Gustave Doré: L'imaginaire au pouvoir

by Gustave Doré, Philippe Kaenel, Patrick Lang

A quinze ans à peine, Gustave Doré entame une carrière de caricaturiste puis d'illustrateur professionnel – qui lui vaudra une célébrité internationale – avant d'embrasser tous les domaines de la création : dessin, peinture, aquarelle, gravure, sculpture. L'immense talent de Doré s'investit aussi dans les différents genres, de la satire à l'histoire, livrant tour à tour des tableaux gigantesques et des toiles plus intimes, des aquarelles flamboyantes, des lavis virtuoses, des plumes incisives, des gravures, des illustrations fantasques, ou encore des sculptures baroques, cocasses, monumentales, énigmatiques... En tant qu'illustrateur, Doré s'est mesuré aux plus grands textes et aux plus grands auteurs (la Bible, Dante, Rabelais, Perrault, Cervantès, Milton, Shakespeare, Hugo, Balzac, Poe), et est ainsi devenu un véritable passeur de la culture européenne. Le catalogue entend aussi montrer combien Doré occupe une place cruciale dans l'imaginaire contemporain, de la bande dessinée aux films de Méliès, Tim Burton ou Terry Gilliam.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History

335 pages, Hardcover

First published February 26, 2014

About the author

The most popular and successful French book illustrator of the mid 19th century. Doré became very widely known for his illustrations to such books as Dante's Inferno (1861), Don Quixote (1862), and the Bible (1866), and he helped to give European currency to the illustrated book of large . He was so prolific that at one time he employed more than forty blockcutters. His work is characterized by a rather naïve but highly spirited love of the grotesque and represents a commercialization of the Romantic taste for the bizarre. Drawings of London done in 1869-71 were more sober studies of the poorer quarters of the city and captured the attention of van Gogh. In the 1870s he also took up painting (doing some large and ambitions religious works) and sculpture (the monument to the dramatist and novelist Alexandre Dumas in the Place Malesherbes in Paris, erected in 1883, is his work).

Reviews

[Atwalys Tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un livre incroyablement intéressant sur un des plus grands artistes français du XIX ème siècle. Rétrospective de l'immense œuvre de Gustave Doré. Un livre magnifique pour un artiste essentiel.

[Todd Glaeser · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible book! I was surprised by how many of the Dore paintings reminded me of Frazetta. Perhaps because they are both illustrators; Maybe Frazetta was influenced by Dore but I haven't ever read that,