INTRODUCTION TO 'THE AUSTRALIAN H.P.

LOVECRAFT CENTENARY CALENDAR'

By Leigh Blackmore
374 words

H.P. Lovecraft is undoubtedly the most significant figure in the development of weird fiction in the first half
of the twentieth century. The imaginative influence of his work continues to be felt, and his reputation
(both as original thinker and prose stylist) continues to grow despite the distaste for the speculative fiction
genre lingeringly professed by some critics/would-be arbiters of literary taste. While a multitude of
cinematic adaptations have signally failed to do justice to Lovecraft's atmospheric tales (which - again
despite some critics' view of them as overly explicit - are generally too subtle to translate easily to the
screen), Lovecraft continues to inspire writers of contemporary horror, who use his themes - and more
importantly, his techniques - to introduce a chill note of cosmic fear into their tales.

In 1990, the centenary of Lovecraft's birth, a group of Australian artists, brought together by the
enthusiasm of Bryce Stevens, have thought it fitting to produce a pictorial tribute to the Providence
fantaisiste. Admittedly Lovecraft's own interests in pictorial art, as in music, were distinctly limited, though
he expressed a fondness for old-fashioned landscapes and the occasional visionary work such as the
paintings of Nicholas Roerich. Yet in his classic "Pickman's Model", Lovecraft makes his protagonist an
artist. Lovecraft believed in the visionary potential of the artist, holding that (like the poet), the artist is one
of those few of the 'requisite sensitiveness' to peer into the abyss and unflinchingly portray what is
glimpsed therein.

This calendar represents an Antipodean perspective on Lovecraft - not in its subject matter, for each
artist has captured a dark glimpse into the dark cosmos HPL envisioned, and that cosmos is here (as in
Lovecraft's stories) portrayed by scenes set primarily in America's New England - but in its representation
of the imaginative effect that Lovecraft's work has had on artists living so far from the geographical locus
of his best writing. Perhaps the spirit of Lovecraft would agree that here, in visual form, the artists have
also caught (to borrow a phrase from his letter to Farnsworth Wright - ref. UNCOLLECTED LETTERS, p.
11) "at least some faint echo of black, brooding whispers from unholy abysses and blasphemous
dimensions..."