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News From Bree
spymaster@theonering.net
Aug 29 2011, 11:03am
Post #1 of 11
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New Book: A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany The Lord of the Rings
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 Pieter Collier from the Tolkienlibrary.com writes: Exactly 50 years ago the artist Cor Blok created about 140 illustrations to accompany The Lord of the Rings, he visited Tolkien who liked his art and bought 3 pieces - the only artist who ever sold his art to Tolkien. In his letters Tolkien once said that if ever an illustrated The Lord of the Rings could be created it would have been Cor Blok who would receive the job. No such thing ever happened. However Cor Blok's art was featured on the Dutch translation of The Lord of the Rings for 27 years, without even mentioning the name Cor Blok. Some five years ago I talked to Cor Blok and embarked on a mission to track down his art, since many were sold and lost. They were all over the world, no one knew how much there were and how they looked like.
Still I kept to my mission and managed to trace them back (except a few which are lost forever) and managed to scan all of them and in my passion managed to convince both the artist Cor Blok, the Tolkien publisher HarperCollins and the Tolkien family to get a book out to show all the illustrations. It was a fun project that did cost me all of my free time, but I enjoyed every single minute of it. This week, the first of September, this project will see the light and will be released by HarperCollins. It has received the title: A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany The Lord of the Rings. The name comes from the general idea of Cor Blok to create a tapestry (just like the famous Bayeux Tapestry) and not just to illustrate the book.
The approximately 100 full-colour paintings in this new book are presented in story order so that the reader can enjoy them as the artist intended. If one looks at the art works one by one you can easily tell the complete tale of The Lord of the Rings. So all the paintings are accompanied by extracts from The Lord of the Rings and the artist also provides an extensive introduction illuminating the creation of the series and notes to accompany some of the major compositions.
Many of the paintings appear here for the very first time. Readers will find Cor Blok's work refreshing, provocative, charming and wholly memorable – the bold and expressive style that he created stands as a unique achievement in the history of fantasy illustration. Rarely has an artist captured the essence of a writer's work in such singular fashion; the author himself agreed, and what higher accolade is there?
Here is a link to the book http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/991-A_Tolkien_Tapestry.php
There will be released a hardback and a signed limited deluxe edition (signed by Cor Blok and myself)… What an excitement and an honor!
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Advising Elf
Nargothrond
Aug 29 2011, 6:33pm
Post #2 of 11
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There's no accounting for taste.
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I always thought his pictures looked like they were drawn by 3rd grader.
BTW, I made my own "Textless LOTR" from downloaded pictures by various artists, printed, placed in page protectors, then in a binder.
My girls loved it. I know many don't like Ted Nesmith (he doesn't do well with faces), but he has done a larger variety of scenes, not just the action-packed ones, than any other artist that I've seen. For example, he has pics of Sam telling his Troll-poem, and the meeting Saruman and Wormtongue with the company headed north after the victory over Sauron.
Link to Youtube video about my daughter's book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCo-bF0u8xI
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squire
Gondolin
Aug 29 2011, 6:48pm
Post #3 of 11
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This is a very great achievement
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Cor Blok's Tolkien illustrations (the few I have seen, pending this book) are classic examples of one trend in Modern art of the mid-century: recycling modes and forms from earlier eras of art, in service of a contemporary message. Thus his work is (as Advising Elf says) simplistic and apparently even childlike at times. But it is not childlike, and no child could mimic Blok's work accurately.
What makes this cycle so remarkable is that what Blok does with his art, Tolkien did with his writing: he recreated a medievalized romantic epic to express his concerns about the modern world. I think Tolkien recognized this congruence, and I think that's why he responded so positively to Blok's art - just as he did with Pauline Baynes' similar works illustrating his lesser writings. Baynes and Blok are not particularly "realistic", and Tolkien was not "realistic" either; Tolkien's great book was accused of being "childlike" too. For all that we admire Lee and Nasmith and Howe and Jackson and WETA, Tolkien himself did not see "realism" as the best mode of illustrating his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings.
Thank you very much, Pieter Collier! I hope I can afford to get this book. Had Blok's art been recognized for what it was in its own time, possibly the entire trend of Tolkien illustration might have gone differently...
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd (and NOW the 4th too!) TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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Beren
Nevrast
Aug 29 2011, 11:02pm
Post #4 of 11
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Thanks Squire... I know my English can be rough around the edges, but I fully agree. Cor Blok is one of the greatest art critics in the low lands and has written multiple books on how to use art as a language. He for sure did not create 'childlike art' but managed to show us the emotions of for example Frodo, instead of drawing us Frodo... if you get what I mean. When I embarked on this quest I was not prepared to be stunned over and over again... one thing is certain the more I saw Cor Blok's art the more I wanted to see. OK some are not that good, but some are truly brilliant. One has to remember that all this art was created 50 years ago and I'm proud to be able to tell that I put through and puzzled it all together. This is as close as we will get to what Tolkien once dreamed about, a Lord of the Rings with pictures by Cor Blok... looking forward to see all your reviews over the next few weeks!
'It is fulfilled. Even now a Silmaril is in my hand.' - tolkienlibrary.com
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Gandalf'sMother
Nargothrond
Aug 29 2011, 11:17pm
Post #5 of 11
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I never quite understood why some prefer "realistic" depictions of Tolkien's work (which really means figures and landscapes that have a post-Renaissance feel). Tolkien's own drawings (which are a bit of a combination of Japanese woodblock/Bayeux tapestry) are the best, IMO, and Cor Blok's come in at a close second for me, as they are wonderfully infused with both a Dark Age and medieval northern European aesthetic and a more modern minimalism (which sometimes hearkens back to pre-Renaissance art forms).
The contention that his paintings could be done by a child is nonsense.
(This post was edited by Gandalf'sMother on Aug 29 2011, 11:18pm)
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geordie
Dor-Lomin
Aug 30 2011, 4:20am
Post #6 of 11
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Beren - congratulations! I like Blok's work; (well, I like most of the works of his that I've seen so far). I have the 2011 calendar on my wall, and intend to buy next year's, too. What's more, I'm seriously tempted by the limited edition of your book. 
But I can't remember Tolkien saying that he'd dreamt of an edition of LotR with illustrations by Cor Blok. Could you remind us ? Thanks.
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geordie
Dor-Lomin
Aug 30 2011, 8:08pm
Post #8 of 11
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- I just looked it up in Scull and Hammond's Chronology - very interesting. As I said, I like Blok's work, in the main. I've seen some of his original paintings; and I must say, to see a work in the original; whether Blok, or Ted Nasmith, or Tolkien's himself, adds an entirely new perspective to it. It is a living, breathing thing in itself. (you know what I mean; enthusiasts of motor-cycles and steam-engines say the same thing).
No matter how good a reproduction might be, in a book or a calendar, one can only truly get an idea of the piece, and what the artist was aiming at, by seeing it 'in the flesh', as it were. So, in the case of Blok's paintings, I could see the layers and textures of which he speaks in his paper 'Pictures to Accompany a Great Story', in Lembas Extra 2008. I love to hear artists speak of their work; or to read of it, if I can't actually get to hear their talks. Cor Blok, and Ted; and also Anke Eismann and the bookbinder Philip Smith, all write so eloquently of their art - I can't get enough of this sort of thing.
I'm glad you chose Blok's 'Hornburg' picture for the slipcase illustration; it's one of my favourites.I'm looking at it now as I type; on the 2011 calendar. Only one more day to go, before I turn the page to see what's up for September.
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Beren
Nevrast
Aug 30 2011, 8:21pm
Post #9 of 11
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Well I have seen many of them... and it is indeed so... the originals are so fabulous and the scans less so. But Cor Blok really did help to get the color right, but sometimes it was just trying to get it as close as possible. Maybe I'll try and get some exhibition done, since the originals will just stun you!
'It is fulfilled. Even now a Silmaril is in my hand.' - tolkienlibrary.com
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Findegil
Lindon
Aug 30 2011, 9:55pm
Post #10 of 11
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not Tolkien, who suggested Cor Blok or Pauline Baynes. See our Chronology entry for 20 December 1962: "A bookseller has suggested that Allen & Unwin celebrate the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring by producing a six-volume Lord of the Rings in a somewhat de luxe format, which might appeal to an untapped market. Rayner is not entirely convinced but asks Tolkien for his reactions to a choice of illustrator: 'So far we have Mr. Blok and Pauline Baynes who seem to have something of the spirit of your writing in their art.'" There is no reply from Tolkien in the Allen & Unwin files; possibly he and Rayner discussed the matter at their meeting in Oxford on 22 February 1963. Of course, nothing came of the bookseller's suggestion, unless it led to the de luxe Lord of the Rings, in a slipcase illustrated by Pauline Baynes, produced in 1963 and sold in 1964.
In any event, it cannot be said that Tolkien dreamed of an edition illustrated by Cor Blok, regardless of how much he liked some of Blok's pictures. Cor Blok himself has recalled that Tolkien was not in favour of an illustrated edition, by any artist, and this is borne out in Tolkien's letters at least as early as 1956. (His earlier hope that Pauline Baynes could produce illustrations or decorations for The Lord of the Rings had been tentative and ruled out by cost; see Chronology for 20 December 1949.)
Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull
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geordie
Dor-Lomin
Aug 31 2011, 6:08am
Post #11 of 11
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Thanks for the clarification, Findegil
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- we can always rely on you.
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