Part II: Calendrier Magique by Manuel Orazi
Calendrier Magique is an occult calendar created by Austin de Croze and illustrated by Manuel Orazi. The booklet calendar was printed in France in 1895 and only had 777 copies to commemorate magic for the coming year of 1896. It was meant to be a work of art rather than a real handbook for occult practices. The booklet blends Orazi’s Art Nouveau style with occult, horoscope, and tarot imagery. Overall, the calendar has dark, muted earth tones, natural elements, and organic line art – a clear reflection of the Art Nouveau style. This project was a lot different than Orazi’s well-known advertisement prints. Orazi’s work is usually imagery-focused with very little text, but this calendar has an equal balance of imagery and text– probably due to the fact that he is working in collaboration with de Croze. The imagery created by Orazi helps support the text written by de Croze. The text also reflects the Art Nouveau style. Art Nouveau takes heavy inspiration from the medieval craftmanship of books and manuscripts. This medieval-inspired scripture is extremely prominent throughout Calendrier Magique. In other works by Orazi, there is an element of elegance and glamour. Calendrier Magique also encapsulates these themes through the imagery of royalty and religious artifacts illustrated by Orazi.
References
Fantastic… book record. (n.d.). Retrieved April 6, 2022, from http://fantastic.library.cornell.edu/bookrecord.php?record=F051
Onion, R. (2014, August 29). Gorgeous, creepy pages from a late 19th-century art nouveau occult calendar. Slate Magazine. Retrieved April 6, 2022, from https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/08/history-of-the-occult-magic-calendar-by-austin-de-croze-and-manuel-orazi.html
As you said, this art balances image and text very well. What I find especially remarkable, though, is how the images as overlapped. Sometimes with each other, sometimes over text. Instead of creating a mess, this works really well for the art. I imagine that since the book was intended to be art, this opened up the creator to do many exciting things.
I also noticed the inky scribbling below the handprint. It makes me wonder if it was intentional or an accident that the artist simply ran with. I think in the context of what the book was meant to portray, it works very well and certainly passes for being an intended part of the artwork.