Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
PREVIOUS SPREAD: Guy Peellaert, photographed in 1968 on the set of his musical short Machine In Out. opposite: The artist (RIGHT) is shown
directing a photographic shoot. Peellaert would insert pictures of his model into one of the later experimental comic strips he produced around 1968.
83
84
85
from the months-long initiatory journey through Asia, the young man now had to deal with his immediate needs. He took his first steps as an assistant set designer for the Brussels National Theatre, before being hired, in 1957, by the advertising agency in charge of the Max Factor account. This American brand had taken off in the 1940s thanks to what was a unique concept for the time: the make-up of the stars. Over a three-year period, Peellaert rose to the position of Business Manager, in charge of the European Max Factor account, during which time he created countless fashion drawings for
BELOW AND NEXT PAGE: After giving up his career in advertising in 1960, Peellaert worked in Brussels as a freelance illustrator. The Belgian national airline Sabena was among his first clients: In 1963, it commissioned him to create the images for its prestigious annual calendar, an early work in which the influence of Surrealism and Peellaerts deep-rooted fascination with machinery are already manifest. Also noticeable are the artist's formal study of murals and friezes, as well as a pronounced taste for seriality, which he would use profusely in Jodelle to depict soul-deprived human beings. At the time, Sabena was a major sponsor of Belgian art, notably giving a similar commission to Ren Magritte the following year.
the agency and saw thousands of portraits of the cream of American cinema cross his desk. Dismayed by the suffocating constraints of the commercial world, he tendered his resignation as soon as his tasks had been drained of all creative dimension, but these years in the advertising field helped him acquire a sharp sense of glamour and the ability to depict women, skills he would soon use to his advantage. From 1960 on, Guy Peellaert worked at fashioning his own personal style even as he was furnishing illustrations to a variety of clients. Very few of these
87
works have survived, but a handful are featured in a 1964 issue of the prestigious Gebrauchsgrafik International Advertising Art, which devoted a sizeable spread to the 30-year-old artist, whom it described with the untranslatable German word Fantast (a man of great imagination in the shaky English translation accompanying the article) and went on to say: He draws and paints strange flying machines; he designs bold perspectives; he perceives human beings and their limbs in extraordinary
distortion. Peellaerts view of reality is unique. He conveys his astonishment at our world to anyone who gazes at his illustrations, whose own imagination is then fired up by these thoughts that have been put on paper. Yet this artist is no dreamer, his fertile imagination notwithstanding, and his drawings are created not for rarefied literary works, but to meet the demands of everyday, day-by-day life. He depicts the rough-and-tumble, uncompromising world of sports just as convincingly as he does a contemporary love story, or thrilling scenes from the early days of aviation () Peellaert is a chronicler with a mind of his own, fulfilling this new generations yearning to see things as they are, not prettified or romanticized.
which produced numerous cultural events, was one of Peellaerts major clients during these exploratory years. This brochure, created for an Orkest festival in 1964, is particularly interesting: the mosaic appears to foreshadow his comics work, and its graphic style, consisting of flat, bright colors, white areas, and stylized, faceless silhouettes, prefigures major elements of the Jodelle approach.
Far Left: As an art director in charge of the Max Factor cosmetics brand throughout Europe in the early days of marketing, Peellaert worked from countless photographs of film stars under contract with the brand, including Brigitte Bardot for this 1959 magazine ad. Left: These illustrations are among dozens that Peellaert produced for the womens lifestyle book Le Conseiller de la Femme. Published in 1961, soon after his resignation, they comprise some of the artist's oldest known surviving work. Peellaert would go on to create many more fashion drawings for womens publications during the first half of the 1960s.
88
89
automobile racing and football proved a veritable obsession throughout Peellaert's 1960s work, as evidenced by these early gouache paintings foreshadowing the slabs of solid colors and the forced perspectives of the Jodelle style. Peellaert would use football as a recurring motif in almost all of his major works from the period, even devoting a complete comic to the sport with The Game, published in 1968.
BELOW: This work, a mural created by
Peellaert for the corporate headquarters of a Belgian insurance company, displays intricate ornamental patterns reminiscent of the graphic style developed by the American illustrator Milton Glaser around the same time. This ethereal, dreamlike depiction of a football team also incorporates abstract decorative elements recalling the technique utilized in the murals of Gustav Klimt.
90