Showing posts with label Jacques de Loustal. Show all posts

Monday, August 3, 2015

New 2016 Calendars: The New Yorker and Edward Gorey

The new wall calendars for 2016 have arrived. They are probably on sale just about everywhere by now but I came across them over the weekend at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The New Yorker's 2016 entry calls itself The New Yorker Covers Poster Calendar 2016 which is nearly as awkward to read to yourself as it is to say out loud. The calendar's cover reproduces the 2012 Innovators Issue magazine cover "The Cloud" by Bob Staake. On the calendar's back cover, we get to see the magazine describe itself as "Iconic design. Iconic New Yorker." Apparently they left out the part about humble. Calendar covers are by Mark Ulriksen, Charles E. Martin, Maira Kalman, Jacques de Loustal, Birgit Schössow, Adolph K. Kronengold, Garrett Price, Christoph Niemann, Eric Drooker, Arthur Getz, Jorge Colombo, and once again Bob Staake. Helpful advice is offered for those who wish to "First hang it as a calendar--then frame it as art!" Let's face it: you could do worse.

The New Yorker Covers Poster Calendar 2016

Now the Edward Gorey 2016 Calendar describes the artist as "famous for masterful pen-and-ink cross-hatched drawings and ironic, offbeat humor." While I might quibble a bit with the use of "cross-hatched" to describe the great variety of detailed pen-and-ink work for which Edward Gorey is acclaimed, I nevertheless find this calendar's blurb to be pretty accurate and without pretense. The cover illustration is a wonderful set-piece called "An Exhibition." I certainly would have no quibbles about gazing at an image of this quality every month.

Edward Gorey 2016 Calendar

Note: You're in luck! This blog has a few posts on many of these artists:

Bob Staake

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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Hump Day

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. A happy Hump Day to all!

Which brings us to the following original artwork by Jacques de Loustal. How's that for a seamless transition? The ink and watercolor work went unsold at Sotheby's Paris on July 4, 2012.

**Jacques de Loustal, Un après-midi à Fedala (c.1984),** Sotheby's Paris, July 4, 2012

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/bande-dessine-comics/lot.76.lotnum.html

The following two images are from the website loustal.nl:

La brasserie de Mr Bedouck 1950
Avenue de la Marne, maintenant rue de Fes. Mohammedia

http://loustal.nl/museum1105.htm

pour la couverture du numéro Spécial France du magazine espagnol El Vibora en septembre 1986.
Cover of the Especial Francia issue of the Spanish magazine El Vibora, September 1986

http://loustal.nl/museum1105.htm

Jacques de Loustal, Un après-midi à Fedala (c.1984), Sotheby's Paris, July 4, 2012

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/bande-dessine-comics/lot.76.lotnum.html

Note: My post on some of Jacques Loustal's New Yorker work from the same sale appears here.

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Monday, June 18, 2012

Jacques de Loustal: The Timely and the Timeless

For a long time, the covers of The New Yorker tended to have no relationship to the content of the magazine or to current events. Covers typically showed scenes of New York City and surrounding areas as well as vacation spots, or domestic scenes, or artistic flights of fancy. This was typical of the magazine under editor William Shawn, and to some degree this type of cover is still published today. The changing of the seasons are duly noted, but for most covers of this sort, they could as easily have been published a year or two later, with little change in their impact.

That changed under the editorship of Tina Brown, and it persists with David Remnick as editor. Today The New Yorker's covers can broadly be grouped into two categories. One type depicts, as before, scenes of everyday life typical for the time of year. The other attempts to capture the mood of a specific moment in our history and to comment upon it. These covers are often overtly political. They may be deliberately provocative and tend to get a lot of attention in the press and online. Often, they wouldn't work if publication were delayed by even a week or two.

Sotheby's Paris is about to sell two examples of original New Yorker cover artwork by Jacques de Loustal, a popular illustrator based in Paris. As it happens, these pieces demonstrate both types of approach to the magazine cover, the provocative and the evocative, the timely and the timeless.

Loustal's cover art to the June 13, 1994 issue has a gay marriage theme and is entitled June Grooms. It is probably one of the earliest mainstream magazine covers with such a theme, and as such makes a strong political statement. Unlike most of the timely covers, it is not so much a reflection of its time as ahead of its time. I find it at once sedate and garish, elegant and unappealing. I mean, that blond groom could do so much better for himself!

The cover to the April 18, 2011 issue appears to show the French or perhaps the Italian Riviera. If Sotheby's 2009 date for the artwork is correct, then this is indeed an example of a cover that could have been run in any spring or summer, including the spring two full years after its creation.

July 4, 2012: Unsold.

Jacques de Loustal, June Grooms,
The New Yorker, June 13, 1994

Jacques de Loustal, June Grooms,
Original Artwork for The New Yorker, June 13, 1994

http://www.sothebys.com/en/catalogues/ecatalogue.html/2012/bande-dessine-comics#/r=/en/ecat.fhtml.PF1224.html+r.m=/en/ecat.lot.PF1224.html/78/

July 4, 2012: Sold for 7,500 Eur (US $9,441) with buyer's premium.

Jacques de Loustal, "Drawing While Waiting,"
The New Yorker, April 18, 2011

Jacques de Loustal, "Drawing While Waiting,"
Original Artwork for The New Yorker, April 18, 2011

http://www.sothebys.com/en/catalogues/ecatalogue.html/2012/bande-dessine-comics#/r=/en/ecat.fhtml.PF1224.html+r.m=/en/ecat.lot.PF1224.html/79/

Note: An earlier New Yorker cover by Jacques de Loustal can be seen in my post entitled The World Trade Center in Pre-9/11 New Yorker Covers.

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Saturday, September 10, 2011

The World Trade Center in Pre-9/11 New Yorker Covers

The World Trade Center opened in 1973 in lower Manhattan. The twin towers were briefly the world's tallest buildings until the completion of the Sears Tower in Chicago, now the Willis Tower. They were massive structures boldly dominating the New York City skyline and, love them or hate them, they just couldn't be ignored.

R. O. Blechman's 1974 New Yorker cover put the World Trade Center front and center and paid homage to the City's Dutch origins by depicting fanciful windmills on the buildings. Arthur Getz's 1982 cover gives the best sense of the towers's scale against the lower Manhattan skyline. In most of the New Yorker's cover art that appeared prior to 9/11, though, the World Trade Center was not the sole focus, but rather was the most outsized of the many notable landmarks of which the City boasted.