The Adventures of Famed Illustrator Gustave Doré Presented in a Fantasic(al) Cutout Animation

When we fea­tured his illu­mi­na­tion of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” we called Gus­tave Doré “one of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th cen­tu­ry,” who “made his name illus­trat­ing works by such authors as Rabelais, Balzac, Mil­ton, and Dante.” His hand may have giv­en a visu­al dimen­sion to a num­ber of revered texts, but what of the man him­self? For the deep­est insight into an artist, we should look to the works of art he inspires. In the case of the cutout ani­mat­ed film above, Doré not only pro­vides the inspi­ra­tion but plays, in a sense, the star­ring role. L’imaginaire au pou­voir offers us a por­trait of the artist as a two-dimen­sion­al man, stum­bling into haunt­ing drawn-and-cut-out realms straight from his own imag­i­na­tion.

“The film was cre­at­ed by Vin­cent Piani­na and Loren­zo Papace of Le Petit Écho Malade and fea­tures music by Ödland,” writes EDW Lynch at Laugh­ing Squid (a site that pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Le Petit Écho Malade’s music video for Ödland’s “Øster­søen”) “It is a pro­mo, Lynch adds, for ‘Gus­tave Doré (1832–1883): Mas­ter of Imag­i­na­tion,’ an ongo­ing exhi­bi­tion of Doré’s work at Musée d’Orsay in Paris through May 11, 2014.” Though Doré, by all accounts, lived a fair­ly event­ful life, he had to have spent a great deal of it slav­ing painstak­ing­ly away with his wood engrav­ing tools. The same goes for any pro­duc­er of such vivid artis­tic visions—but I sus­pect that all of them have to go on this kind of har­row­ing jour­ney to the cen­ter of their soul now and again. Here, Piani­na and Papace have, with Doré’s very mate­ri­als, cre­at­ed a jour­ney into the inner realm that still gives them life today. And they’ve added a healthy dose of 21st-cen­tu­ry humor for good mea­sure.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Vin­tage Film: Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.