DRUILLET - Lot 67

DRUILLET PHILIPPE DRUILLET ◊ LONE SLOANE Salammbô 3: Matho (T.7), Dargaud 1986 Original plate no. 11. The phylacteries on supports affixed to the original. Signed. India ink on paper 72 × 92 cm (28.35 × 36.22 in.) Edgar P. Jacobs titled his memoirs Un opéra de papier, published by Gallimard, somewhat in mockery of his early career as a baritone with the Lille Opera. His drawing, however, was of a classicism that could be described as "hergéo-ingriste". This was not the case for Philippe Druillet, who published the first pages of Gustave Flaubert's masterpiece in Métal Hurlant in 1980, in a version that would captivate the entire world. For the first time, an electric opera-hard-rock emerged from paper, in an aesthetic with Wagnerian overtones. What we have here is an admirable page, with its profusion of details organized like a Baroque cathedral. The army of Carthage spills out of the city like glowing lava. Respect for Flaubert is total: the scansion of the verb is expressed with power (Flaubert read his texts aloud: he "gueuloir" them), in harmony with a drawing that has all the makings of a "paper opera". Masterpiece.