The Devilish Gardens of François Houtin

The French artist François Houtin captures something of the wonderful side of the weird, but also something of the terrible. His brilliantly tangled, overgrown jungles reflect some element of the bizarre beauties writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith occasionally pined after and represented in their less dark tales. Though clearly inspired by ancient legends like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Houtin's exotic paper conservatories are more like enormous plant kingdoms from another planet. The skill and immensely odd vision that seeps into each one of his etchings shows nothing short of brilliance.


Although one would be hard pressed to find a Houtin garden that isn't beautiful, the reader of weird fiction will likely feel a vague anxiety rustling amid the leaves of Houtin's works. Houtin's jungles are peopled by unearthly plants, but people themselves and animals make scant, if any appearances at all. Moreover, quite a few of Houtin's dreamscapes show the relentless encroachment of magnificent fruiting bodies over abandoned palaces and pyramids, while other images make it impossible to discern whether the plants themselves might have formed terrifying facsimiles of abandoned buildings. When the observer considers who, or what, walks among the lush fields of Houtin's worlds in the past or future, there is horror. There is a dreamy hell behind the beauty of Houtin, as with most true beauties.


Regardless of whether awe or revulsion at Houtin's seething gardens come in greater proportion, he has cultivated an atmosphere closely associated with the weird's roots: cosmic wonder. In fact, Houtin has created the very environments of the weird often conjured only in the mind from reading eldritch literature. Although chances are good he will remain fairly obscure in the United States, this needn't be the case in weird circles. Several decent galleries of the artists work are available for perusing at the "Galleria del Leone" and "The Francis Kyle Gallery."

-Grim Blogger