THE POP ART OF GUY PEELLAERT

all art by guy peellaert

You probably have something Belgian artist Guy Peellaert made in your house, or at least on your digital device of choice. He got pretty gigantically famous for album covers for Bowie, the Rolling Stones and of course the underrated French heavyrockers Variations, as well as some well-known movie posters, too. He also was the artist for the book Rock Dreams—subtitled “Rock ‘n’ Roll For Your Eyes”—which is full of let’s say … overwhelming portraiture of Bo Diddley, Lou Reed and I wanna say the New York Dolls but I can’t find that online. Actually, I should do a whole post on that book … but not yet. Because this post is about early Guy.

Before he got huge worldwide, he was working on getting huge in Europe, where he published two famous pop-art comics with heroines inspired by contemporary French pop stars. The first was The Adventures of Jodelle, starring somebody who looked like Sylvie Vartain. I put one of the rare SFW panels above. (The rest of the book is SFW if your work is cool with brightly colored cartoon nudity.) This was recently reissued by Fantagraphics, so now you can experience it in something way better than .jpg form.

The second was Pravda, apparently based on Francoise Hardy, but Francoise Hardy if she rode a cosmic motorbike and just generally kicked ass. (Pravda also had an animated short, which you can watch here.)

And he also did animated sequences for the film Jeu De Massacre (The Killing Game). Some stills above, and you can watch / listen to the opening credits here.

He even got out a few album covers in this pop-art style. (Above, and this has a cool back cover, too.) As far as I know, there’s no collection out yet of his early work. If there is, send it over! If not, make one!