Jacques Houplain’s Maldoror

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This is more like it. In 2008 when I posted one of Jacques Houplain’s etchings for a 1947 edition of Les Chants de Maldoror there were none of the other pictures in the series to be found. Now there’s a website devoted to Houplain’s work which features a page of his Maldoror illustrations. There’s a crude vigour to these pieces that gets much closer to Lautréamont’s fervour and viciousness than do the illustrations by Houplain’s famous contemporaries. Houplain is also one of the few illustrators to pay some attention to Lautréamont’s frequent digressions into the animal kingdom. The artist’s other work is worth a look; Legendes is a series of prints of medieval demons.

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