He painted world-famous ballerina Lydia Lopovka, and God knows who else. Infamous booksellers and art dealers like Jake Zeitlin, Jack Brussel, and Bernard Guerney promoted his work. The actor John Carradine knew Blaine during his Hollywood career, as did Tina Modotti. Despite labels like these, Mahlon Blaine, 1920s book illustrator and pen-and-ink maestro, campaigned for “freedom of art” against “dysenteric hypocrites” who proclaimed “beauty is obscene.” He mixed his commercial success with an underground vocation of creating “playful drawings – sly dancing thoughts that would delight all men blest with the godly gift of laughter.” This bohemian Rabelaisian, with 2000 published illustrations ranging from children’s books to erotica, fought “for the beautiful and imaginative – conceptions beyond all limits of time and morality.”John Steinbeck was one of his best friends, and Blaine illustrated two of his early novels. Exploring his friendships with the famous and infamous from bohemian San Francisco to Hollywood to New York City, this (self)portrait paints the struggles and triumphs of an artist truly committed to his unique singular vision.Included are over 120 Blaine illustrations and photographs (most previously unpublished, unearthed from the vaults of collectors and friends).Ribald, risqué, bawdy, naughty, salacious – take your pick. Dealing with nudes and demons while in pursuit of the perfect model – who had killed herself.This historical novel takes a rollicking ride through one-eyed Mahlon Blaine's adventures and experiences as an early 20th-Century illustrator. A glass-eyed Jazz Age artist bounces between pre-talkies Hollywood and sinful New York City. The drawing above comes from this gallery which is among the better sets available.An Amazon #1 ebook rank. (Beardsley, to you.) Similarities too to contemporaries such as Wallace Smith and John Austen, both of whom owe a debt to Clarke and Beardsley.

Blaine’s quality control is variable but there’s a trace of the usual suspects in many of these drawings, notably Harry Clarke and, occasionally, the etiolated shade of the Divine Aubrey. The always reliable Bud Plant has a page about Mahlon Blaine’s life and work, and there’s also a website, The Outlandish Art of Mahlon Blaine. As usual with obscure talents of this period it’s good to know that someone has already done the required legwork in assembling biographical details. I doubt that illustrator Mahlon Blaine featured in any of the scurrilous porn books in Franz Kafka’s collection-he would have been too young, for a start-but his erotic work isn’t so far removed from some of the artists of The Amethyst and Opals.

Mahlon Blaine by Roland Trenary