Barlowe's Inferno [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

~ Wayne Barlowe (Author) "BEFORE ME LAY A DARK PLAIN, SHADOWED AND MYSTERIOUS, UNBROKEN BY ANY MAJOR FEATURES..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Wayne Barlowe, Society of Illustrators

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In this work, Wayne Douglas Barlowe dips his brush into the swirling mists and rolling infernos of Hell. His renditions of Hell's landscape and bizarre inhabitants, with tormented souls and hideous demons populating the living structures, sprouts from the darkest regions of the human imagination.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 72 pages
• Publisher: Morpheus International; 1 edition (December 8, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883398363
• ISBN-13: 978-1883398361
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 11.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #319,677 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A visually arresting, if VERY brief, "natural history", February 21, 1999

By A Customer

Bottom line: if you like jarring images for your jaded visual palate or as Robert Williams put it, are a "retinal fiend", then buy this and buy it now! But beware, it is not the usual eye candy. You have to like your candy made of habanero peppers, gravel and meat by-products.

There is very much that is odd about this book. It's certainly a coffee table book but only a deranged, militant bishop would leave it out on the coffee table. It is not a guide, neither field nor travel, nor is it a photo-journal of a trip as, with only 22 full color paintings and 6 sketches, it would be a woefully incomplete one. Yet, at times, one is left with the feeling that Barlowe is on the verge of a new form of story telling, i.e., using a series of almost disconnected images to force the reader thru a series of emotions and conclusions leading to an inescabable denouement.

The artwork, while visually stunning, has its oddities also. It owes nothing to Dore, Bruegel or Bosch and in this Barlowe succeeds in the almost impossible task of creating something "completely new" in his re-fitting of Hell. His handling, always meticulous, has become a vituoso display of textures and gone, generally and thankfully, are the sharp linear highlights and brushwork of his earlier works.

The images presented are neither hermetic nor hieratic and very approachable in symbolic content. While somewhat more impressionist than realist, the paintings range from landscapes to portraits. Yet, they are curiously without sympathy--the artist is moved to awe by the atmosphere of Hell but conveys little pity for its inhabitants.

In this, he matches Dante, but oddly again, gone is the divine logic of Dante's punishments. Barlowe's punishments are capricious and illogical. In fact, there seems to be a glaring logical flaw (something like the Daggerwrists in Expedition: how can the population be stable if the parent has to die in the birthing?). Unlike in Dante (and Niven and Pournelle's derivative re-telling) souls can be utterly, permanently torn apart or altered (morphed) until they are either laying about the landscape or are part of it. It seems like they can become so diffuse one wonders how there is anything left to suffer pain.

Finally, in the most inventive part of the book lays its most dissatisfying aspect. Barlowe begins to outline a logical ecology for Hell that uses souls as raw material, yet never completes it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoroughly believable, beautiful hell, February 1, 2002

By	Jim Boydston (Tulsa, OK USA) - See all my reviews

Depicting an artist's descent in to hell, Barlowe's Inferno is a richly stunning masterpiece. This hell is not a simple pit of torment, not limited to one religions preconcieved notions, and definitely not a place you would want to be. Everything about it screams of human suffering as the souls of the damned are cruely ground down in to the very stuff hell is made of. One of the other reviewers mentions that the depictions lack sympathy for the souls of the damned, but indeed how can you have sympathy for the souls able to wonder when every brick of the behemoth structures surrounding them is itself a soul, when the very dirt is constructed of souls so old and torn they have become agonized fragments of dust. From the Demons Major and Minor with their regal stances and manor bearing witness to their once grace filled state, to the lesser demons completely alien and yet frighteningly recognizable, to the bricks that stare at you with their sorrowful imprisoned eyes, this book is simply captivating.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh... HELL!, December 26, 1999

By	Jim Nevermann (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

Very highly recommended... but be certain all your lights are on when you open this beautiful but disturbing book.

Although Barlowe's searing INFERNO imagery is rendered in a somewhat less photographic, more "painterly" style than his earlier books I have, it's dead-on target for depicting this eternally skin-crawling, hyper-grotesque netherworld. Helpfully described by a sort of narrative text, the twisted inhabitants of Barlowe's raging nightmarescapes purposefully go about their unending torments with skull-shredding focus: their horrors make bizarre sense.

I first went through this visually and spiritually cacophonous, masterful work on Christmas day. What contrast: listening to carols about angels from Heaven, while staring at demon-shrieking souls in Hell.

Final note; don't miss the deliciously caustic JUSTITIA OMNIBUS at the bottom of page 2.