The Explorigator
Rush to Barnacle Press to enjoy the full run of The Explorigator, one of the most original, and nonsensical, comics of all times and meet a crew on a par with the one that set out to hunt the Snark.
Edward Lear in The Beano
Lew Stringer posts on Hunt Emerson’s comic strip adaptation of Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat.”
If anyone has scans of the complete three-page story I would be interested in getting them (I can’t find The Beano here in Italy.)
Shadows
After the success of his two Topsy-Turvys, Peter Newell published A Shadow Book (New York: The Century Co., 1896) in which after looking at a picture, e.g. of an Arab leading a camel,
you turn the page and place it in front of a light source, so that the image you now see represents something else, this case “A Rag Picker:”
Unfortunately, the images above were taken with a camera and do no justice to the real book: in many cases the different densities of the tints in the “front” picture produce nuances in the shadow one which enhance the effect. If I ever manage to find a way to get good images without ruining my copy, I’ll post the whole series.
It is likely that the book sold as well as the earlier ones, though it is harder to find as in many cases it was probably burnt by inattentive children who followed Newell’s back-cover suggestion of using a candle:
Better luck probably had those who preferred, or could afford, to use a light bulb, as recommended in the title page:
Shadow pictures, Kage-e, seem to have been common in woodblock prints of the Edo period in Japan, according to the pinktentacle blog. Here is one of the several instances posted:
In this case, first you looked at the shadow image cast on a door (in the example a hawk), and then discovered the real subject, a man in a very peculiar attitude.
1896 must have been the annus mirabilis of shadow books for the Century Co.: they also published Gobolinks, or Shadow-Pictures for Young and Old by Ruth McEnery Stuart and Albert Bigelow Paine. These were not real shadow pictures, but rather images obtained with a process involving, at least in part, chance:
Drop a little ink on a sheet of white paper. Fold the sheet in the center and press the ink-spots together with the fingers. All of the pictures in this book were made in this manner — none of them having been touched with a pen or brush.
To each of the images thus generated a short poem is added, in some cases a limerick:
On Peter Newell, also see Philip Hofer, “Peter Newell’s Pictures & Rhymes.” The Colophon. A Book Collectors’ Quarterly. Part Nineteen. New York, 1934.
Previous Articles
In the Papers
- Alice in Wonderland - Lookingglass Alice is the splendid adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. ?Lookingglass Alice? is turned into a marvelous, playful 100 minutes of almost circus performance arts. Extra, 15 July 2008.
- A naked return for puritanism - Kevin Rudd, Australia?s prime minister, has started yet another row over nudity in art by protesting about the July cover of Art Monthly Australia (AMA). The cover photograph was taken by Melbourne photographer Polixeni Papapetrou in 2003, and it shows her daughter Olympia at the age of six, seated nude on a seaweed-covered rock on a beach, against a painted backdrop of white cliffs. Spiked, 15 July 2008.
- Too much Lewis Carroll in Porthouse?s Alice - Matthew Earnest adapted the two stories for the stage and named the show ?Alice...? Under Earnest?s direction, ?Alice...? is now playing at Porthouse Theatre through July 19. The ellipsis after the word Alice indicates something has been omitted. When the show moved past the two-hour mark, I began to suspect not enough had been omitted. Akron Ohio News, 10 July 2008.
- Carroll sketch sells for £4,800 - The original purple ink drawing, sold by Bonhams Auctioneers in London, showed Edith Blakemore holding a bucket and spade and leaning against a wheel and is thought to have been sketched on the beach. Eastbourne Today, 26 June 2008.
- Strip Mind - In the winter of 1831, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, creator and appreciator of all things Kunst, was feeling blue. His loyal attendants, sympathetic to the great man?s depression, had heard of a taciturn Genevan educator who, in his spare time, wrote and drew farcical picture-stories to amuse himself and his students. Bookforum, April-May 2008.
