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 Now Out

Coye was one of the famed artists connected to the original legendary magazine "Weird Tales" in the 1940s, and in many ways he was a natural when it came to presenting the nitty-gritty of horror.

(PRWEB) November 7, 2004 -- Lee Brown Coye was one of art's almost men"-not a loser, but never quite a winner. Bad luck haunted much of his career. He began his life 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. Coye was ready to make a breakthrough when he began to appear in the Whitney Museum's 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" and "Amazing Stories", 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 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. 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.

Price: $39.95; 176 pages, hardcover
ISBN: 1-933065-04-4
website: www.nonstop-press.com

Featuring over 350 pieces of art by Coye, including many never before published.

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