Monday, May 3, 2010

The Bringer of Wonders

And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences - of electricity and psychology - and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of a nightmare.

—H. P. Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep

The latest work from artist Joe Broers is a commemorative statue from Nyarlathotep's infamous tour of the United States in the 1920's, complete with associated paperwork. The entire set is a wonderful recreation of the "sinister showman" aspect of the dread god, based partially on his depiction in the talented Christian Matzke's eponymous film.







"Nyarlathotep" and other Mythos artworks can be found at Mr. Broers' DeviantArt page.

4 comments:

Gabriel said...

Nyarlathotep is my favourite of The Old Ones. Hail The Crawling Chaos! This statue is quite sublime, thanks for sharing.

Raven said...

The angularity of the Nyarlathotep figure puts me so much in mind of some of M. C. Escher's work that I even spent some time looking it over suspiciously to see if the negative space could form another close-fitting figure too, for tessellation.

Paranoia strikes deep....

brandykruse said...

Wonderful! Thank you very much.

Raven said...

Put a crystal ball in Doctor Steel's hand in this photo, and compare him to the statue; isn't it clear that he too is an avatar of the "sinister showman" Nyarlathotep?

See: DoctorSteel.com ; ToySoldiersUnite.com .