HELLASCORPIONS

Finally, this week, we have Magical World of Monsters (1992), a collaboration between artist Erni Cabat and writer Daniel Cohen.

I hadn’t heard of Cabat before I went on my spree of buying up all the Daniel Cohen books I could lay my hands on. Seems he spent most of his career in advertising and only began illustrating toward the end of his life (he was also a ceramics artist, collaborating with his wife, Rose, who had a pretty significant career of her own). In addition to Monsters, he produces Magical World books for prehistoric animals, carousel animals and dinosaurs, all in the same basic format. His style is rather hard to describe. I suppose I would start with “garish.” They’re a swirling combination of texture, pattern and unusual color choices that are difficult to visually parse. There is so much detail in the Medusa head, for instance, and the tonal range so compressed, that my eye can’t stop in any one place for long, to the point that it seems like her hair of snakes is perhaps really squirming. The sense of motion in all of these pieces almost verges on vertigo. They’re pretty amazing!

The selection of monsters seems mostly governed by what Erni wanted to paint. Cohen is there to provide the slightest bit of context. It all hangs together fine, Cohen knows who the star is here.

A late 19th century netsuke of a meditating skeleton, made of silver set in stag antler. Meiji period, from Japan.