Gori Muñoz for Lorca

Illustrations by Gori Muñoz for a volume of Lorca’s posthumous poems, 1945
via Bibliofilia novohispana.
An Amazon search for the artist brings up many results.

Merry Christmas

See the 50 Watts' post of eleven watercolor faces, courtesy of a Japanese library covered by BibliOdyssey in 2008. I resisted the urge to photoshop some Christmas green into this image.

Reynard the Fox

Illustrations from Reinecke Fuchs, circa 1880 via a German library.  The watercolors are by Heinrich Leutemann, working close to the style of Wilhelm von Kaulbach's famous versions. (The fox is anatomically-correct in both versions!)

This post is a supplement to my 50 Watts' "Kinderbuch series" of German, Austrian, and Swiss children's books

Alfred Pal

Alfred Pal, via http://dizajn.hr

I learned about this illustrator from A-Ž SFRJ, the blog of the folks behind the Leksikon YU Mitologie (I just bought a copy and will feature it soon)

Colonial Love for McMushie's Hamburgers

From the Colonial Love series by Bengt Böckman

I featured his late 60s series "Projeckt 666" on But Does it Float

Lacking one brick

Germany, c. 1890, Mosaic game with about 160 geometrical wooden color bricks..."Lacking 1 brick."

I've been coming across a lot of interesting artifacts while researching German/Austrian/Swiss children's books for this Kinderbuch series.

Alexander Andreev's Tarot

From a tarot deck by Alexander Andreev

Mikalojus Vilutis

In two posts at Animalarium, Laura turned me on to Illustrarium, a website for Lithuanian children's book illustrators (Lithuania was the 2011 Guest of Honour at the Bologna Children's Book Fair).

Rooting around on Illustrarium, I found the page for Mikalojus Vilutis (born 1944) and asked him if I could feature his work.

The illustrations in this post come from Fables by Vytautas Landsbergis (Kronta, Vilnius 2011) and A Cake. For many years before illustrating books and working digitally, Vilutis worked in silkscreen/serigraphy and he's known as a master of the method (he's taught at Vilnius Academy of Arts since 1989). I will soon feature some of those earlier works.

(This post went live well before it was supposed too...some of you may have seen it in embryonic form  —oh blogger, how I (didn't f*cking) miss thee. Part 2 coming soon.)

(A search reveals that Monster Brains linked to a Russian page on Vilutis way back in 2007.)

Tumbling Old Women

In September 2010 I featured illustrator Joanna Neborsky's adaptation of Fénéon's Novels In Three Lines. Joanna has since worked her magic for deadpan Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms:

"Daniil Kharms (1905–1942) wore a hat to protect his ideas from being seen. He smoked a pipe to appear English (he was Russian). He wrote twenty children's books. This is not one of them.

"This short story from 1936 is illustrated in twenty collaged pages. Available in English and Italian editions. English translation courtesy Matvei Yankelevich and The Overlook Press."

via Joanna Neborsky

via Joanna Neborsky

via Joanna Neborsky

via Joanna Neborsky

via Joanna Neborsky

via Joanna Neborsky

Good morning, sunshine!

Portrait of Michel Leiris by Francis Bacon, 1985 via Asymptote

"The immense force, it seems, that will have to be deployed to move us from the first rough attempt to recover ourselves to a complete mustering, when -- after the three blows struck in some unknown place by the mysterious stage manager who oversees the daily recommencement of the action -- the footlights of what we persisted in concealing of life are no less mysteriously turned on; the anguish, as soon as we are drawn from the dark by this signal, of feeling petrified, restored almost to consciousness but without any control over these inanimate limbs, these scattered bones awaiting some last judgment; the despair, without the attenuation of any outcry, of ever emerging from the mattress of sleep that has become confused with the physical mattress -- itself thick and fleecy -- on which the night has lain down with us; the brutal event, finally, wresting us from these pangs when (without our knowing how such a vapor, with its stifling billows, could have dissipated all at once) we find ourselves with our eyes unsealed."

--Michel Leiris, from Scraps (Rules of the Game vol. 2), 1955 (trans. Lydia Davis, 1997). Buy your very own copy for $.62 on Amazon.

Fragile Demon: Juan Soriano in Mexico

Juan Soriano, The Beach, 1943

Juan Soriano, Portrait of Lola Alvarez-Bravo with Juan Soriano as a Child, 1944

Juan Soriano, Still Life with Self-Portrait, 1949

Juan Soriano, The Dead Girl, The Wake, 1946

Juan Soriano, Girl with a Mask, 1945

Juan Soriano, Saint Jerome Mourned by Angels, 1949

Juan Soriano, The Burial, 1942

From a random library find: Fragile Demon: Juan Soriano in Mexico, 1935 to 1950

Wikipedia says:

Juan Soriano (1920-2006) was a Mexican painter and sculptor.[...]

He became a member of the Mexican School cultural movement also featuring Frida Kahlo and poet Octavio Paz. He also joined the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios.

Franz Sedlacek on Monster Brains

Franz Sedlacek, The Unicorn, 1925 via Monster Brains.

I love it when I couldn't possibly correctly guess the date of an image.

Krzysztof Skórczewski

A 2006 copperplate engraving by Krzysztof Skórczewski.

I posted some of his architectural works on But Does it Float.

Also see these cool photos of the artist at work.

Can you believe it?

It's true. For no real reason, I'm reviving A Journey Round My Skull. 

50 Watts will remain my primary online vehicle. Journey will return to what it was 

in the early days: a simple diary/scrapbook about things I read and see. 

I won't be heavily pushing it. It will just exist.

The face and posture I'm making as I type this:

1906 watercolor left over from the 50 Watts post Kylberg's Cocktails

The madness continues at 50 Watts

I've been posting up a storm on my new site (same as the old site) 50 Watts: http://50watts.com/

A Journey Round My Skull is now 50watts.com

Dec. 2011 update: I'm now blogging again here at "A Journey Round My Skull" but doing my signature too-big-to-fail posts on 50 Watts.

Jan Toorop, O Grave, Where Is Thy Victory

As of 9:00PM EST February 28, 2011, I have changed my online pseudonym from 'A Journey Round My Skull' to 50 Watts. All new posts will appear there! Please spread the word.

http://50watts.com/

I hope my RSS subscribers (all 7906 that I know of) will subscribe to the new feed. I will be posting the same type of stuff.

My new twitter handle is: @50WattsDotCom (if you already followed me, you don't have to refollow -- same account)

My tumblr is http://50watts.tumblr.com/

I'm not sure if I'm keeping the same 'networked blog' on facebook, but I created a facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/50WattsDotCom

I'll leave the 'comments' function on here for the next week (right now there is not a comments feature on the new site).

I'll be importing into the new site over the next month (year...decade):

(For the official record, I chose neither "A Journey..." nor "50 Watts" to show up at the top of blogrolls. If I could do it over, this site always would have been "Journey Around My Skull" -- no "A" in front, but an "A" in "Around" -- thus making the acronym JAMS. Feel free to alphabetize under "Fifty" or "Zzzifty.")

Dec. 2011 update: I'm now blogging again here at "A Journey Round My Skull" but doing my signature too-big-to-fail posts on 50 Watts.

Smoke Hairy Who

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Koopman's Harem

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Don't fall off the building

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts: