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George Montbard II: Master of the Multipanel
From the early Eighties on George Montbard became mainly known for his illustrated travelogues from the Greater Maghreb. But he was also a wanted editorial illustrator, who managed to translate the blurred photographs and rough sketches of his collagues into exciting and catchy graphics. He developed a very special mastery in the field of the […]
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George Montbard I: A communard´s career in London
George Montbard (real name: Charles Auguste Loye) was one of the most brillant and versatile illustrators of the 19th century. The staunch republican started his career as a political caricaturist during the imperial rule of Napoleon III. He worked for “La Rue”, the legendary antiautorical magazin of his friend Jules Valles. The anarchist author assembled […]
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Visual notes. A selection.
Alex Bodea´s “Visual notes” is an ongoing series of poetically condensed observations in the urban sphere combining image and text. The visual notes archive was started in 2012, comprising more than 2000 entries. Technique: ink on paper, 5,7 x 10,7cm.
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The Art of Louis Sabattier II: 1900 – 1918
Many of Louis Sabattier´s soft focussed photo-paintings for the French magazine L Illustration conveyed a ambiguous cultural – critical content. Especially his popular scenes of colonial tourism could easily be read as a subversive comment on the Eurocentric perspective of the oriental painting tradition of his teachers Jean-Léon Gérôme and Gustave Boulanger. Exoticism and alienness, […]
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The Art of Louis Sabattier I: 1897 – 1904
The trained history painter Louis Sabattier was one of the most interesting press illustrators of the late 19th century. None of the numerous accredited special artists managed to catch the tense atmosphere of the spectacular trials against Alfred Dreyfus and Émilé Zola in a comparable subtle way. Many of his soft focussed photo-paintings for the […]
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Doré´s works for “Journal pour Rire” (1847-51) – II
Thirteen years before his coeval successor Wilhelm Busch began his career at the Munich “Fliegende Blätter”, young Gustave Doré had already established a mature and distinct Comic imagery in Charles Philipon´s groundbreaking “Journal pour Rire”. Doré´s Art of Comic was a livley blend of various influences: The loose improvised “romans en images” of Rodolphe Töpffer […]
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Doré´s Works for “Journal pour Rire” (1847-51) – I
In 1847, the pioneering publisher Charles Philipon launched a new graphic periodical. The success of his “Journal pour Rire”, which can be regarded as the world´s first Comic magazine, was based not least on the graphical inventiveness of the sixteen-year-old exceptional talent Gustave Doré. In the large folio pages “Doré proved himself master of three […]
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Bangs, shakings and floodings (Masters of Faits Divers – Painting V)
Faits divers-coverart was a transformation of history painting into the realm of urban civil culture, with the middle class-reader as sovereign.
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Scenes from the Armenian Massacres of 1896
These first near-genocidal series of atrocities committed against the Armenian population were carried out during the reign of Abdul Hamid II, the last sultan effectively to rule over the Turkish state. The police responded to a demonstration held in Constantinople in September 1895 by Armenian political organizations which sought to pressure the government and the […]
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Robert Weaver VI: Baseball & Gang War
“Illustration is an essential to great painting. Abstractness cannot be equated with it; it is merely the grammar.(..) Many illustrators of today are too little concerned with the actualities of their time. Too often they merely aid and abet the pre-sold illusion of the age.” (R. Weaver, 1959)”The state of the art of illustration might […]