The Ephemerist

French ligne claire genius Floc’h illustrating a story by Haruki Murakami in the New Yorker, May 2, 2005.

(for Basil at L’Homme Dans La Foule)

It’s always a pleasure seeing new, interesting blogs pop up about ephemeral aspects of comics. With L’Homme Dans La Foule, blogger Basil Sedbuk tries to trace the quite voluminous output of French artist Floc’h outside the confines of comics : illustrations, limited edition prints, magazine covers, the works.

I particularly liked the above cover for French magazine Monsieur, since it features a man in a suit and two suited up men.

I had bought the oct. 22 issue of the New Yorker for John Updike’s review of the recent Charles Schultz biography, but lo and behold, there were also illustrations by two of my favorite ligne claire cartoonists to be savoured ! Joost Swarte made the illustration above for an article on a new trend in condensing books, and Floc’h made a portrait of historian and cultural critic Jacques Barzun (with a big fat clin d’oeil to Citizen Kane, no less).

(artwork © the respective creators)