Cool Hunting

Marked by eerie, nightmarish imagery, the work of Alfred Kubin seems awfully appropriate on Halloween. The Austrian artist mined the depths of the human subconscious to craft some of the most enduringly spectral drawings, watercolors and lithographs. The recently-released monograph "Graphic Works 1897-1910" accompanies the retrospective by the same name that is currently on display at the Neue Galerie New York, which focuses on his earliest works drawn at the turn of the century.

In addition to the illustration of his own dream worlds, he interpreted the more macabre works by the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, as well as Balzac, Gogol and Dostoevsky, to name a few. The book spends 212 pages exploring the genesis and significance of his work with 100 color illustrations that, judging by Kubin's monochromatic palette, might as well have been black-and-white. A full 50 years after his death, Kubin's early work still exudes the creepy, hypnotic weirdness that made him a household name in the German-speaking world.

The text is provided by Annegret Hoberg, a curator at Munich's Lenbachhaus and author of numerous art books. "Graphic Works 1897-1910" is available through Prestel, as well as Amazon.