George Barbier, Illustrations for Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos, 1934.
During his life, George Barbier was one of France’s most acclaimed illustrators and designers, a forefather of the art deco movement. But after his death in 1932 he quickly sank into obscurity. It’s only in the modern era that his work has been reappraised.
George Barbier, Illustration for Les Chansons de Bilitis by
Pierre Louÿs, 1929.
Barbier is notable for his bold depictions of female sexuality, and an aesthetic in his design work that a modern critic called ‘a kind of lipstick lesbian chic’. Many of his illustrations have a sapphic subtext, featuring women together in intimate poses, or women embracing people of ambiguous gender. Some show women dancing or being affectionate with figures that appear to be male but on closer inspection are clearly women in drag.
George Barbier, Le Feu (The Fire), 1925.This illustration shows a woman reclining in the arms of a person of indeterminate gender.
In his illustrations for Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Les Chansons de Bilitis, this
subtext became outright text, with women naked together, kissing or making love. For the time, these illustrations were extremely daring and
verged on the pornographic (even if they seem quite tame by today’s
standards).
George Barbier, Illustration for Les Chansons de Bilitis by
Pierre Louÿs, 1929.
Little is known about Barbier’s personal life in his hometown of Nantes, but we do know that in Paris he moved almost exclusively in homosexual circles. He was an intimate friend of the dandy and poet Robert de Montesquiou, and mixed with gay intellectuals like Marcel Proust.
George Barbier, Les dames seules (the single ladies), 1910. This early work is particularly striking for its apparent depiction of a butch/femme subculture among gay women in Paris.
His sexuality gave him access to the underground gay scene in Paris, and his knowledge of it filters through into his work. Although many of his illustrations are fictional, fantastical, or historical, here and there we see glimpses of the hidden lives of queer women in
fin-de-siecle Paris.
It also makes his work particularly notable, IMO, because unlike many of his straight male contemporaries, he did not depict sex and romance between women for the titillation of the straight male gaze. His women are complex, resisting bland stereotypes or didactic stories of innocence and fallen virtue. They are beautiful, sensual, dangerous and daring. Even idealised, they seem like real people. They have a self-possession that resists objectification. Their sexuality belongs to them, not to the viewer.
This is how I draw hands. I simplify the shape and then later I will add the necessary details. It makes it easier to get them right. But the only way to learn how to draw hands is to just keep drawing them.
i love being an artist/creator. the ability humans have to create things is probably the Greatest Superpower like, look at this lil rooster i just drew for no reason
he’s gay, and he doesn’t get enough sleep, but lives a decent enough life. i relate to this rooster
look at this hippo i drew (also gay). she’s having a good day, but she has a secret: she suffers from severe depression. it’d give her a hug if i weren’t so afraid of hippos. sorry martha. i hope tomorrow is as good as today
now see this “sweet” little gran? she hides a dark secret as well. that secret is tax evasion. 55 YEARS of nonpayment of taxes. we’re not surprised, gran. just disappointed
drawing a rooster and making it gay for no reason, or drawing lesbian hippo having a good day, or a criminal old lady (probably also a lesbian – i know her cats are) may seem meaningless enough. but now the world is +1 gay rooster, +1 happy hippo, and +1 tax-evading grandma. without my doing, these specific things wouldn’t exist, but now they’re on your screen and you’re thinking about them and they have been registered into your brains as things that exist. they’re real now
OH MAN I SUCK. I was going to post this yesterday for Free Comic Book Day, buuut after sketching/handing out comics all day at my local shop, I pretty much crashed as soon as I got home. But I was overwhelmed with the positive reception I got to the preview of this comic I posted a few weeks ago, as well as how excited people have been to buy copies at cons since then. So now, as promised, is my original comic MARKED in its entirety 😀 Thanks for waiting for it, and I hope you’re satisfied with the ending!
Question of Smoke 