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.

To make an excit­ing movie, do you real­ly need much more than an art thief and his capers? With Dripped, ani­ma­tor Léo Ver­ri­er sees that can’t-miss premise and rais­es it in an explo­ration of art his­to­ry. In its 1940s New York City set­ting, paint­ing-swip­ing pro­tag­o­nist Jack lives not just to make world-renowned can­vass­es his own, but a part of him. When he gets these works of art back to his apart­ment, he does­n’t even con­sid­er sell­ing them; instead, he chews and swal­lows them, thus enabling him to assume in body the forms and col­ors famous­ly expressed in paint on their sur­faces. We are what we eat, and Jack eats art, but even becom­ing the art of oth­ers ulti­mate­ly leaves him unsat­is­fied. Deter­mined to paint and eat a can­vas of his own, he finds his stom­ach can’t han­dle his work in progress. Thrown into a bout of frus­tra­tion, an angered Jack toss­es one of his paint­ings to the ground, ran­dom­ly splat­ter­ing it with every col­or at hand. And thus he dis­cov­ers, in this ani­mat­ed fan­ta­sy, the tech­nique that Jack­son Pol­lock would pio­neer in real­i­ty.

To see the real artist — one not known for his eat­ing, though his drink­ing did gain a rep­u­ta­tion of its own — in action have a look at Hans Namuth’s 1951 footage of Pol­lock paint­ing with his sig­na­ture “drip” method above. To learn more about the how and the why of it, see also the 1987 doc­u­men­tary Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, which we fea­tured in 2012; and below, see the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s short exam­i­na­tion and re-cre­ation of Pol­lock­’s “action paint­ing” tech­nique. Chance may have led him to dis­cov­er this prac­tice, but it hard­ly means he gave up con­trol. Film­mak­er Stan Brakhage liked to tell the fol­low­ing illus­tra­tive sto­ry, which came out of hang­ing out with var­i­ous artists and com­posers in Pol­lock­’s stu­dio in the late 40s:

They were, like, com­ment­ing, and they used the words “chance oper­a­tions” — which was no both­er to me because I was hear­ing it reg­u­lar­ly from John Cage — and the pow­er and the won­der of it and so forth. This real­ly angered Pol­lock very deeply and he said, “Don’t give me any of your ‘chance oper­a­tions.’ ” He said, “You see that door­knob?” and there was a door­knob about fifty feet from where he was sit­ting that was, in fact, the door that every­one was going to have to exit. Drunk as he was, he just with one swirl of his brush picked up a glob of paint, hurled it, and hit that door­knob smack-on with very lit­tle paint over the edges. And then he said, “And that’s the way out.”

via Jux­tapoz

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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.