SCHUITEN

FRANÇOIS SCHUITEN Original illustration for the 1987 calendar published by Le Petit Robert. Signed. India ink and colored inks on paper 35.8 × 50.9 cm (14.09 × 20.04 in.) This illustration, entitled L'Archiviste (The Archivist), obviously alludes to Schuiten and Peeters' album, which is to some extent the linchpin of their universe. The character depicted in this drawing investigates the reality of the famous and mythical Cités obscures in these mile-long archives. It's somewhere between Jorge-Luis Borges' Library of Babel and the Benedictine monastery in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. We're also reminded of Paul Otlet's Mundaneum library in Belgium, which aimed to bring together in one place all the world's knowledge, in all its forms (books, posters and newspapers of universal origin...) in a "Répertoire bibliographique universel", which Le Monde described as a "paper Google". Schuiten exhibited there. Another version of this drawing, in which the archivist is replaced by Franz Kafka, decorates the façade of the Archives départementales (2000 m2) in Angoulême.