User:Daniel Phantom/Jean Giraud

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Illustrator and author

As already indicated above, Giraud had throughout his entire career made illustrations for books, magazines, music productions (though playing the piano and electric guitar, Giraud was, unlike his second son Raphaël, regrettably not a creative musician himself by his own admission, but did have a lifelong fascination with jazz), but also promotional art for commercial institutions such as banks and corporations. A notable early example of the latter, concerned the Blueberry art he created in 1978 for the Spanish jeans manufacturer Lois Jeans & Jackets; Aside from being traditionally run as an advertisement in numerous magazines, it was also blown up to gigantic, mural-like dimensions and as posters plastered on walls and billboards in several places all around Paris. As book illustrator, Giraud illustrated for example the 1987 first edition of the science fiction novel Project Pendulum by Robert Silverberg, and the 1994 French edition of the novel The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The subsequent year Giraud followed up in the same vein as the Coelho novel, with his cover and interior illustrations for a French 1995 reprint of "Ballades" from the French medieval poet François Villon. Much of this non-comic art, including the one for Lois has been reproduced in the artbooks that were released over the years.

In 1999, Giraud's illustrations appeared in an edition of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, published by the Nuages Gallery in Milan. He illustrated the third volume, Paradiso, while Inferno and Purgatorio were illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti and Milton Glaser respectively. The edition was published under the Mœbius name. Giraud's illustrations for Paradiso take heavy inspiration from the engravings of the Divine Comedy by Gustave Doré, with compositions often approaching an exact match. Giraud acknowledged this influence directly, praising Doré's work and remarking how he sometimes literally used tracing paper to sketch compositions. Though another prominent example of Giraud's non-comic book work, the influences from his science fiction and fantasy comics shine through. The illustrations, with vivid colors and space-age headresses, are distinctly rendered in the Mœbius mode.

An out-of-the-ordinary latter-day contribution as such, constituted his illustrations as "Mœbius" for the Thursday 6 March 2008 issue of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir. His illustrations accompanied news articles throughout the newspaper, providing a Mœbiusienne look on events. In return, the newspaper, for the occasion entitled "Le Soir par (by) Mœbius", featured two half-page editorials on the artist (pp. 20 & 37).

Under the names Giraud, Gir and Mœbius, he also wrote several comics for other comic artists as listed below, and the early ones including Jacques Tardi. and Claude Auclair Aside from writing for other comic artists, he also wrote story outlines for the movies Les Maîtres du temps, Internal Transfer, Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland and Thru the Moebius Strip as outlined further down the line.

As author on personal title, Giraud has – apart from his own bande dessinée scripts – written philosophical poetry that accompanied his art in his Mœbius artbooks of the 1980s and 1990s. He also wrote the "Story Notes" editorials for the American Epic publications, providing background information on his work contained therein. In 1998, he took time off to write his autobiography, Moebius-Giraud: Histoire de mon double.

Exhibitions

Part of the "many desires" that increasingly attracted Giraud later in life, steering him away from creating traditional bandes dessinées, was his personal fascination and involvement with the many exhibitions dedicated to his work, that started to proliferate from the mid-1990s onward not only in native France, but internationally as well, causing him to frequently travel abroad, among others to Japan, for extended periods of time, with the 2010 «Mœbius transe forme» exposition in Paris becoming the apotheosis.

• Summer 1991: Exposition at the Maison de la culture Frontenac [fr], Montréal, Canada
• 26 April-16 August 1995:«Mœbius: a retrospective» exposition at the Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco, USA; came with limited edition catalog (see below)
• December 1995: «Wanted: Blueberry» exposition at the Arthaud Grenette mega-bookstore, Grenoble, France; also featuring original Blueberry art by Colin Wilson. Both he and Jean Giraud attended the opening on 1 December, making themselves also available for book signings. Prior to the opening a promotional brochure was disseminated by the bookstore ("Arthaud BD News", issue 1, November 1995), featuring a three-page interview with Giraud.
• 19 September-9 October 1996: «Jean Giraud Blueberry» exposition at the Stardom Gallery, Paris, France, for the occasion of the upcoming release of the "Blueberry's" artbook by Stardom – Giraud's own publishing house/art gallery. The below-mentioned 1997 documentary was the registration of events surrounding the release, including the exhibition.
• August 1997: «Giraud/Mœbius» themed Festival BD de Solliès-Ville [fr], France; co-produced with Stardom. A special festival guide, illustrated by Giraud – having received the festival's most prestigious comic award the previous year – and featuring a large interview with the artist, was published for the occasion by the festival organization.
• 10 October–9 November 1997: «Mœbius: Infinito» grande exposition, Deposito ferroviario ai Lolli, Palermo, and on 7 February–29 March 1998, Palazzo Querini Stampalia, Venice, Italy; The softcover artbook "Mœbius: Infinito" (OCLC 40845785) published for the occasions
• 29 November 1997 – 11 January 1998: «Mœbius: Visoni de fine mellennio» grande exposition, Palazzo Bagati Valsecchi [it], Milan, Italy; The softcover artbook "Moebius: Visoni de fine mellennio" (ISBN 8886456425) published for the occasion
• December 1998-January 1990: Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, France
• 30 June-14 November 1999: «1 Monde Réel» exposition at Fondation Cartier, Paris, France
• 26 January-3 September 2000: «Trait de Génie Giraud» exposition, Centre national de la bande dessinée et de l'image [fr], Angoulême, France; The 48-page illustrated exhibition catalog "Trait de génie Giraud Moebius" (ISBN 2907848240) published for the occasion. Enhanced with elaborate background information and an in-depth interview with the artist, the book edition was limited to 2000 copies.
• May–June 2000: Große Austellung, Erlangen, Germany
• May 2000: Collective exposition on contemporary comics at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France
• October 2001: Grande exposition, Montrouge, France
• January–February 2003: Große Austellung in the Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany
• June 2003: Great exposition, Kemi, Finland
• 16 November-31 December 2003: «Giraud-Moebius» exposition, Grand Manège Caserne Fonck, Liège, Belgium
• 4 March-28 April 2004: «L'Elixir du Docteur Gir/Moebius» exposition, Galerie Arludik, Paris, France
• December 2004-April 2005: «Giraud/Mœbius & Hayao Miyazaki» exposition at the Musée de la Monnaie de Paris, France
• 15 March-15 April 2005: «JEAN GIRAUD: Exposition de dessins et planches originales de "DUST" le nouvel album de Blueberry aux editions Dargaud», Galerie Arludik, Paris, France; small exhibition for the occasion of the 28th Blueberry album release.
• June 2005: Exposition «Mythes Grecs» at the Stardom/Mœbius Production Art Gallery, Paris, France
• December 2005: «Jardins d'Eros» exposition at the Stardom/Mœbius Production Art Gallery, Paris, France
• February 2006: Exposition "sur le thème du Rêve" at the Centre d'arts plastiques contemporains de Bordeaux, France
• October 2006: «Boudha line» exposition at the Stardom/Mœbius Production Art Gallery, Paris, France
• May 2007: Exposition, Seoul, South-Korea
• May 2007: «Hommage au Major» exposition at the Stardom/Mœbius Production Art Gallery, Paris, France
• February 2008: «La citadelle du vertige» attraction from Futuroscope, (Poitiers), France; inspired by the Garage hermétique universe.
• June 2008: «Fou et Cavalier» exposition at l'Espace Cortambert/Mœbius Production, Paris, France
• 15 January-14 June 2009: «Blueberry» exposition at the Maison de la bande dessinée, Brussels, Belgium
• May 2009: Exposition at the Kyoto International Manga Museum, Japan
• November 2009: «Arzak, destination Tassili» exposition at the SFL building located at 103 rue de Grenelle, Paris, France (Co-production of Espace Cortambert/SFL/Mœbius Production)
• 12 October 2010 – 13 March 2011: «Mœbius transe forme» exposition at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, France, which the museum had called "the first major exhibition in Paris devoted to the work of Jean Giraud, known by his pseudonyms Gir and Mœbius." A major and prestigious event, it reflected the status Giraud had by then attained in French (comic) culture. A massive, limited edition deluxe art book was released by the museum for the occasion.
• June–December 2011: «Mœbius multiple(s)» exposition at the Musée Thomas-Henry, Cherbourg-Octeville, France
• 15 September 2019 – 29 March 2020: «Mœbius: Surreale Comicwelten» exposition at the Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR [de], Brühl, Germany. A massive, 272 page hardcover art book, similar to the one released by the Parisian museum in 2010, was released as a deluxe, limited edition exposition catalog by the museum for the occasion. (No ISBN mentioned but assigned the ISBN 9783944453187 by the German National Library) The exposition though, was prematurely closed on 14 March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
• 25 October 2021 - 25 October 2021: «Hell, Purgatory, Paradise. Divine illustrations» exposition at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy. The exhibition was held to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, and included the illustrations of Giraud, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Milton Glazer previously compiled in a 1999 illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy.