2015

Ars Necronomica 2015

In the two years since our last convention, we were made aware of more biographical details on “Perry”, who cut the famous black gum paper portrait of H. P. Lovecraft from life. This work is a valuable depiction of the writer at age 35, which stands apart from the wealth of photographic representation and yields within a gaunt, featureless contour a stately aesthetic true to The Man.

HPL not only had his silhouette done in 1925 by this Coney Island and Harlem artist, but on a second occasion a few months later commissioned a portrait of Sonia Greene, then his wife. Obviously a full regard of the individual and a rapport between the two men was likely. New York historian Eric K. Washington essays all additional facts on Perry available in an online post archived on the excellent Gotham History Blotter.

This artist portfolio regards not just the individuals included but their work—that always should speak for itself. Giving credit where due, we respectfully include in their company Lovecraft Portraitist and American Folk Artist
E. J. PERRY
and dedicate this iconographiam to him. –TjZ

The joey Zone 

Twenty-one years ago, we got The Starry Wisdom and learned of a new Haunter of the Dark.

D. M. Mitchell’s tribute to H. P. Lovecraft seemed inadequate to some (this writer not one of them), despite the usual gang of acolytes: Campbell, Lumley, Price, Webb, etc. The first edition’s beautiful stippled chrome wraps by Peter Smith contained much that struck average Mythos readers as discordant and unbeautiful. Most reviewers were in accord, however, in praising its illustrated version of “The Call of Cthulhu.”

Etched with a torrential downpour of the finest line upon line, no dream of Wilcox could ever have been limned in a darker hue. Inspector Legrasse’s discovery of something “only poetry or madness could do justice to” in the Louisiana swamps was accurately and abominably shown over a two-page cinematic spread. In the climax, ravening for delight from a dark dream, the dread Old One himself is depicted from reality: a jumble of Futurist midnight.

Under those same wraps were two manipulated images in the manner of an Ernst or Sätty. Both were anatomically correct in their X-ray vision of some things human or crinoid. The talent of both “Call” and these were work of the same hand.

Six years earlier, this talent had debuted in another adaptation of the Canon with “The Haunter of the Dark.” That work, along with “Call of Cthulhu” and pages from an unfinished version of “The Dunwich Horror” were collected by Creation Oneiros in The Haunter of the Dark and Other Grotesque Visions. The 2006 edition includes “The Great Old Ones: Evocations” by Alan Moore, accompanied by more of that hand’s illustrations.

This same hand — and one other — belongs to John Coulthart, who has now long been one of Lovecraft’s most accomplished artistic interpreters. His body of work includes design for Ellen Datlow’s Lovecraftian anthology Lovecraft’s Monsters (with a followup on the way from Tachyon Publications); work for the Call of Cthulhu gaming magazines The Unspeakable Oath and Book of Dark Wisdom; The Cthulhu Calendar for 2012; and work in An Exhibition of Unspeakable Things: Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book, held at the Maison d’Ailleurs in Switzerland in 2007.

We are extremely proud to exhibit John’s work here stateside. That work encapsulates both the legacy and the future of what we endeavor to present in ARS NECRONOMICA, making him an Artist Guest of Honor that not only we but Providence welcomes.