Review: 'Star Wars Bestiary Vol. 1'

As we've recently seen right here on Psychobabble, the Star Wars universe continues to pump out more and more stuff, often at the expense of the original trilogy's sense of whimsy and fun. That's why S.T. Bende and Iris Compiet's new book Star Wars Bestiary Vol. 1 is such a breath of fresh, Endor-scented air. This book is all fun and whimsy, a pseudo-space zoologist's (plus robot buddy) star-field book logging all the weird beasties populating Tattooine, Hoth, Dagobah, Jakku, Mandalore, and all those other far-flung locales. 

Review: 'Hardcore: The Cinematic World of Pulp'

Pulp had been at it for close to two decades when they finally joined the upper echelon of contemporary British pop with Different Class in 1995. For a band as erudite and self-aware, that kind of success doesn't go down easily, and their next album was an expression of that hard comedown.

Bleary and weary, This Is Hardcore is a weird centerpiece for a book like Paul Burgess and Louise Colbourne's colorful coffee table-ish Hardcore: The Cinematic World of Pulp. However, the album's artistic bona-fides make the choice less odd. The record spawned four lush music videos, inspired collages and paintings, and had one of the decade's most recognizable (and infamous) jackets, though Burgess and Colbourne mostly steer clear of exploiting that arguably exploitative image of model Ksenia Sobchak prone and in the buff. There is a completely hilarious image of the censored Malaysian version of that cover with an ugly gold sweater photoshopped onto Sobchak.

There are also lots of behind-the-scenes shots and stills from the "Party Hard", "Help the Aged", "A Little Soul", and "This Is Hardcore" music videos; a storyboard for "Party Hard"; examples of Pulpy artwork (most notably Sergei Sviatchenko's disturbing collages); and shots of the band on stage at the release party. 

The authors and several guests supply essays on the times, and director Garth Jennings conducts a very, very brief and unilluminating interview with band leader Jarvis Cocker that is almost comically split into two installments. Without question the most substantial piece of text in Hardcore is a 14-page interview with keyboardist Candida Doyle, who is unabashedly unenthusiastic about both the album and the era this book celebrates. However, her weariness over that period captures the temper of This Is Hardcore more honestly than most of the rest of this rather candy-coated book does. An essay by Pulp-documentarian Florian Habicht is also a must-read for the most horrifying interview-mishap tale ever told... that he was brave enough to recollect it in this book for posterior posterity is way more hardcore than anything on This Is Hardcore.

Review: 'King's Road' Expanded Edition

Carnaby Street may have been synonymous with Swinging London, but the King's Road was swinging centuries before dedicated followers of fashion swarmed Carnaby and a good decade after that street warped into a Disnified version of itself. Henry VIII spent time in the King's Road area. So did Thomas More, Henry James, Noel Coward, Germaine Greer, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, Aleister Crowley, Bram Stoker, Francis Bacon, and Karl Marx. But it was scene makers like Mary Quant, the Stones, Pete Townshend, and later, the Sex Pistols and The Damned, who really gave the road its character. The Rocky Horror Show debuted there. A Clockwork Orange was filmed at its Chelsea Drug Store, which Jagger immortalized in "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Judy Garland died there. It was where a box for keeping plants alive on long sea voyages was invented, where you could see a monkey ride a pony around a mansion's grounds (if you were around in 1843, that is), where a "mad idiot" was known to visit the night spots with a dyed-green rabbit he loaded up with LSD until the poor pet committed suicide, where a wombat suffocated in a box of cigars, and where the British Spaghetti Queen slipped into a dress comprised of thirty helpings of macaroni. Thirty!

Review: 'Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s'

The mutual explosion of sci-fi and cheap paperbacks in the seventies necessitated a similar boom in sci-fi art. Near household names like Ralph McQuarrie, Roger Dean, Frank Frazetta, Robert McCall, and Alan Aldridge helped fulfill industry needs with nearly photorealistic depictions of otherworldly worlds, freaky tech, weird monsters, and excessively sinewed and/or buxom humanoids. The art adorning books by the likes of Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, and Ellison were often selling points as major as the words within. Some of it was garish or tacky, but even the most ghastly covers displayed a wealth of imagination and technique. A good deal of it was truly beautiful.

Review: 'Illustrated History of Rock'

You know rock and roll has lost its bite when it becomes the subject of a big picture book for tiny little tots. What hand-wringing dads and moms once considered hymns of Satan is now fit for toddlers in Luis Demano and Susana Monteagudo's Illustrated History of Rock. 

Review: Lynne Goldsmith's 'Music in the '80s'

If you paid any attention to rock music during the eighties, you've seen a bunch of Lynn Goldsmith's pictures. She shot all of the decade's biggest stars from the coolest (Prince, The B-52s, The Ramones, Siouxsie) to the squarest (Barry Manilow). The variety of her photos is as eclectic as the people she photographed. She took glossy posed pics and candid back-stage ones that could be Polaroids. She took black and whites and colors and electrifying live shots and casual al fresco ones. My personal faves are the weird after-party pics featuring unlikely gatherings of stars. You want to see John Mellencamp beaming alongside Jayne County and David Johansen? You want to see Nile Rogers, Chrissie Hynde, Dexter Gordon, and Paul Shaffer sharing a table? You want to see Darlene Love in a clutch with Joan Jett and Elton John, who's wearing a huge, fake mohawk? Then Music in the '80s is the book for you. 

Review: 'The Wild World of Barney Bubbles'

Along with a scant handful of designers like Roger Dean and Hipgnosis, Barney Bubbles is that rare creator of LP jackets who is something of a household name among serious rock geeks. This is ironic considering that the man born Colin Fulcher was determined to protect his anonymity by working under a series of pseudonyms. Barney Bubbles, a name he devised as the operator of a light show at London's famed UFO club in the sixties, is just the most well known. He also worked as, among others, "Eric Stodge," "Jacuzzi Stallion," "Heeps Willard," and (a-hem) "Big Jobs, LTD." But the mark of any truly memorable designer is a memorable style, and under any name, a Barney Bubbles cover is instantly recognizable. His bold use of color, simple shapes in clever compositions, funny photos, and irresistible modernism informs his most iconic work for Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Nick Lowe, Ian Dury, Carlene Carter, and The Damned. Honestly, the colorfully chaotic sleeve he designed for Music for Pleasure is the main reason to own that record, which is not one of The Damned's best. 

Review: 'Loner at the Ball: The Life of Andy Warhol'

Andy Warhol was the most famous artist of his generation, but he was often criticized as an empty vessel replicating vacuous images of soup cans and celebrities. He was the best-known artist, but he was also seemingly unknowable. He was instantly recognizable because of his iconic look (wan demeanor, white skin, white wig) that seemed to be as much about personal branding as it was about personal style, but he was stoic, and when he did become relatively chatty during interviews, he tended to spin yarns or sell others’ stories as his own just as he sold the Campbell’s company’s designs as his. 

Review: ''Sukita: Eternity"

The covers of albums such as Wish You Were Here and Nevermind are regarded as art because of their provocative and unusual compositions. However, with a photographer as focused as Masayoshi Sukita behind the camera, the simplest shot can become iconic. Take his work on the sleeve of David Bowie’s “Heroes”, which features nothing more than the artist chest up against a featureless backdrop. Yet the striking clarity of Sukita’s black and white and Bowie’s unnatural pose are as powerful and unforgettable as any flaming businessman or money-grubbing water baby.

Eternity presents the breadth of Sukita’s work in a halting package. Though they haven’t crossed into the culture the way his photos on the covers of “Heroes” and Iggy Pop’s The Idiot have, Sukita’s portraits of Marc Bolan (who, like Bowie and Pop, is the subject of an entire chapter), Klaus Nomi, Bryan Ferry, David Byrne, The B-52’s, Ray Charles and Quincy Jones, Joe Strummer, and Elvis Costello punching himself in the face are also potent. Sukita may be at his most arresting when working with Yellow Magic Orchestra, who were up for having their faces painted or plastered with newsprint or propelled through the air amidst a flurry of cassette tapes. Such photos deliver all the striking character of Sukita’s work with Bowie and Iggy and the conceptual ingenuity of those Pink Floyd and Nirvana covers. 

Review: 'The Art of Star Wars Galaxy's Edge'

The Star Wars movies have always been a lot like amusement park rides with their dizzying flights through asteroid fields and high-speed races on speeder bikes. So when Disney gobbled up the franchise in 2012, it was just a matter of time before the mega-corporation built some sort of Star Wars land in its theme parks. Indeed, the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge section of Disneyland and Disney World opened to the public in 2019. Little did the Mouse know that there was a pandemic lurking right around the corner that might cut into attendance.

For those of us not dopey enough to risk exposing ourselves to crowds of maskless tourists in Bermuda shorts, The Art of Star Wars Galaxy's Edge should scratch the itch to check out Galaxy's Edge a little. The book is a tour through the theme park section via production illustrations and paintings. The work inside this book is not too different from what artists created to conceptualize the films that inspired the park. There are paintings of fanciful new aliens, spaceships, and environments intended to remind you of such familiar Star Wars territories as Yavin 4 and the Mos Eisley Cantina. As is always the case with books of this sort, there are ideas that didn't come to fruition, such as a cool alien aquarium that would have been the centerpiece of the Galaxy's Edge cantina. It would have been nice if the book included a few actual photos of the rides and concessions developed from the art to get some idea of how they were realized, but I guess there's no substitute for seeing this stuff in person. Just be sure to get your vaccines first, kids.

Review: 'Art Sleeves: Album Covers by Artists'

There have been many collections of album cover images, and the implication of all of them is that the album cover is more than a carrying case for music: it is a self-contained work of art. Specimens such as Peter Blake’s life-size collage for Sgt. Pepper’s or Storm Thorgerson’s striking Dark Side of the Moon prism support that stance, but another collection of such usual suspects would be pointless.

A 'Twilight Zone' Doodle

Here's a little doodle I did to remind you that if you can't think of what to watch this Halloween season, one of the creepier episodes of The Twilight Zone tends to hit the spot. Consider trying "The Dummy", "Living Doll", "The Grave", "Jess-Belle", "The New Exhibit", "To Serve Man", "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", "The Howling Man", "The Hitch-Hiker","Mirror Image", "It's a Good Life", "The Masks", or "Night Call". Hell... try them all!

Review: 'Fashion in the 1960s'

The 1960s were not always rich in substance (welcome to Gilligan’s Island!), but the decade’s style was often unimpeachable. Before frumpy hippie non-fashions took over toward the end of the sixties, sharp lines, vivid colors, eccentric materials, and wild op-art patterns defined the decade. The sixties were also very notable for making a place for men on the runway. It seems like we’ve been shut out of genuinely exciting fashions ever since.

Review: 'David Lynch: Someone Is In My House'

David Lynch is mainly known as a creator of film and television, but that is only because film and television are the most popular visual art forms. He actually started living his art life as a painter and illustrator, and has been much, much more prolific in creating such works than film and TV over the past 55-or-so years. This is not news to fans, who have long known that Lynch only began filming in the first place because, as he said in one of his most oft-quoted statements, “I wanted to see my paintings move.”

In a sense, Lynch’s art always moved with or without celluloid. His paintings burst off the materials on which he oozes them. They are swirling, tactile. They are three-dimensional, either because Lynch applies his oils with such a heavy hand or because he actually sinks objects such as glass eyes or dead rats into them. They stare back at you. They seem to decay before your eyes. They speak. They move.

It must madden Lynch to see such massive, dimensional works shrunk down and reproduced on flat paper as they are in the new collection Someone Is in My House (a tie in with an exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum in the Netherlands), but as far as art books go, this is a nice one. It infuriates me when artworks are unnecessarily shrunk down for the sake of showing as much white border as possible, and this book does not commit that crime as egregiously as too many other art and photography collections do. This collection also provides a very wide look at Lynch’s varied career, not only presenting many of his paintings, but also his photographs, sculptures, film stills, and even a selection of his “Angriest Dog in the World” comic strips.

Someone Is in My House is also notable for presenting a great deal of work I’ve never seen before. One striking thing about much of this work is how it offers a completely unfiltered gaze into the abyss of his imagination. The dichotomy between Lynch’s affable, charming, sedate personality and the violence and nightmarishness of his films is familiar to anyone who has ever seen Eraserhead or Twin Peaks, but some of the material in this book may shock even the most hardcore fans of his films. Body are mutated and twisted to the extreme across his paintings and manipulated photos. Sexual violence looms queasily in works such as E.D., I Take You to My House, and Do You Want to Know What I Really Think? Works such as Change the Fuckin’ Channel Fuckface and Pete Goes to His Girlfriend’s House distill the explosive anger of Lynch’s most loathsome screen villains from Frank Booth to Fred Madison, and tempt the viewer to conclude that Lynch is only able to suppress similar anger with dedicated meditation. An early sketch depicts an al fresco bestiality orgy. The work is disturbing, sometimes repellant, though sometimes beautiful, like bits clipped from his most harrowing cinematic scenes and dipped in dark oils.

And Now for No Other Reason Than It's Halloween, Here's Some Halloween Wallpaper for Your Desktop with Love from Psychobabble!

Review: 'John Waters: Indecent Exposure'

Wait a minute. John Waters is an artist? A rather multifaceted artist? I consider myself a fan, but this is news to me. That Waters is not just the uncontested King of Trash-ola but also a photographer and collaborative sculptor who has been the subject of his own art show is a revelation. The works displayed in that show at the Baltimore Museum of Art (of course) are featured in a new book called John Waters: Indecent Exposure.

So what should you expect from Waters’s non-cinematic art? Oh honey, you know what to expect! You’ll laugh! You’ll die from shock! You’ll puke! You’ll see the faces of Hollywood stars projected onto butt cheeks (Rear Projection, 2009)! You’ll see a disturbing 3D tableaux involving an infant with Michael Jackson’s adult head crawling toward a tyke with Charles Manson’s deranged coconut (Playdate, 2006). You’ll see some of cinema’s most iconic moments subtitled in pig Latin (Pig Latin, 2008)! You’ll see a Jackie O doll dolled up as Divine (Jackie Copies Divine’s Look, 2001)! You’ll see Twelve Assholes and a Dirty Foot (Twelve Assholes and a Dirty Foot, 1996)!

So like Pink Flamingos and Polyester, Waters’s museum-worthy work delights in scatology, celebrity, and hilarity. One does not usually expect to laugh out loud when viewing fine art, so prepare yourself for that shocker too.

Waters’s work will be a gas for those with a taste for bad taste, which makes the presentation in Indecent Exposure a bit frustrating. While his photos of his TV screen and weird sculptures completely lack pretension, the layout and text content of this book sometimes succumbs to that vice. The images are often shrunk down to postage-stamp size to make room for vast vistas of empty, white space, which is a crime that too many art books commit. 

As for a series of analytical essays, the only writer who really taps into the spirit of Waters’s work is Robert Starr, whose “Queering the Pitch” is both enlightening and funny. The others feel inappropriately academic. Initially, I wondered how Waters, himself, would react to such pieces. Would he roll his eyes at them or revel in them as scrumptiously kitsch? Based on the lengthy interview with the artist that wraps up the text side of Indecent Exposure, I think Waters may unironically approve. Here he reveals that there is actually serious, artistic consideration behind works depicting title cards of the shitty movies that were supposed  be screened on the planes destroyed on 9/11 or a picture of a flower that squirts viewers in the face if they get too close to it. The interview is also very valuable for what it reveals about Waters’s artistic process, such as the fact that he conceptualizes his sculptures while Tony Gardener, the guy who created killer-doll Chuckie and the fake breasts Selma Blair wears in A Dirty Shame, sculpts those uncanny likenesses of Jackson, Manson, and the rest. Needless to say, the interview is the biggest kick textual kick in Indecent Exposure. 

Review: 'It Must Be Art! Big O Poster Artists of the 60s & 70s'

Poster art made the big leap from the purely commercial to the voguishly decorative in the mid-sixties when hippies started decorating their groovy pads with brain-blistering images originally intended to attract flocks to Dylan concerts or other assorted happenings. During this period, infamous counterculture magazine OZ gave birth to a poster business with the express intent of enticing flower children to wallpaper their dorms with affordable images from the likes of Martin Sharp, Roger Dean, and Heinz Edelman, in essence transforming graphic art into something more personal. Big O Posters hawked its wares from 1967 into the punk era, when decidedly un-flowery artists such as H.R. Giger got in on the fun.

It Must Be Art! Big O Poster Artists of the 60s & 70s tells the story of the company, profiles nineteen of its most significant artists, and most importantly by a great distance, presents many of its posters and other artworks by the profiled artists in full color and at large scales. The art towers above all else both because it is outrageously striking by design and because much of the text is not that interesting. Roger Dean may have produced some truly iconic fantasy images, but he’s kind of a dull dude. The same is true of most of the graphic artists who often tell their own stories via dry interviews. There are a few exceptions when too much acid (David Vaughan), awful wartime experiences (Virgil Finley), or proximity to the infinitely more exciting pop world (Edelman, who designed Yellow Submarine seemingly against his will, and Sharp, who co-wrote “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and created some Cream album covers) intervene. Witchy Vali Myers is the rare artist in this book who makes for interesting text on personality alone, and not just because she’s the only woman who cracked its all-too-typical Boys Club.

But no one is going to pick up It Must Be Art! for its words. While some of the artwork is indescribably ugly (Brad Johannsen’s “Parson’s Crazy Eyes”) or tacky (pretty much everything by Robert Venosa), there’s also a lot of cool stuff in a wide variety of styles. The best of it captures psychedelia at its most garish without losing focus: Sharp’s intricate graphic designs, Dean’s prog dreamscapes, Ivan Ripley’s nursery décor, Rudolph Hausner’s bold and grim surrealism, Graham Percy’s tactile cuteness, Virgil Finlay’s pointillistic intricacies, Wayne Anderson’s mellow, gnomish fairy tales. There are also neat spreads devoted to Yellow Submarine and Giger’s Alien.

And Now for No Other Reason Than Universal Horror is Awesome, Here Are 20 Horrific Sketches...

I whipped up some sketches of classic Universal horror characters. Here they are...

Review: 'Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction'

So you just took a nice leisurely ride in the front seat of a shopping cart and successfully fooled your mom into buying you a box of teeth-rotting Fruit Brute. Things have been going pretty well during this supermarket outing. But then, just as you’re about to leave, you catch sight of a young girl’s face absolutely bulging with terror as she peers through a tiny die-cut window. What could be destroying this child’s nerves? As your mom rummages in her handbag for a ten-cents-off Palmolive coupon, you pull the cover open and are assaulted by the terrifying image of that girl in the arms of some sort of skeleton-faced demon.

Review: 'Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics'

In a time when fine artists were more likely to thumb their noses at comics than take jobs drawing them, Reed Crandall was happy to get the work. The fine sense of form and movement that informed his elegant and eclectic paintings, sculptures, and illustrations served him well when drafting Captain America, Blackhawk, and Doll Man to make ends meet. While his early work was usually anonymous, he began to make a name for himself when he started receiving his due credit while working for E.C. Comics, depicting some of the company’s most memorable crypt tales, such as “Carrion Death” and “Only Skin Deep”.

Reed Crandall’s art was exceptional, but based on Roger Hill’s new illustrated biography Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics, the man may have been a bit of a blank slate. Hill describes the varied beats of Crandall’s history, but only the most essential ones of the man’s life get a mention, and Crandall’s personality remains frustratingly aloof. On occasion, a friend or acquaintance briefly describes Crandall as nice, humble, and a bit insecure about his work while dwelling on his art in far greater detail. The fixation on his work implies there wasn’t much to the man when he wasn’t at the drafting table. That could have been the case, but I doubt most people can be reduced so glibly. This also leaves Hill’s text a bit lacking in substance since so much of it is spent synopsizing plots of comics Crandall illustrated or describing Crandall’s artwork (textually, the book is more satisfying as a history of the early comics industry than a biography). The copious color and B&W illustrations included in this volume—which includes both Crandall’s comics work and his fine arts work— speak much louder about the artist’s talent. A flawless counterfeit of a King of Hearts card will make you gasp when you realize Crandall created it when he was only ten years old. That the man was such a master of his medium may overshadow his inner self in Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics, but his mastery also makes the book a constant marvel to gaze at.