In 1863 a new kind of journalism with particular emphasis on sensational news stories, the so called faits divers, was introduced to the French press landscape by the foundation of the daily “Le Petit Journal”. It´s editor M.P. Millaud had coined the much quoted phrase “dare to be stupid”. In the 1890s this leading French penny paper had a circulation of a million copies and by 1884 it also included a weekly illustrated four page supplement. The pictorial news were created by some of the best illustrators of the decade and the dramatic style they established, merging documentary with phantasmagorial elements, became highly influential for magazine covers wordwide.
Alexander Roob’s “History of Press Graphics. 1819-1921. The Age of Graphic Journalism” is out now. (Taschen Cologne, Hardcover, 24.6 x 37.2 cm). In over 600 pages, this far-reaching compendium presents press illustration and graphic journalism as a distinct and unique genre and a laboratory for developing avant-garde aesthetics. The images are largely taken from the […]
What sails here under the flag of caricature is nothing other than an early form of blunt and bleak social realism. The group makes a powerful and monumental impression, misery in the dimension of a history picture, and that’s exactly how it was meant to be. The publisher of La Caricature, Charles Philipon, like most […]
Heavenly Zo / INRI becomes ISO / Swabian and Lorraine Somnambulism Heavenly Zo Richard’s emblematic sexual symbolism originated in the theurgic Neoplatonic geometry of Alexandrian late antiquity and had found its way from there into Jewish mysticism and Hermeticism. The most famous example was the Seal of Solomon, the hexagram, which consisted in the interpenetration […]