CROSSED EGGS

 [Photo: Brian Sibley]

GOOD FRIDAY

“He was the boy I had given birth to and he was more defenceless now than he had been then.”

 

― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary: A Novel (2012)

 

[Photo: Brian Sibley]

EASTER TIMES PAST

 

 

It's Eastertide and Radio Times magazine has just unveiled the cover-art for its Easter 2024 Issue. The work of Dawn Cooper, it comprises a bunny, a bird (a red-breasted swallow?), spring flowers and, obviously, a few eggs. What could be nicer? They are, of course, all part of the traditional tropes and trappings of the season, but it sent me off in search of how Radio Times marked Easter in days gone by.

 

For five decades, like a number of other weekly magazines, Radio Times employed artists noted for their skill at working with woodcuts and pen-and-ink illustration and allowed them the time and space to create lavish pieces of decorative art that – for what was nothing more than an ephemeral publication – are astonishing in their unrivaled detail, story-telling and arresting imagery.

 

Many Easter issues of Radio Times contained interior artwork presenting classic or newly-created depictions of the Passion, but the covers – unsurprisingly, perhaps – mostly comprised intensely rural, village-centric scenes from some of the finest illustrators of the age – in all of which the church was either a central feature or at very least an integral element of the design. It may be hard to believe, my children, but that is how it was in Britain during those early All-Things-Bright-and-Beautiful years of the Twentieth Century.

 

 

 

Easter 1934 - John Austen (1886-1948)

 

 

 Easter 1948 - J. S. Goodall (1908-1996)

 

 

Easter 1949 - [Unidentified artist] 

 

 

 

Easter 1950 - Robin Jacques (1920-1995)

 Easter 1951 - C. F. Tunnicliffe (1901-1979) 

 

Easter 1952 - S. R. Badmin (1906-1989)

 

 

Easter 1954 - S. R. Badmin (1906-1989)

TIME FOR CHANGE!

Everything MUST be CHANGED!

And NOW ––– or SOONER!

Everyone knows: Dettol is yellowy-brown in colour and smells like a hospital.  

FACT!

It is absolutely NOT this colour... and it does NOT smell of 'Lavender & Orange Oil'.

As American novelist Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945) observed:
 

"All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward."

 

"THAT'S THE WAY TO DO IT!"

There are days when I totally despair of the rank bonkerness with which our media is now infested!

A display currently on show at the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum) 'mentions' (as a historical fact, please note) that the popular seaside entertainment, the Punch & Judy Show, has – over the years – opted to substitute the play's original 'Devil' puppet with one modelled on the features of hated public figures including Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher and Osama bin Laden.

So?

Well, that story has now been re-presented as the V&A promulgating the monstrous proposition that Thatcher was as evil as Hitler and bin Laden and, as a result, that the museum ought to have its funding taken away and that those responsible for exhibition-label-writing should be flogged, naked, through the streets of London!

What utter whiffle and piffle! You can't possibly learn from history if you hide or deny it!

Anyway, here's Mrs Thatcher (or, rather, her 'Spitting Image' alter ego) as I accounted her at the Tate Gallery at their 2010 exhibition, 'Rude Britannia'.

 

 

 

 

[Photo: Brian Sibley]

MOTHERING SUNDAY 2024

 

Even when they're no longer with us, our Mothers are ever-present in our memories...

 

[Photo: David Weeks]

THE MILLER'S TALE

 

Back in print after ten years: a fabulous celebration of fantastic illustration: The Art of Ian Miller; a book crammed with 300 astonishing images of graphic brilliance to which I had the great privilege of contributing an Introduction.

As I wrote (in part) back in 2014, and as I still passionately believe: 

 

"A good illustrator may capture the essence and detail of author’s work, transforming word into image, but a truly great illustrator transports us into the silences between sentences, evokes the possibilities between paragraphs, illuminates the shadows that lurk in the turning of a page."

 

Welcome to Ian Miller's amazing and disturbing world of flying fish, walking trees, floating cities, mechanical warriors and creatures from the worlds of Tolkien, Lovecraft, Bradbury and Peake not to mention the darkest recesses of your nightmares!

ARF! ARF!

 

18 February: HAPPY PLUTO DAY! 

MEET THE PLUTOS...

 

 

PLUTO 1: GOD 

 

In ancient Greek mythology, Pluto (Greek: Πλούτων, Ploutōn) was the ruler of the underworld. In Greek cosmogony, Pluto was given charge of the underworld in a three-way split of sovereignty over the world with his brothers Zeus and Poseidon: Zeus ruling the sky and Poseidon being sovereign over the sea. Pluto's central narrative in myth is of his abducting Persephone (daughter of Zeus and Demeter) to be his wife and queen of his realm; a scenario that would inspire Walt Disney's 1934 'Silly Symphony', The Goddess of Spring.

 

PLUTO 2: PLANET 

 

On 18 February 1930, (94 years ago today) Clyde Tombaugh of the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona discovered a ninth planet in our Solar System and named it ‘Pluto’.

 

 

PLUTO 3: DOG 

 

In May 1931, Mickey Mouse’s pet dog (previously known as ‘Rover’) was renamed ‘Pluto’ when he appeared in Walt Disney’s short cartoon, The Moose Hunt, likely inspired by the huge publicity surrounding the then recent discovery of the planet.

 

 

PLUTO 4: DWARF PLANET 

 

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a ‘Dwarf Planet’. Pluto’s ‘demotion’ caused considerable outrage. Pluto the Pup, however, was unconcerned! In 2023, NASA shared images captured by its spacecraft including a photograph of a glacier on Pluto’s surface, which was shaped like a heart. Others have seen the shape as a silhouette of the head of Mickey’s doggy pal seen in profile!

 

 

LENTEN DAYS

It's Lent!  So, here's a little Easter book for the kids...

 

 

 

(Not quite a follow up to The Fall of Númenor – but, occasionally, I can still be unpredictable!)

VALENTINE'S DAY

A Short Note on the ART of LOVE…

The brilliant American artist, J. C. Leyendecker (1874-1951), celebrated for his memorable poster and advertising illustrations, spent his career depicting idealized images of the sexes that were redolent of the spirit of the 1920s. That imagery, for his generation, served as archetypes of heterosexual masculinity and femininity. But while a nation adored his work – and sought to emulate the style and glamour of the Leyendecker men and women – the creator lived a closeted life common to so many gay men and women of that era.

Today, his work has undergone a process of homoerotic decoding and, on this Valentine's Day, I'm sharing three of his classic paintings: 'The Butterfly Couple' (1923) and its romantic usage as a magazine advertisement for Kuppheimer Good Clothes, and two covers for The Saturday Evening Post (March 1913 and 1934)...

 

 

 

Alongside these ladies and gents, I give you a re-imagined amalgamation of Leyendecker's craft (together with appropriate Evening Post lettering) made in 2010 by James Blah as a Valentine’s Day card for his boyfriend.

 

 As the Bard neatly observed:

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." 

– A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, scene 1 

Let's remember J. C. Leyendecker for his astonishing art while celebrating the fact that we live in a time when, for the benefit of all humanity, Cupid is increasingly – and thankfully – being "painted blind".