The art of Jean Benoît

More French weirdness, and another Bertrand…

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The Necrophile (dedicated to Sergeant Bertrand) (1964–65).

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The Eagle, Miss…

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Adam and Eve.

A site about Jean Benoît
Another site about Jean Benoît

And speaking of the lonesome necrophile, Bret Wood’s film, Psychopathia Sexualis, features a shadow puppet rendering of the case of Sergeant Bertrand and his nocturnal grave-ravagings. You can watch an extract from it here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
L’Amour Fou: Surrealism and Design
The Surrealist Revolution
Surrealism at the Hayward

7 thoughts on “The art of Jean Benoît”

  1. Yes, contrary to what most people would think, the perverse aesthetic definitely had its heyday a long time ago (at least by my standpoint). For crying out loud, people should read what Clark Ashton Smith was writing in cheap magazines over half a century ago. The only relatively recent writer who I know of able to capture this lovely “evil” french style was James Havoc, and he’s probably dead.

    This does remind me of some of the anime that is quite popular in some circles. Have you ever seen the Hellsing or Requiem from the Darkness shows, or maybe some of the crazier comix or drawings by Yoshitaka Amano? Some of these sculpted creatures look like something from Onimusha.

  2. Yeah, the drawn section of ‘Butchershop in the Sky’ kind of reminds me of some the art I’ve seen from Lord Horror / Reverbstorm, though any of the art that I’ve seen displayed on yours or Savoy’s website from their books wins.

    Surprisingly, I have the older printing of ‘Haunter’ . Besides the different layout graphics does the new edition have a whole lot that the elderly edition does not. The news I’d read about it doesn’t make it seem as though it does.

  3. I’ve described the new version as being like a remastered CD with extra tracks. There’s 8 new pages of artwork and an extra section of The Great Old Ones (0 – Kadath) that Alan and I did for an unrealised calendar project. Then I re-typeset the pages to make them a bit neater as I was never entirely happy with the layout of the original book. So you’re not missing much, in other words, but I do regard the new one as the definitive edition, I wouldn’t want to go back and change anything now.

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