torchwood perhaps even MORE than Doctor Who, and was happy that Sioux brought star John Barrowman (affectionately known to the world as Captain Jack Harkness) to our booth.  He had just watched the movie “Freaks” with his sister, and was SO excited about Gail Potocki‘s new Freak series that I wish I had it on camera… he was very charming, and explained that as he and his sister watched the film they looked up facts on the internet.  Gail had done quite a bit of serious research, and he knew trivia that even she didn’t about her subjects!

The charming John Barrowman discussing Gail Potocki's Freak paintings

'Pip' from Gail Potocki's new Freaks series. (Who, thanks to John Barrowman, we now know was incontinent- hence the dress...)

During set-up, we teased Gail that her Freaks prints were going out in the hallway because she was “old news” behind Jeremy Bastian and Dave McKean.  After the hysterical fun that the VERY charming John Barrowman brought into our booth she joked, “Don’t underestimate Pip- he saved the day!  Even though you tried to stick me out in the hallway.”

John Barrowman joking with Gail Potocki

Founding members of the Freak Appreciation Society

Of course, the painting “Destiny” by Dave McKean was a huge hit, and the Transmission Atelier prints of Dave’s Nitrate series sold VERY well.  When Dave approached the booth, he said, “Hmmm… I like my billing- over Klimt, not too bad!”, something Gail had joked about during set-up…

Dave McKean's 'Destiny' painting (plus that guy Klimt). Jeremy Bastian and Jack help a customer, Emily appeears to be... reading? I'm not sure.

Century Guild booth: Opium, Cocaine...

Gerard Way, singer for My Chemical Romance and author of The Umbrella Academy, appreciating the Symbolist artifacts

Sioux seemed to run into the most random people while she wandered; Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, cast members from Torchwood, True Blood, Twilight… the best story of all is when she pushed Stan Lee’s wheelchair around, but it’s sunrise here and I need to sleep.

Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer (creators of The Venture Brothers) with Sioux Sinner, right after she unknowingly crashed their interview- Not kidding.

And Then There Were Three: Gail Potocki, Jeremy Bastian, and Dave McKean.

When Stuart and I started Century Guild in 1999, the very first artwork that started us off was an original 19th century poster for an exhibition of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

The P-R B poster. On a side note, the Goupil Galleries interestingly counted Theo and Vincent Van Gogh as employees. Theo attempted to place his brother's artwork with the prestigious gallery, but they were rejected as 'horrors'.

More posters by luminaries such as Alphonse Mucha and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec soon followed, as well as Art Nouveau porcelain from Sevres and 19th century Japonist ceramics from Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat and Clement Massier. We spent untold hours and gained countless frequent flyer miles in tracking down cabaret and theater artifacts from Berlin and Munich and opera artifacts from Italy. Most recently, lithographic works by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele have been high points of our collection.

In the early days of our business, we brokered primarily for museum level collections. (There is nothing like the thrill of seeing a piece that used to be in your hands behind glass at a museum!) As time went on, we expanded our inventory to be able to assist new collectors in acquiring original period Art Nouveau and Symbolist artworks. Connecting others with the rich history of art is emotionally enriching, and we have made a whole world of new friends who share our passion.

We are proud that Century Guild has become the top gallery in the world in placing the rarest art regarding our areas of expertise.

But…

We have always wanted to be connected to the 21st century as well as the 19th and early 20th.

I spent large amounts of money in buying various contemporary artists, taking them home, and sadly watching them crumble when in proximity to what history has shown to be the very best of earlier days. There is an attention to detail and craft in contemporary art that is sadly, for the most part lost, and it does not reveal itself when viewed in relation to other similar works. Event the top contemporary artists, in my opinion, work best in relation to each other than their earlier peers. Ruprecht Von Kaufmann’s gigantic oil painting “But What if He Comes?” survived. George Klauba’s tattoo art and “Ahab” survived. I have a sneaking suspicion that Chris Berens would survive.

But the first experience that made me consider representing contemporary art was with Gail Potocki.

Gail Potocki's take on the rapturous climax of the Eve myth. Oil on linen, Gail Potocki, 2008. 36 x 48 inches. SOLD

GAIL POTOCKI

I had a client from the Detroit Institute arrive in Chicago to view a distressingly-expensive-for-something-eminently-breakable, handmade piece of Art Nouveau porcelain. Mindblowing would not describe the quality. But the strangest thing happened: he could not stop asking questions about the painting hanging above the console, a painting from my personal collection by one Gail Potocki.

Fast forward past Juxtapoz magazine, MTV, a critically lauded show at the prestigious Billy Shire Fine Arts in L.A., and a stream of wonderful letters including:

“A really fantastic artist. It’s refreshing to see a modern painter that has a classic, romantic touch and the skills to add a fresh facet of expression to the new period of Realism.” –Robert Williams, the legendary and controversial god-among-painters.

“Brilliant occult portraits from the Symbolist underworld of the 21st Century. More than just paintings, Gail Potocki conducts seances on canvas.” –Grant Morrison (visionary author, psychic revolutionary, and one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 100 Creative People in America).

Gail has a special show in the Netherlands this fall, and a new series on display alongside her friend David Anderle plus Elizabeth McGrath and Charlie Immer at Billy Shire Fine Arts in Culver City, LA, opening November 14th, 2009.

You can see artworks from Gail’s Opened Apples series- and the first three edition prints from the never-before-seen Freaks series!- next month in our booth at San Diego Comic Con.

Plastic Vortex: look it up on google, and be depressed. Oil on linen in handmade custom frame, Gail Potocki, 2008. 42 x 55 inches. Available.

Flip (from the Circus Freaks series), oil on linen, 2009, Gail Potocki. 18 x 24 inches. SOLD

The next artist on our (very small) roster is wholly impossible to appreciate online. This madman paints black lines with a single hair brush, and to appreciate the artwork requires proper lighting and a very large magnifying glass; it’s like something you would see in The Museum of Jurassic Technology:

The Octopus and The Silver Cello, ink on paper by Jeremy Bastian, 2008. 4.5 x 7.5 inches. SOLD

JEREMY BASTIAN

I personally believe that he is the reincarnation of Richard Dadd. These are not book illustrations, these are individual pieces of art, each telling a long and wonderful tale.  I’ve spent hours poring over a single inch, and still find new things every time I look.  We are limited here to viewing these as best we can in the sad, sad jpeg form, but make a point to see his work in person. You will NOT regret it. (Next stop? Our booth in San Diego!)

Oh- and keep in mind that these are only about SEVEN INCHES tall!!! Quotes from duly impressed parties are below.

“Jeremy Bastian rocks some inky, inky id! How someone can channel such turgid spontaneity into the gossamer precision seen here is beyond rational explanation. Clearly he’s kidnapped his own inner child, plied her with enough Victorian sweets to keep her up for days, and then chained her to a drawing board in a tiny room.” –Jackson Publick, creator of Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Bros.

“It’s all too rare that I see work that is truly original, and I almost never see work THIS original. Jeremy Bastian is a genius.” –Mike Mignola, Eisner Award-winning creator of Hellboy.

“Jeremy Bastian is a transplanted 19th century prodigy who has harnessed the mysteries of the microcosm; with the hands of a surgeon and the mind of a magician he conjures an entire universe in the space of a single drop of ink. Cursed Pirate Girl is our generation’s Alice in Wonderland.” –Gail Potocki (yes, that Gail Potocki.)

The Goblin Warlock. You can't imagine how many sinister denizens are peering out from the forest; Hieronymus Bosch would be proud at the originality of Jeremy's sinister creepy crawlies. Ink on paper by Jeremy Bastian, 2009. 4.5 x 7.5 inches. SOLD

The Sextant. Again, impossible detail. Even the map on the beetle's back is fully developed. Ink on paper by Jeremy Bastian, 2008. 4.5 x 7.5 inches. SOLD

The third artist that we recommend with the same verve and passion as we do any of our 19th century Masters is a very welcome addition, indeed:

Der mude Tod (English: Destiny) (Fritz Lang, 1921). Mixed media by Dave McKean, 2008. 44 x 44 inches. SOLD

DAVE McKEAN

I have respected Dave McKean’s art ever since he came into my field of vision as a cover artist for Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman books. (Even today, the pair still work together; their most recent collaboration, The Graveyard Book, just won a Newberry Award.) Countless CD covers, ad campaigns, and short films later, I was always impressed with how Dave was able to infuse his commercial ventures with recognizable flair and a genuinely fine aesthetic. But nothing to my mind comes close to being career-defining as his current body of work, titled Nitrate, inspired by early cinema.

Our next major event, the Nitrate and Kinogeists exhibition at the historic Portage Theater in Chicago (it was used for the interior of the Biograph Theater in the new Johnny Depp and Christian Bale film Public Enemies), features five of these very large sculptural and painted artworks, with a sixth en route to our booth at San Diego Comic Con. Extremely limited edition facsimile prints of “Destiny”, “Melies”, and “Faust” will be available at both shows.

Dave McKean’s Nitrate series wraps up in early 2010 with a Nitrate and Kinogeists exhibition we are curating at Billy Shire Fine Arts, and a 2010 book documenting all the Nitrate works from Allen Spiegel Fine Arts.

Vampyr (English: The Vampire) (Dryer, 1932). Mixed media by Dave McKean, 2009. 44 x 44 inches. SOLD

Le Sang d'un Poete (English: The Blood of a Poet) (Cocteau, 1930). Mixed media by Dave McKean, 2008. 44 x 44 inches. ON APPROVAL.

If you want to be placed on the waiting list for original or edition works by any of our artists, as always, please send a note to me at THOMAS AT CENTURYGUILD DOT NET and we’ll do our best to accommodate you. (Not dot com! DOT NET! Got it?)

Thanks for reading.  Love to you all.

Tom

goofy bourgeois

Someone typed that on Google and it- curiously- led to our blog.  I’m serious. (And now that I’ve used it as a title, we are actively crawling up that particular search string.)

Too tired from looking at art and posters and making posters for Dave’s show and planning shows and exhibitions and booths and stamping books and packing art and shipping said art and eating leafy greens to do anything productive…

I thought about the interviews where they make an artist put their iTunes on random and make them share the playlist, no matter how embarrassing.  I won’t share the fact that I’m listening to Earth, Wind, and Fire relentlessly as I work on the Kinogeists book, or that my shuffle is now playing Rick Springfield, for fear of losing my massive artistic credibility.  What I will do is this:

Thirteen images, universally lucky number and Baker’s dozen, pulled from my iPhone by their anonymous file code, and presented here unedited and unphotoshopped.  (Let’s hope there’s no incriminating shots of Jack supergluing shut the new and highly controversial Chicago parking meters.)

I can’t wait for the Nitrate and Kinogeists show here in Chicago, I think that we may have a really fantastic new artist to announce before San Diego, and it is impossible to be as Zen-master calm as Allen Spiegel, but we mere mortals can keep trying.  In the meantime, enjoy thirteen magical seconds of my life:

Lovelovelove,

Tom

Oh, this is a good one. Our archivist couldn't find a tube that was long enough to hold the Opium poster, so he wrote warnings on the side for the Merchandise Mart's not-always-so-careful Union handlers. The other sides said "Pushing Down=Murder" and "Push Down, Kiss Your Life Good Bye".

Jeremy Bastian loves Industrial music, and Mexican Food at 4 a.m.

After the midnight show of The Dark Crystal at the Music Box; thankfully we only found one of these tossed aside.

Fairies and ghosts love old leather.

Gail Potocki is blissfully happy about twice a year. This was one of those nights.

Stuart was so funny this show, I wish we had a video camera. I'm not kidding.

Every night is Halloween around here, and I love it.

I pulled up to a stop sign around 1 a.m. just as this woman stumbled past in her bathrobe. Not kidding once again.

The Reverend Hudson. Jack touched Hugh Jackman's butt mere moments after this was taken.

I have no idea. I think for the wall texture. (It was very "European Gulag".)

Our Artropolis booth. You can see the unbelievably sexy original Walter Schnackenberg painting moderately well here on the front column. People's reactions were VERY varied, and VERY entertaining when they rounded the corner and saw "Opium" "Hunger" "Syphilis" and "Cocaine".

This the second day in 2009 when Gail Potocki was wildly happy from playing in the garden. (That's her quota.) This is an old box spring from a sleeper couch that she converted into a trellis for her Clematis. Lyta is wagging her tail as she gets scratched under the chinny chin chin.

Lyta has a magic snaggletooth that is soooo heavy that she just has to rest it sometimes. And, yes, she sits there with her legs straddling the arm of the chair like that every single day. When not sleeping on the back of the chair like a cat.