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Jacques de Loustal is a comics artist. But he's no freak. His comics are
not even comical; often he even dispenses with balloons
Jacques de Loustal is a painter. But he's no elitist. He is one of the
most prominent representatives of that trend they cad the >French
author comics< and which is nourished from special sources: in the
story, from the European narrative tradition and in the line, from the
famous Ligne claire school of the Grand Old Master Hergé
To an outsider, the astounding differentiation in the international
comics markets may be new -American super-heroes beside respectable
caricaturists, entertaining cartoons and obstreperous underground
products, more recently the wild Japanese mangas ... In contrast,
Loustal relates picture stories for completely normal, sensitive viewers
and readers. His visual novels owe much to the French film: slowly
unfolding plots, a poetic rhythm, magic moments, intensely emotional
scenes in melancholy settings
Along with his dear, strong line goes an iconography all his own: quiet
palms, empty beaches, motionless lizards, muteless fish the eloquent
silence of the pictures. Loustal draws a world full of cryptic messages
that are nevertheless well-known to the subconscious, a world full of
tropical melancholy, the charm of the >off-season< (as he entitled
one of his albums), when the summer's avidity has spent itself. Other
typical settings are that dusty blues-jazz-dream America as it fives in
the hearts of certain Europeans. or an only too recognizable fictive
Mediterranean fairytale principality with its poor rich princely children.
Above all his pictures of women have made Loustal famous. Far away from
all comiclike exaggerations, he shows us his mysterious Goddesses of the
Everyday, at peace with themselves. In his stories, even young girls have
their past they bear the knowledge and the burdens of past generations of
women.
Jacques de Loustal is a pro. Cleverly he plays with the seductive
powers of age old clichés, to which he unexpectedly restores their always
valid truths.
And, not least, Jacques Loustal is extremely successful. In France he
is a star of that special art scene which, for example, clusters around
the Galerie Escale in Paris. The gallery owner, Christian Desbois, who is
also a publisher, enjoys an enthusiastic public of collectors that also
honors the most extraordinary ideas. So a sort of cardboard box was
produced in the tiny format of a cigarette box with silk-screening on
hand-made paper in a limited and signed edition a remininesce of the photo
cassettes on the tea tables of fine ladies at the turn of the century a
product truly tailored for a community of fans. Price: 480 francs; title:
>80% humidity.<
Loustal's works are brought out in German by the publishing company,
Schreiber & Leser, Munich. An album was published in Hamburg by the
Carlsen Verlag. One of the firms from which print graphics and portfolios
can be ordered is X fur U, Freiburg.
Rossi Schreffier
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