un regard moderne

...mandatory in Paris is a visit to un regard moderne; a legended retailer of small-press and otherwise marginal comix publications. Near neighbour is the former 'Beat Hotel': one-time home to Burroughs, Gysin, Balch et al.

To be honest: I found the selection - which is sufficiently extensive as to render human egress past the leaning 'skoob' towers of accumulated graphic detritus mortally perilous - a little disappointing. Ebay has been very kind to me in recent years & I've hoovered up some horribly obscured items (principally, in the Elles Sont De Sortie line) for what was relatively dirt-cheap (& correspondingly; proof also of just how difficult specialist retail is become in an increasingly global & digitised marketplace).

Such were the boom years of the Australian economy: in retrospect I can recognise what a supremely serendipitious thing it was to be earning real money while the Australian dollar actually traded at a decent rate of exchange... Upon returning, I stifled a weary yawn to make the final Goran Bregovic gig of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Bumped into a former colleague there, "we were worried you'd run out of money - the exchange rate went directly south for the Aussie, while you were away"... But I suspect, rather, that my timing could not have been better: I spent my savings while they still obtained a reasonable value.

Is financially much more tightened circumstances now, & perhaps not only for myself. But a joy it was to traipse about Europe in the knowledge that I didn't have to go back to work at the library. And now, the misremembered luxury of leisure moments in which to enjoy alla musique concrete vinyls and 'figuration libre' monographs. I've been hoarding gourmet artefacts of marginal creativity for the last 2 years, but with the defered expectation of ever being able to actually enjoy the damn things!

Anyways. Paris! Un Regard Moderne. Mark H found himself a graphic anthology of works by Roland Topor. I picked up the new Henriette Valium omnibus, and a collection of punky strips by Marc Caro; both of them published by L'Association (who did Persepolis, and the works of our friend Caroline's housemate, Florent)... some confoundingly beautiful books, but I was visited with much better luck at Bimbo Tower - digging up a long OOP #4 of L'Horreur est Humaine, and for a bare 4 Euros, heh heh...

Chester Brown does Chatterley

... the library has just finished accessioning a whole new batch of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions. The editorial selection - which finds room for repress of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, & Jack London's The Iron Heel - is unapologetic in its militant humanism.

What is most striking about the best of these titles is the absolutely stunning packaging: these are genuinely beautiful books. Frank Miller does artwork for the Gravity's Rainbow of Pynchon, and a Dame Darcy portrait of Dot Parker is all over that anthology. Clearly the execs at Penguin have clues, nerve, and a budget.

This one kills me! The first time I read thru that cover graphic, my eyes teared up. Chester Brown's graphic summary is the passionate & feisty epicentre of the book. In his own way, Gamekeeper Mellors is just as impotent and powerless as any of the other characters; just a bit more outspoken, is all. But the cover's tension - between the furtive tenderness of the becalmed lovers, and the righteous outrage of abased humanity - is what makes this thing so powerful. (click on the image for a better look, in a new tab)

RAMÓN PUYOL

... not so much info available on the creator of this image - & even less of it in English. Single most useful source is his entry in the exhibition catalogue for "Shouts From the Wall: an exhibit of Spanish Civil War posters", published by the University of Princeton. Here's what little I can gather:

Ramón Puyol (1907-1981). Born in the town of Algiceras (Andulucia province). By the late 1920s, was making a living doing illustrations for a number of Spanish publishing houses. Dedicated member of the Spanish Communist Party (probably from at least 1930, when Spanish Communism was very much in the shadow of the local Socialist party & various Anarchist groups). Travelled abroad several times, and in a 1933 visit to Moscow he worked on one of Mayakovsky's theatrical productions. During the Spanish Civil War, designed graphics for Red Aid International (Sp: Socorro Rojo Internacional) - a humanitarian charity directed by the Comintern.

... and hence, the image above. Published in Feb of 1937 within a folio of 10 lithographs, each of which mixes the burlesque & the monstrous in its portrait of 10 different bourgeois personality-types: the hoarder, the defeatist, the spy (etc). Dedication of the folio is to his brother Miguel, "murdered by the fascist hordes". The Ultraleftist caricatures the Trotskyist; its target is the POUM militia. For all those clenched fists, the shadow is gathering into the raised open hand of the fascist salute... & I figure the metamorphosis of his left foot into a tree stump to be the allegorical indication that this character is safely rooted to a position far-in-back of the front lines.

This is still some months in advance of the open fighting between the Communists & the POUM, detailed in Orwell's Homage to Catalonia: messy politics! Propaganda graphics typically tend to the crude (to say nothing of the then-Soviet penchant for socialist realism), but this is a tremendous, cartoon-like image: the zealous super-marxist, with his homely capitalist swine lurking within...
... another from the same folio: The Rumour.

Iberian history is rich with horrible ironies. Puyol was captured by the falange after the capitulation of Madrid. Sentenced to death, which was commuted to 30 years in prison, he was then offered a reduced sentence in exchange for restoring Tiepolo's fescoes in the San Lorenzo de Escorial monastery. Presumably, many of Spain's most able & gifted artists were either already dead, or had fled the country in advance of Franco's hordes.

Below, the cheerfully dilapidated (2nd thought: maybe not so cheerfully) house Puyol was born in: