Joost Swarte

I was just curious, I live in Holland and just a few blocks away lives a man called Joost Swarte. In Holland at least he's a very respected 'clear line' artist and I think he's great... have any of you ever heard of him? If not, check out his site (it's a bit confusing but click on the left door for his galleries) By the way he's also doing the furnishing for the new Herge museum...

www.joostswarte.com

Yes - I like his work, which I first came across in 'Heavy Metal' (the U.S version of Metal Hurlant) in the 80's. Say hello if you see him! :-)

(P.S - thanks for the link - interesting site).

Bizarre....very very bizarre. :)

Paul

Yeah, what he does is kinda bizarre but he's actually quite a nice guy... and he's a great artist. He just launched a new book called 'Leporello' which to my knowledge doesn't mean anything in any language but it's really cool, it has lot's of pictures that are really worthwile. I don't know if it was also launched in the UK and the states but I'm positive it will after a while...

The name 'Leporello' comes from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, a comedy drama about Don Juan. (The text is in Italian, so that is why Don Juan is given the Italian version of his name.) Leporello is the name of Don Giovanni's servant. The name actually means "little hare" in Italian.

I have several books by Swarte and have admired his work since I first came across it around 1980, but I haven't seen Leporello, and have no idea why he chose the title.

I can't get his site to come up on this computer, but I bet it's solid. Leporello does sound familiar though---my father used to have a lot of the Heavy Metal magazines, so I may have seen it but didn't recognize it right away.

As for the Italian name, that's exactly what it means--for some reason, the majority of Italian names are very easy to translate, whereas in other languages the meaning is lost. Leporello is a common last name anyhow....

Courtney

Did he have anything to do with the illustrations for the Book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film? Some of the pictures on his site look really similar to those...

There’s a new video profile of Mr. Swarte up on the Fantagraphics site, to promote their new collection of his works, now brought to English.

N.B. There is a downloadable .pdf file with sample pages of the new collection on the book’s page, but be warned, the content is adult-themed, and in that respect not a lot like Tintin!