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Anne Bachelier and Edgar Allan Poe!

Anne Bachelier Illuminates the Spirit of a Nineteenth Century Gothic Master in a New Volume from CFM Gallery Books

... As soon as one learns that gallerist and collector Neil Zukerman's most ethereal art star has teamed up with that immortal master of the macabre, it seems clearly a match made in one of the nether regions of Heaven. For what living visual artist could possibly be better suited to illuminate the words of the haunted American writer who once said "The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world" than the retiring French painter of wraithlike ingenues who personify the Victorian ideal of "pale "tubercular" beauty?

The occasion for this auspicious marriage is "13 Plus One By Edgar Allan Poe," a profusely illustrated volume about to be released in both a standard edition and a Deluxe Collector's Edition by Zukerman's publishing company, CFM Gallery Books. Bachelier's abilities as one of the few contemporary colorists capable of approaching the Old Masters for evoking subtle chromatic qualities were made manifest in her previous illustrations for the same imprint, most particularly those for Gaston Leroux's gothic classic "The Phantom of the Opera," where she evoked the opulent setting of the Paris Opera House -- its sweep and grandeur, as well as its shadowy eaves -- with such breathtaking skill. Her line and her colors were a bit lighter and brighter in her illustrations for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," as befit Lewis Carroll's more fanciful prose style and whimsical characters, yet her interpretation of the text was every bit as stunningly on the mark.

For the present volume, however, in keeping with Poe's dark vision, Bachelier has chosen to create oils on panel in black and white grisaille, substituting for her usual radiant hues a plethora of subtle monotones and dramatic chiaroscuro effects that fully complement his melancholy magic.

The volume opens with Poe's best known and most tragic romantic poem, "Annabel Lee." Some believe this syncopated masterpiece about the loss of an early love was prompted by the death, two years before it was written, of Poe's wife Virginia, whom he had married when he was twenty-six and she thirteen. ( In fact, the poem inspired Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Lolita," whose pedophile protagonist's lifelong obsession with "nymphets" was stirred by a prepubescent infatuation at a seaside resort with a girl named "Annabel." And that the first nineteenth century American poet and short story writer to attempt to survive solely by his writing continues to exert a wide cultural impact is heard in poet and art rocker Lou Reed's tribute to him, an entire album of songs entitled "The Raven.")

For "Annabel Lee," Bachelier evokes the setting of a "kingdom by the sea" in bravura fashion, with just the most exquisite painterly suggestion of shadowy spires rising amid moonlit mists, turbulent white waves, and the cloud out of which covetous angels "not half so happy in Heaven" sent down a cold wind, "chilling and killing" and chilling the narrator's star-crossed sweetheart. In the lower right area of the composition, we see the girl in her long white gown, already brilliantly, spectrally oblivious, as her grieving suitor reaches out for her hopelessly in the all-pervasive gloom. Already there is nought for him to do but lie with her nightly in the necrophile's marriage bed of her tomb by the sea.

Next comes "The Black Cat," Poe's terrifying horror story about an alcoholic whose love for a pet feline takes a perverse turn, causing him to gouge out one of the animal's eyes with a penknife in a drunken rage and later hang it by the neck from a tree in his garden. Through a complex chain of such circuitous circumstances as Poe alone could plot, he ends up killing his wife and cementing her body into a cellar wall of a new house he moves into after the first one mysteriously burns down. The police, investigating her disappearance, hear another one-eyed cat, with which he had replaced the one he killed, wailing inside the wall. It turns out he inadvertently buried it alive along with the corpse of his wife.

Although Aubrey Beardsley made a famous illustration for this story, Bachelier surpasses its merely decorative art nouveau appeal with an image more spookily worthy of Poe's harrowing tale.

Contrastingly lovely, if also supernatural, is Bachelier's illustration for "Eulalie" yet another Poe eulogy for a beautiful woman gone too young to the grave. Although Poe does not make her demise as explicit in the finished text as he does in Annabel Lee," he scrawled the phrase "Deep in Earth" on the original manuscript page. And Bachelier makes it crystal clear in her image of a ravishing ivory-skinned nude with tresses showering in luminous ripples of "humble and careless curl" beyond her slender shoulders, as she stands like a cold ivory statue in the portal of her skull-canopied tomb.

For "The Raven" (along with "Annabel Lee," one of Poe's best-known poems), Bachelier embodies the sheer terror of the verse in a monstrous avian figure -- More frightfully formidable than any of the birds of prey in Leonard Baskin's "Raptors" series. Hovering midair in moonlight that reflects off the glistening black impasto which gives palpable weight and depth to its feathers, the frightful creature dwarfs Poe's harried narrator, as he shields his eyes with one hand and with the other attempts to wave it away.

Here, finally, is the visual complement for which this immortal work has long been pining.

Here, as always, Anne Bachelier actually interprets the texts that inspire her, rather merely than exploiting them as a platform for showcasing her own style and sensibility, as all too many fine artists do when they condescend to work in book form today -- and even as many full-time illustrators do, for that matter, in an era when picture books geared to adult readers have become precious rare. It is clear from her visual storytelling that she does not consider illustration a minor art form, but a high calling on a par with painting or sculpture, which she undertakes in the spirit of equal collaboration with her close friend and publisher Neil Zukerman.

Zukerman, whose dynamic designs invariably return the favor by respecting and complementing her pictures, seems singlehandedly dedicated to restoring the stature that the illustrated book once enjoyed among grownups, as well as younger readers. And in Bachelier, an artist with a natural humility to match her genius (a rare combination, for sure, in an age of runaway egos!), which enables her to enter into a full collaboration with the author as well, Zukerman has apparently found the perfect accomplice.

Her drawings and narrative paintings -- as the monochromatic oils in this volume can only properly be described -- not only thoroughly and thoughtfully translate the spirit of Poe into visual terms, but faithfully capture the spirit and setting of each specific story or poem. For example, for "William Wilson #2," the story of a man of noble descent who has been plagued since his school days by a "double" who shares even his name (in which Poe can be said to have anticipated the modern problem of "identity theft" in his own peculiar manner), Bachelier depicts the climatic moment when Wilson finally confronts his namesake and nemesis at a ball, before dragging him into an antechamber and stabbing him to death -- only to later be haunted at the man's bloodied image in his mirror.

Also including Bachelier's illustrations for stories and poems such as "Hop-Frog," "Lenore," "The Mask of the Red Death," "Spirits of the Dead," "Tamerlane," "The Tell-Tale Heart," Ulalume," and "Epimanes," this is arguably the most lavish and handsome edition of any work by Poe ever printed.

-- Ed McCormack

Artist's book signing:November 8, 2012, 4:30 - 8:30pm CFM Gallery, 236 West 27th St., 4th floor

 

 

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CFM Gallery
Exquisite technique coupled with artistic vision defines our user-friendly presentation of figurative fine art paintings, sculptures and original graphics. Contemporary symbolism at its apex in the traditions of Bosch, the Italian Renaissance, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Viennese and German Secession and the symbolist movements with an edge of surrealism.