the acclaimed fantasy art books,
prints and portfolios
by Kenneth Smith
the acclaimed fantasy art books,
prints and portfolios
by Kenneth Smith
PHANTASMAGORIA PUBLICATIONS or KENNETH SMITH
PO Box 381551 / Duncanville TX 75138-1551
phone (972) 780-0384 or email kensmith@texas.net
LINK D of website kennethsmith.com--CLICK HERE TO RETURN:
During its first phase of existence (until 1983), when it competed for his time as a professor of philosophy, Phantasmagoria yielded 7 books & over 20 portfolios. It was critically acclaimed for its rich concepts and renditions and excellence in production values, an idea too soon before its time: a creator/publisher developing a direct access to his public, to challenge ordinary notions of what was commercially publishable. Although comics would later see several creator-controlled publishing houses, few if any other than PHANTASMAGORIA attempted to introduce ideas and material that transcended the conventional framework of mass-market commercial culture. The closest venture to PHANTASMAGORIA may have been Frank Zappa's Barking Pumpkin Records. PHANTASMAGORIA served also as a significant extension of an artist/author's creative vision into the technology of reproduction and printing.
PHANTASMAGORIA's every issue set higher standards of quality for reproduction--tinted inks, hand-finished negatives, glorious color printing. It was a limited-edition publication before its time, sold originally at prices to compete with newsstand-periodicals or other prozines of far less costly printing.
Over the years its art and stories were praised by dozens of comics and SF artists: ". . .To encounter the combination of excellences--in concept, writing, lettering, layout, draughtsmanship, rendering, and production--all in one person, is downright frightening! A really beautiful job" (Kelly Freas). "A pleasure from cover to cover" (Jaxon). "Again and again I find myself paging through your wonderful book about the fish. A truly fine work loaded with thought-provoking imagination-tripping detail, a marvelously inspired series of pictures" (Tom Sutton). "Thank you for caring enough about art and philosophy to produce a series of delightfully beautiful magazines" (Arnold Fenner). "I really don't think you're producing a 'comic book,' but something much beyond that--on the order of visual narrative, or narrative and pictorial poetry--you're upgrading the field, in another way, and I salute that" (Burne Hogarth). "My modest research into the world of zines is over. . .I've now seen the ultimate. Phantasmagoria is so very interesting in so very many ways. I thought Bode's stuff was the supreme visual-text catharsis in this medium. Your things have a similar quality. Heartbreaking, bewildering, mystical and honestly wonderful in so many ways" (Frank Thorne). "Excellent textural/design/tonal delights in B&W--and fine color pieces, too, by gosh! . . .Carry on the good fight in your own unique creations!" (Alex Toth).
PHANTASMAGORIA's second phase was initiated in 1998 when Smith issued Otherwise, a book of philosophical anecdotes, myths, and enigmas from Memnon Press--the first in a series of attempts to define and depose the vicious modern ideologies from the minds of thoughtful readers.
Phantasmagoria
P.O. Box 381551
Duncanville TX 75138-1551
(972) 780-0384 (10AM-10PM CST) or email kensmith@texas.net
TO ORDER FROM PHANTASMAGORIA:
Payment may be in the form of (1) personal or (2) cashier's checks (payable to Memnon Press or Kenneth Smith, not Phantasmagoria), (3) postal money orders (payable only to Kenneth Smith), or (4) VISA/MC. The latter two forms enable immediate shipment. Personal & cashier's checks must clear (about a week) before shipping. Phantasmagoria will continue to produce books and prints, but it is no longer an independent business-entity but a subsidiary of Memnon Press, to which checks should be addressed.
You have the right to prompt shipment and adequate protection against damage to your order; please be aware, if you have not directly confirmed availability before ordering, that we travel at times for book-buying or conventions, and thus may occasionally not receive orders immediately after you send them. You have the right additionally to return any item(s) ordered, with or without cause, within 10 days of receipt for a full refund of the cost of the item itself (not postage/handling). All such returned items must be in the same condition as sent (e.g. resalable as mint or very fine). Complaints regarding damage in transit require notification of the shipping agent. You have the right to full satisfaction.
After nearly 30 years of filling orders by mail, I have no dissatisfied customers so far (albeit some souls are still patiently waiting for the remaining issues of PHANTASMAGORIA, bless their hearts; and those publications will indeed happen).
All PHANTASMAGORIA Publications are limited editions, the books issued in print-runs of about 3000 copies, and most prints and portfolios in runs of about 500 (some more, some less). So long as they remain posted on this website-link, it is safe to assume that these listed items are still stocked in some depth. At some point it will be necessary to withdraw particular issues, prints or portfolios from public offering; if your order is caught in that transition, a full refund for that item will be forthcoming.
It is not necessary to confirm any order in advance for anything listed on the Phantasmagoria link, or the Memnon link, which deal in multiple-copy offerings. The links Kenneth Smith Art and Kenneth Smith Books deal with one-of-a-kind or one-of-a-kind-in-stock items; orders from those links should be preconfirmed by phone or e-mail, if you do not want to take the risk of an item being subject to prior sale or being held for payment by mail.
Any PHANTASMAGORIA item may be autographed for an additional fee of $5.
PHANTASMAGORIA:
notes about a creative
concept from its originator
I wished for a system of thought that would leave my imagination free to create as it chose and yet make all that it created, or could create, part of the one history, and that the soul's. --Yeats
From my earliest college years I saw in Yeats' credo several conflicts I needed to deal with: how to keep my own struggle as an artist for originality from deteriorating into idiosyncrasy or vain self-indulgence, and how to preserve the fluency and organicism of creative spirit from the crystallizing and sclerotic effects of too-rational intellect. Any artist who is fully conscious and conscientious must combat not just the vices of a stupefying social order, but his own understanding and ego as well. Every intelligent artist must harness his or her wits to a larger sense of the significance of human existence: whoever is not clarifying such a meaning is indeed making himself just another part of the chaotizing modern problem of pseudo-individuals propagating a pseudo-culture which is, truly, no more than pathetic psychic debris.
To a creative individual the rigorism of human intelligence is a potentially deadly vice, as I learned from Nietzsche, Bergson, and Barzun. I wanted to produce work that could grow along with my intuitive intelligence, provoke and fertilize it. So I needed a format that would set a synoptic and long-term task for myself, yet also allow me the freedom to express peripheral, incidental or even distractive work also.
PHANTASMAGORIA was the answer to those concerns. What it was essentially alternated from odd to even issues: the odd-numbered titles were fables, making allegories or parables out of the various species that had risen to dominance as they evolved. (Whereas the even-numbered issues contained experimental or self-contained works.) Like different lens-systems, each species in its flowering threw into sharp relief some aspect of human nature and the liabilities of civilized cultures. We ourselves are creatures who learn little by looking directly at ourselves: we come to know our own natures obliquely, less from philosophy than from the glancing blows that literature and art strike upon our ways of seeing and thinking.
What was in my imagination when the idea of PHANTASMAGORIA first formed itself, that is, its first issue? Walt Kelly's POGO certainly, and Edd Cartier's supple brush-and-crayon work for the pulps; the succinct fables of Aesop, whose simple and ingenious logic impressed me although I never aspired to such simplicity; the rich science-fantasy worlds Wood, Williamson, Krenkel, and Frazetta spun out for the EC science-fiction comics; and, in the background, the evolving and mutating forms of culture that I gleaned from Hegel and other thinkers. Many fans not too keen on calendars suppose I fixed on reptiles because of Bode's lizards. He and I liked one another's work but it was POGO we were mutually influenced by.
I understood that I was in many ways an anomaly, not just an artistic intellect and a concretizing thinker but an intellectual artist who would not follow currents of abstractive modern art; and an educator determined to be a philosopher rather than a mere professor. Art like philosophy is ultimately about the deeper strata of life, so its own life is imperilled in an era of surfaces and shallowness. "Remain faithful to the meaning of the earth," wrote Nietzsche. Has anyone heard him--even now, a century after his death?
--Kenneth Smith, 1999
SECTION I: PHANTASMAGORIA Books / Magazines
PHANTASMAGORIA I: 1
First of the odd-numbered fable issues, "Eggs Over Easy" tells the tale of a naive countrylizard, Spaardi Dukkus, who after finding a monstrous egg fallen into his house takes it to sell in the decadent market of Threnatisthes City. A sharpster, Por Herminthes, leads him to T. Melinchtonis, a scientist of dubious scruples. Like their whole city, both of them come to regret ever having seen the egg. (Published 1971.)
The art for this issue shows the intricate form and texture that give its world the conviction of real life. All of these creatures show unusually expressive and lifelike subtlety, virtually animated on the page, and have made Smith's hard-to-come-by art a favorite among illustrators and animators. Some of these illustrations were reprinted as the opening vignette of Bradbury's DINOSAUR TALES (1983).
Costly coated stock was used as the text and covers: 8.5 x 11", with 36 interior pages in B&W and a 2-color wraparound cover. Entirely calligraphed by the artist/writer, this first issue is now so scarce--only 5% of the original print run of 3000 remains--that it can be sold only together with the set of 3 odd-numbered fables-issues, #1 / 3 / 5: the set of 3 for $75 (plus $6 p/h), a saving of $10 ($45 + $20 + $20).
PHANTASMAGORIA I: 2
Collecting a color cover and lead story in comics-format originally produced for Warren's CREEPY Magazine, as well as a much earlier story rendered for Wood's WITZEND, this second issue is a science-fantasy smorgasbord. It gathers also early creatures and heroic figures considered too difficult to reproduce by various fanzines.
At the time it was first published, its front cover was considered by critical reviews such as GRAPHIC STORY WORLD the finest art and printing ever to come out of the world of the amateur press.
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36 pp. of interior B&W; 8.5 x 11"--like issue 1, I: 2 is nearly depleted (about 5% of the original print run of 3000 remain). Published in '72, it is available only in the set of even-numbered experimental issues, #2 / 4 / 6, the set of 3 for $65 (+ $6 p/h), saving $10 over $45 + $20 + $10.
PHANTASMAGORIA I: 3
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This fable-issue offers "Timestream," the poignant story of Issi, a sensitive eel driven to despondency by the dogfish-eat-dogfish life of the undersea world. Unlike the reptiles of issue 1, the fish live not indifferently to one another but embroiled together in the rich soup of mother sea; but the world that provides for all of them also takes them heartlessly as sacrifices, all metabolized for the sake of all. The ocean's marvels and delights mean nothing to creatures who exist only to eat or be eaten. Issi is distraught by an artist's soul: if everything exists just to be consumed, if all is used up in the course of time, what is to become of the beautiful things that deserve to be saved? Then--a poignant discovery. (Published in 1973.)
Like issue I: 1, I: 3 measures 8.5 x 11" but contains 40 interior pp. plus a wraparound, luscious color cover. Its text is hand-calligraphed and all interior pages and inside covers are printed in a rich, specially mixed seagreen tint. It is available by itself for $20 plus $5 postage / handling.
PHANTASMAGORIA I: 4
All even-numbered issues contain experimental story and art, a mix of spontaneous inspirations and stories unrelated to the odd-numbered fables from the Great Ages of Evolution. Gathered into issue I: 4 are intricately rendered fantasy worldscapes of CERETA DREAMING, exquisitely crafted, poem-like accounts of a sybil whose imagination ranges through exotic universes.
Contributing to this richly textured issue are collaborations with Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, Hannes Bok, Roy G. Krenkel, and Curt Pardee. As with issue I: 3, the body of the issue--including the wraparound cover--is printed in a specially mixed warm brownish-black ink that captures the graphite and ink-wash tones of many of the originals. Four interior plates are printed in dreamlike full-color.
Published in 1974, issue I:4 measures 8.5 x 11" and contains 40 interior pages plus wraparound covers. Some nudity and horror, mild by most standards. $20 per copy, plus $5 postage / handling.
PHANTASMAGORIA I: 5
This fable-issue presents the saga of young Szgratizankel, a would-be knight on a vision-quest for the fabulous "Monnitation," a revelation hoped to reveal the purpose and significance of their lofty-minded insectival life. Traveling through fantastic lands, he meets exotic creatures among the unearthly flora, and finally is shepherded by some humblebees, a caterpillar and an underworldly monster into the insight he was seeking--but it is very far from the inspiration he had been expecting. (Published in 1977.)
Issue 5 measures 8.5 x 11" with 40 interior pp, all printed in a special mix of purplish black ink. The wraparound cover is printed in glowing color, as is the centerfold. Cost, $20 plus $5 postage / handling.
PHANTASMAGORIA II:1
This issue gathers several stories, some of them the 2-to-5-page comics-format pieces Smith has published in Heavy Metal, some brief vignettes composed to flesh out evocative pieces of art, and some--like the tragic allegory of The Eyeggs--the more elaborately spun logic of mad human reason in its race to uproot and destroy itself as comprehensively as possible. Two portfolios--one a rogue's gallery of science-fantasy Reprobates, the other outstanding scenes from the fables-issues--fill out the issue. Front and back covers in glorious color, 8 interior color pages. (Published by Fantagraphics in 1990.)
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64 interior pages, including 4 pp of introduction by Burne Hogarth; 8.5 x 11"--the first issue in squarebound format. $10 plus $5 postage / handling.
PHANTASMAGORIA II: 2
The seventh issue of PHANTASMAGORIA continues the fables-line with a nostalgic, humorous tale from the great Age of Amphibians. Their marshy world is drying up, its flavor is changing, their delicate skins are wracked by hostile air and sun--they hardly understand one another anymore. Only the old ones remember the rich myths of how life used to be. Now is a time of troubled lives, as the new geological age allows no interzones any longer between dry land and fathomless sea. What new forms of life are evolving for the salamanderish or newtish peoples in the cities? Are they hardening up like reptiles, their dreams and savor for life drying up? Go along on a tour of a demented carnival of eccentricities.
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Specifications for this issue have not been firmly set as of yet: the art calls for interior color as well as color covers. To finance the issue and gratify collectors, Phantasmagoria 7 is being offered in five different editions: (1) 10 copies signed/numbered I-X with a color original bound in (pre-publ., $250, post-, $300), boxed; (2) 25 copies signed/numb. i-xxv with a B&W original bound in (pre-publ., $150; post-, $200); (3) 100 copies signed and numbered 1-100 with a special plate bound in (pre-publ., $80; post-, $100); (4) signed only, in an indefinite number (pre-publ., $25; post-, $30); and (5) the regular edition, already pretty stupendous (pre-publ., $20; post-, $25). Inquire.