Arty Farty Friday ~ Josh Kirby & Discworld

Some of us might be unfamiliar with the name Josh Kirby, but many of us - especially fans of the novels of the late Sir Terry Pratchett - will have seen many examples his artwork.

Ronald William "Josh" Kirby
(27 November 1928 – 23 October 2001) was a commercial artist born on the outskirts of Liverpool in the town of Waterloo, Lancashire. With a career spanning 60 years, he is known for being the original artist for Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, as well as some of science fiction's most acclaimed book cover illustrations.
See Wikipedia HERE.

Mr Kirby came by the nickname "Josh" at Liverpool City School of Art where colleagues likened his work to that of the great painter Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Kirby’s most significant milestone, in the 1980s, was teaming up with Sir Terry Pratchett.

From https://discworld.com/josh-kirby/

With the Discworld series, Josh found the perfect complement for the more fantastically humorous side of his talent, and his larger than life images exploded off the covers, inspiring many fans to dive into the Discworld.

Cover paintings for The Colour of Magic in 1983 and The Light Fantastic in 1986 quickly established Kirby as the illustrator for Discworld — at the time inseparable, like Tenniel for Alice or E.H. Shepard for Winnie-the-Pooh. Sir Terry himself said, “I only invented the Discworld, Josh created it.”

It should be noted, though, that the cognoscenti appreciated Kirby long before fame dug him in the ribs. He exhibited his paintings in London’s Portal Gallery, in ICA in Berlin, and in many provincial British galleries. Visitors to the huge art show at the 1979 World SF Convention in Brighton voted him Best SF Artist (Professional Class), when Discworld was still years away.............

After, in his own words, ‘many false starts’ he produced a pencil rough of the chosen image, to be approved by the publisher’s art editor, or, in the special case of Discworld, discussed over the phone with Sir Terry Pratchett. Although it seems like simple common sense, this artist/author contact and feedback was unusual in the publishing world, where illustrators normally dealt only with art editors. (Is it mere coincidence that authors are so frequently unhappy with their covers? Perish the thought.)

A slow worker, it took Kirby four weeks to complete a single illustration, or eight, counting the preliminary time taken to read the novel, select and visualize suitable images, and draw sketches to work out how they could be best presented.

When asked about influences, he most often named three past artists. The oldest was Hieronymus Bosch, famous for those teeming, surreally fantastic landscapes of heaven and hell. Next was Pieter Bruegel the Elder, with his hauntingly detailed groups of warts-and-all Flemish peasants, and finally muralist Frank Brangwyn, who made bold use of colour in his large scale, monumental compositions.

Josh Kirby Art is a website dedicated to this artist and the best place to see more of his work.

ASTROLOGY

For any stray passing astrology fan, I'll post a 12 noon natal chart for Josh Kirby, with a link to my archived post containing the natal chart of Sir Terry Pratchett. Notable points, for me are Kirby's Sun and Saturn in Sagittarius (see this quote from above linked extract: "Josh found the perfect complement for the more fantastically humorous side of his talent, and his larger than life images exploded off the covers...") How much more Sagittarius-like could an artist's style be? His Venus in Earthy Capricorn, though, linked to Capricorn's ruler Saturn in Sagittarius acts as a disciplinary factor, ensuring this artist is practical and careful too. (See above extract, again: "A slow worker, it took Kirby four weeks to complete a single illustration, or eight, counting the preliminary time taken to read the novel, select and visualize suitable images, and draw sketches to work out how they could be best presented.") Uranus in Aries, in harmonious trine to his natal Sun reflects his ease in coming up with the unusual and unexpected, sufficient to match Sir Terry's own wild imaginings.


A link between Josh Kirby's and Sir Terry Pratchett's natal charts exists via Kirby's Jupiter in Taurus, close enough to sir Terry's natal Sun/Mercury to be considered conjunct!

Josh Kirby born on 27 November 1928 in Waterloo, Lancashire, UK.

Arty Farty Friday Fusion

I set myself a challenge this week: to combine quotes, from some of the late, great Terry Pratchett's novels, each to an apt famous painting - an arty fusion - hopefully not confusion! I came up with the following:

"He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky." ("Thud")

"Reclining Nude, Head Resting on Right Arm (also known as Nude on a Couch)"
Amedeo Modigliani. [Note - I think she'd eaten the grapes!]

Everyone knew that stars were points of light. If they weren’t, some would be visibly bigger than others. Some were fainter than others, of course, but that was probably due to clouds. In any case their purpose, according to established Discworld law, was to lend a little style to the night. (The Science of Discworld)

Y'all know this one! Vincent's Starry Night.





There are the Brothers of Cool, a reserved and secretive sect which believes that only through ultimate coolness can the universe be comprehended, and that black works with everything, and that chrome will never truly go out of style.(Thief of Time)

Billy Boys by Jack Vettriano





.. he knew how to soothe, but he also knew when to twinkle and - more importantly perhaps - he also knew when not to twinkle. (The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day)

The Laughing Cavalier by Franz Hals




She looked like the kind of person who asked questions. And her hair was too red and her nose was too long. And she wore a long black dress with black lace fringing. No good comes of that sort of thing.
(The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.)

Miranda (The Tempest) by John William Waterhouse





She was, of course, beautiful. You seldom saw a goddess portrayed as ugly. This probably had something to do with their ability to strike people down instantly. (Unseen Academicals)

Pallas and the Centaur by Botticelli
(Pallas Athena was goddess of wisdom, strategic-war and, rather oddly, weaving - in Greek mythology).

It's a book...it's a film...

It's a book...it's a film...(it's not Charades - just another blog post!)

IT'S A BOOK

The Long Earth, the first novel of a sci-fi series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, and my current reading matter when offline. I'm getting towards the end of the book, enjoying it, and intending to move on to the second in the series soon. The premise of a multi-dimensional world is the main theme of the series, and when I say multi-dimensional, I don't mean half a dozen, or even a hundred dimensions, I mean millions and millions of alternative worlds, versions of Earth in a never-ending variation of modes, states, levels of development and evolution. A means of travelling between these Earths has been discovered.

This novel isn't as "laugh aloud" funny as some of Terry Pratchett's novels are reputed to be, but there's gentle humour, a touch of allegory, a touch of satire, none of it is forced.

A quote or two:

So now, he hoped, here was a chance to bring mankind back into the book-loving fold. He gloated. There was still no electronics in the pioneer worlds, was there? Where was your internet? Hah! Where was Google? Where was your mother’s old Kindle? Your iPad 25? Where was Wickedpedia? (Very primly, he always called it that, just to show his disdain; very few people noticed.) All gone, unbelievers! All those fancy toy-gadgets stuffed in drawers, screens blank as the eyes of corpses, left behind. Books – oh yes, real books – were flying off his shelves. Out in the Long Earth humanity was starting again in the Stone Age.

He quite liked the English. They tended to say sorry a lot, which was quite understandable given their heritage and the crimes of their ancestors.

And Joshua felt oddly uncomfortable, once more. A slight feeling you get when everything is so right that it might have gone all the way around the universe and come back metamorphosed into wrong.

All creatures on Earth have been hammered on the anvil of its gravity, for example, which influences size and morphology. So I am sceptical about finding armoured reptiles who can fly and spout flames.


Few bad words were said – apart from ‘Republican’, which was an extremely bad word.

Mankind isn’t really evil. It hasn’t got enough dignity to be evil.

IT'S A FILM

The Dinner, a 2017 movie curently available to stream via Netflix. It stars Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall. In a word it was: disappointing. Wikipedia states: The Dinner is an American drama thriller film directed and written by Oren Moverman, based on the Dutch novel of the same name by Herman Koch.

Where to begin ? For me, there were too many irritants in this movie. Bare bones of its theme hinge upon two brothers: one is a congressman (Richard Gere, natch, in his best oily smooth silverness), the other a neurotic misanthropic school teacher (played, for some peculiar reason, by British actor/comedian Steve Coogan). The brothers meet, wives in tow, at a painfully "elite" restaurant. They intend to discuss the problem arising from their sons having committed murder. That fact is hinted, but detail is slow to come and awkwardly revealed.

That these people would choose to discuss such a problem in a public place is quite unbelievable and that is one continual irritant, which sets the scene for what might, in other hands, have been dark high farce with some moral message embedded. Perhaps that was the original intention, but, well... something went wrong.

If a pompous maitre d' reciting the ingredients of every dish and garnish on the quartet's menu in great detail was intended to provide humorous contrast to serious matters discussed at the table - it didn't, it was clunkily time-wasting and caused me to shout at the TV!

Steve Coogan imitating, or rather ripping off, Woody Allen's voice, tone and attitudes was another major irritant. The role of the schoolteacher brother would have been considered tailor-made for Woody Allen, were he a few decades younger, but that didn't give Coogan the right to copy.

The film is confusingly carved up into sets of flashbacks, supposedly related to the many courses of the dinner. Dinner? I didn't notice much actual chewing of food taking place, come to think of it.

The movie's ending, no doubt reflecting how things would have turned out in a comparable real life situation, was unsatisfying, and a further irritant.

Bearing in mind the movie is based on a respected Dutch novel, all in all, I have to assume that much was lost in translation. Husband and I sat through the movie rather than ditching it, mainly out of curiosity to see exactly where it was going. We agreed that it was a sad waste of a talented cast. Next day I skimmed a handful of reviews and found that half were positive, for reasons I had difficulty understanding, and half negative, outlining views similar to my own. Polarisation - it's par for the course these days!

A Serving of Friday, Saturday & Sundries

A couple of slivers of arty-farty:

Meet painter Pollyanna Pickering, an internationally renowned wildlife artist and environmentalist. Her birthday is this weekend, she was born on 30 July in 1942.

And (with Hat-tip to Avedon's Sideshow)
If Norman Rockwell painted African-American culture today. -
By Jake Johnson [9 pictures by Sam Spratt]







A pouring of politics:

Jon Walker has written about an interesting plan to rectify US's failing health insurance system:
Here’s A National Single-Payer Health Care Plan That Would Work.

A soupçon of astrology:


Back in 2008, just for fun, I Just for fun, I coined twelve collective nouns (you know, similar to "a murder of crows", "an exaltation of larks"), for each zodiac sign, for possible descriptive use in a natal chart where a cluster of planets appear in one zodiac sign, alternatively, for those attached to Sun sign astrology, to describe a group of people who share the same Sun sign.

A rush of Aries
An affluence of Taurus
A chatter of Gemini
A nest of Cancer
A parade of Leo
A proficiency of Virgo
An arbitration of Libra
A collusion of Scorpio
A magnification of Sagittarius
An institution of Capricorn
A metamorphosis of Aquarius (I did write that in 2008, but now prefer An innovation of Aquarius)
A mirage of Pisces

And to pull together the whole caboodle:
A cadence of zodiac signs!

A whiff of words: at The Bureau of Linguistical Reality







A trickle of TV:

We've lately been watching the 10-part series Ozark, starring Jason Bateman (who also co-directs), and Laura Linney, plus a cast of interesting character actors.

Most reviewers compare Ozark to Breaking Bad, I can see why, but for me it felt more akin to Justified, due to its rural, mid-America, background location with lots of attendant quirkiness as well as criminality in local residents. Bateman plays Marty Byrde a cool-headed wheeler-dealer financier from Chicago who, with his early-on murdered partner, had been laundering (and skimming) drug money through their business. He escapes, with his family, to an area of Missouri around Lake of the Ozarks, in the hope that supposedly less-sophisticated (in the ways of finance) locals with be easy to entangle in the money laundering lark away from the FBI's gaze. The laundering must carry on, in order to protect Byrde's own life and those of his (cheating) wife and two (fairly obnixious) teen-ish offspring. He'd thought Ozark locals were going to be unsophisticated in the ways of crime - he had some fast lessons to learn. Some locals could give him a run for his money - quite literally too!

While Ozarks isn't quite up to Breaking Bad or Justified standards, all in all it's not bad, and better than many other offerings available at present. The series could have used a wee bit of lightness to contrast so much darkness, the odd joke or touch of wit, a one-liner or two would have helped anchor the tale in viewers' memories.



The dish garnished with ~

A pinch or two of Pratchett

Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.


Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
~ Sir Terry Pratchett.

Sir Terry Pratchett and "maybe a slice of tomato"

During August of 1997, sitting with my mother in hospital during her last sad days, I couldn't help noticing the guy who used to sit by the elderly patient in the bed opposite. The visitor, while his relative slept, would read a book with a constant grin on his face, occasionally bursting into spluttering laughter.

"What are you reading?"
"It's a Terry Pratchett novel - great stuff !"
"So I'd gathered !"
"You should try him!"
"I will."

Ever since then I've had a stored intention to get my head into some Terry Pratchett books but somehow haven't yet got around to doing so. There are so many, and they're mostly part of a set all relating to his fantasy Discworld. Each time I've begun looking for a used book or two of his I've been overwhelmed by sheer numbers and felt that venturing in to them now would be like trying to leap and hang on to the rail at the back of a speeding train which left the station long ago. In our local video rental store though, a few weeks ago I spotted:

Going Postal - a 2010 2-disc adaptation for TV of a Terry Pratchett novel - I grabbed it without further investigation - turned out to have been a good choice. We both enjoyed it a lot. Pratchett's style has echoes of....let's see.....Douglas Adams, Thorne Smith, Lewis Carrol, Harry Potter stories, Terry Gilliam and on....you get the idea? Fantasy with recognisable references and a good engaging story with quirky characters and excellent visuals. The plot involves a first-class con artist called Moist Von Lipwig finding the tables turned on him when he's conned into becoming the Ankh-Morpork Postmaster General. A position that has not been filled in years. This adaptation was produced as a 2-parter for Sky TV in the UK.

Properly referred to as Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE, the author was knighted in 2009. Wikipedia tells that:

Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s, and has sold over 70 million books worldwide in thirty-seven languages. He is currently the second most-read writer in the UK, and seventh most-read non-US author in the US. ............. And, very sadly: In December 2007, Pratchett publicly announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Sir Terry now fights to raise awareness of the disease. Public attention increasing since he publicly backed assisted dying by making the BBC documentary Choosing to Die.

Sir Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was thirteen, bought a second-hand typewriter with the proceeds. His first novel, The Carpet People was published in 1971. His literary fate, he says, was truly sealed when, aged 10, he first picked up a copy of The Wind in the Willows...."Mole, Rat, Toad, Badger. All different sizes. All can go inside one another's houses. All wear clothes. The toad, by no means a looker, can pass as a washerwoman. That enthralled me." He worked as a journalist and press officer for some years, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including the first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987 he began writing full time. His chosen style: a kind of magical-quirky-satirical-comical-fantasy.


Sir Terry's natal chart set for 12 noon as his time of birth isn't known.

I don't have far to seek to find the astro-signature of his trademark style: look at Venus, planet of the arts tightly conjunct eccentric Uranus - and in writers' sign Gemini too! Game set and match right there! Jupiter is opposite, in its home sign Sagittarius, known for philosophical leanings. From the Pratchett quotes below a definite philosophical bent can be sensed, so this astrological opposition reflects a balancing of the eccentric with the philosophical, and works out well.

A trio of planets in Leo, sign of a born leader in a chosen genre, who is unlikely to be ignored by the general public.

Sun and Mercury in Earthy Taurus with Moon somewhere in similarly Earthy Capricorn provide an underlying base of good old commonsense and business-sense around which his eccentric quirks and philosophical meanderings can swirl.

RANDOM QUOTES from Terry Pratchett and his novels

“There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.

The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?

And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye. ”
(The Truth)


“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
(Men at Arms)

“There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were... what was the word... deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style.”
(Monstrous Regiment)


“The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has it's own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.”
(Moving Pictures)


“He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.”
(The Fifth Elephant)


“This book was written using 100% recycled words.”
(Wyrd Sisters)

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”

“The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.”

“There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.”

More quotes at goodreads.com

THE WEEK THAT WAS

Two minor news items brought a quizzical smile to this blogger's face in the past week. Sometimes it does seem that we live in a world not altogether unlike Terry Pratchett's fantasy Discworld.

NUMBER ONE
""This is the last meeting I will have had with him as prime minister. It's a nostalgic moment for me," Bush told reporters, standing beside Blair after bilateral talks at the gathering of the world's top powers in Germany.
"I'm sorry it's come to be, but that's what happens in life. We'll move on," he added.
Blair is set to stand down on June 27 after a decade in office, the final years of which have been marked by a close alliance with Bush that has angered many in his Labour Party.
Bush and Blair have enjoyed an extraordinary personal chemistry, frequently joking with each other. "

A Taurean Sun (Blair, 6 May) and a Cancer Sun (Bush, 6 July) cookbook-wise would almost always gel together. According to Robert Camp's "Love Cards", which is based on an ancient system which I don't understand, but which seems to work - at least in the matter of relationship compatability - Bush is a King of Diamonds and Blair is 9 of Diamonds. They do have a good compatability rating, #6. A relationship "you could live with long term".

An excellent plan would be for Bush and Blair to wander off into the wide blue yonder together (not forgetting to take Dick Cheyney and Gordon Brown with them!)

A quote from one of Terry Pratchett's books fits nicely here:

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."
--Dydactylos the philosopher (Terry Pratchett in his book "Small Gods")

AND SECOND

"A billboard for a salon and medical spa, promoting cosmetic procedures and featuring a woman wearing little more than an off-the-shoulder top, has outraged some Glenview residents who say it sends the wrong message.

"I was shocked," said Regina Thibeau. "I was offended as a woman, angered as a mother and embarrassed as a resident of Glenview."
"It doesn't represent us as people whose beauty emanates from within," Thibeau said. "I'm a mother, a wife, a member of the PTA, and this is an affront to everything I work for and try to instill in my children."

Cathe Russe, a mother of four girls, stands behind Ibgui's right to put up the billboard, but she does not like its message.

"It demonstrates that there's a set of values they support that are the antithesis of my values," Russe said. "I would love to see it removed."

The 10-foot-by-36-foot sign along Willow Road near Patriot Boulevard depicts a model lying on the beach with lines pointing to "problem" areas on her body, such as facial lines and wrinkles, and corresponding "solutions," including Botox. "




"Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys".(Terry Pratchett, "Maskerade")

"She sighed again. She was familiar with the syndrome. They said they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows." --(Terry Pratchett, "Jingo")

I reckon that a wiser approach by these Moms would be to say to their little sweeties, pointing to the offending billboard, "It's life Jemima, but not as we know it!" After all, by the time the kiddiwinkies are at a stage where wrinkles and botox become an issue, the billboards will likely be advertising "Full Face Transplants". Won't THAT be fun!?