{"id":3537,"date":"2008-09-24T01:28:02","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T00:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/09\/24\/the-art-of-pierre-clayette-1930-2005\/"},"modified":"2008-09-24T01:28:02","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T00:28:02","slug":"the-art-of-pierre-clayette-1930-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/09\/24\/the-art-of-pierre-clayette-1930-2005\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of Pierre Clayette, 1930\u20132005"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"clayette1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Library of Babel (no date). <\/em><\/p>\n

Another French artist who specialised in fantastic architecture, Pierre Clayette’s work came to my attention via the picture above which illustrates a Borges story<\/a>. This leads me to wonder once again what it is about French and Belgian artists which attracts them more than others to this type of imagery.<\/p>\n

\"clayette2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, there isn’t a great deal of Clayette’s work online and biographical details are few. This page<\/a> (the source of the untitled picture above) reveals that he worked as an illustrator for Plan\u00e8te<\/em><\/a> magazine, the journal of “fantastic realism” founded by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels in the early Sixties. Some readers may know that pair as the authors of a { feuilleton } cult volume, The Morning of the Magicians<\/em><\/a> (1960), whose vertiginous blend of speculative and weird fiction, occultism and futurology Plan\u00e8te<\/em> was intended to continue.<\/p>\n

\"clayette3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Clayette also worked as a theatre designer and book illustrator. Le Chateau<\/em> (above) is an illustration from Songes de Pierres<\/em><\/a>, a 1984 portfolio depicting scenes from Pierres<\/em> by Roger Caillois. That writer has his own significant Borges connection, being responsible for introducing Borges’ work to France via his editorship of the UNESCO journal, Diogenes<\/em><\/a>. (Pauwels and Bergier later published Borges in Plan\u00e8te<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Finally, there’s a less extravagant Flickr collection<\/a> of some Clayette covers for Penguin Shakespeare editions. All of which only scratches the surface of what was evidently a prolific career; I’ll look forward to more examples of his work coming to light.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The fantastic art archive<\/a>
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The art of Michiko Hoshino<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Erik Desmazi\u00e8res<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of G\u00e9rard Trignac<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Absolute Elsewhere<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Library of Babel (no date). Another French artist who specialised in fantastic architecture, Pierre Clayette’s work came to my attention via the picture above which illustrates a Borges story. This leads me to wonder once again what it is about French and Belgian artists which attracts them more than others to this type of … Continue reading “The art of Pierre Clayette, 1930\u20132005”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,27,21,48,43,44,46],"tags":[2279,2460,2459,2915,500],"class_list":["post-3537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-borges","category-fantasy","category-illustrators","category-magazines","category-painting","category-theatre","tag-erik-desmazieres","tag-jacques-bergier","tag-louis-pauwels","tag-roger-caillois","tag-william-shakespeare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-V3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}