Arts Unknown
The Life & Art of LEE BROWN COYE
The first bio and art
retrospective of one of the defining horror artists of
the 20th century. Volume 1 of the Nonstop Library of
American Illustrators
"...a smashingly beautiful
book....Reading this fine biography is like riding a
train through the history of three-quarters of the
twentieth century, and seeing Coye's monsters through
every window."
– Paul di Filippo, "On
Books,"
ASIMOV'S Science Fiction
“...a must for lovers of
the weird and fantastic.”
– Publishers Weekly
Lee Brown Coye is one of art's
“almost men”-not a loser, but never quite a
winner. Bad luck haunted much of his career. He began a
career as an artist on the eve of the Great Depression
and was forced to labor as a malcontented advertising
agency art director through much of the 1930s. He
appeared ready to make a breakthrough when the Whitney
Museum accepted some of his paintings for its annual
exhibitions and had a watercolor brought by the
Metropolitan Museum for its permanent collection-then
Pearl Harbor was attacked.
The arrival of abstractionists
fleeing war-torn Europe forced American artists working
in a realistic style, like Coye, to the periphery of
the art world. While Coye dabbled in abstract
paintings, and later worked as a medical artist and
cartoonist, he always considered himself primary an
illustrator. In periodicals such as Weird Tales,
Coye's uniquely macabre and original art found the
perfect home. Illustrating horror stories matched
Coye's anatomy lessons with his macabre sensibilities.
At this time his studios were gothic abodes filled with
skeletons, dead animals, live rats, and human body
parts from a medical college — all models for his
art. Some of his best work was done for pulp magazines
and the horror specialist publisher Arkham House.
In author Luis Ortiz' words,
“Coye was an art machine and an American
Original. As a child he was considered a ‘holy
terror’. As an adult, after a hard day of doing
medical illustrations, he thought nothing of walking
into a bar carrying a decapitated human head in a jar
under his arm, placing it on the counter and buying his
guillotined 'friend' a drink. On another occasion he
'borrowed' the finger-bone of a saint (a holy relic he
was building a reliquary for) from the Catholic Church
in his hometown of Syracuse, New York. The Syracuse
diocese was beside itself and had to send clergy to
perform a blessing on Coye's studio since the relic
could only travel to holy places.”
Ortiz adds, “Coye's horror
illustrations are not like anything done before-or
since. You would have to go back to Goya's black
paintings to find anything comparable to the art he was
doing for pulp magazines and Arkham House. Yet despite
the darkness, Coye's art was always filled with traces
of humor.”
Parts of The Blair Witch Project film may have been based on a true life
incident that occurred to Coye as a young man when he
discovered a strange, isolated farmhouse in the
backwoods of upstate New York. The house was surrounded
by bizarre constructs of lashed-together sticks and had
an unusual tenant. The unexplained display seemed to
allude to some dark nature, and stayed with Coye the
rest of his life. Later on, sticks would become a
recurring motif in his illustrations. Horror writer
Karl Wagner transmogrified the incident into an award
winning story, “Sticks”, which may have
influenced the makers of Blair
Witch.
ARTS UNKNOWN; THE LIFE AND ART OF
LEE BROWN COYE weaves together biography, the mid
20th-century fractured schools of American fine art and
commercial arts, and New York history, as well as
offering fascinating insights into a one-of-a-kind
artist. The author has interviewed many of Coye's
relatives and friends, and was allowed complete access
to the artist's personal archives, including diaries
and letters. As the first book on the Coye, ARTS
UNKNOWN is significant in bringing to light this
extraordinary, eccentric man and his art.
Featuring over 350 pieces of art
by Coye, including many never before published.
by Luis Ortiz
Price: $39.95; 176
pages; Hardcover
ISBN: 1-933065-04-4 Fully illustrated
