OK, I realize I just posted about the amazing Golden Age illustrator J.C. Leyendecker a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve written about him half a dozen times in the past, but I have this general rule that says there’s no such thing as too much Leyendecker.

The first item I want to tell you about is a limited edition book that accompanies the exhibit I talked about in my last post, Americans Abroad: J.C. Leyendecker and the European Academic Influence on American Illustation.

Frustratingly, my schedule won’t allow me to get to New York before this exhibit closes on Saturday (July 12), but a friend was kind enough to pick up a copy of the exhibition catalog for me.

Aside from the fact that it makes me even more disappointed that I won’t see the show in person, it’s the next best thing, because the book is wonderful. It’s full of beautiful illustrations by J.C. Leyendecker, his brother Francis X Leyendecker (underrated in the shadow of his brother) and a number of other great Golden Age illustrators who were classically trained, including Edwin Austin Abbey, Edwin Howland Blashfield, Anton Otto Fischer, Norman Mills Price, Everett Shinn, William Thomas Smedley, Violet Oakley and others.

The book is a treat and, given the scarcity of Leyendecker material in print these days, a steal at $25 just for the beautiful reproductions of his work.

On that note, the second item is a new Leyendecker book on the horizon (finally!!). J.C. Leyendecker by Laurence S. Cutler, Judy Goffman Cutler is due in September of this year. The link I give here is to the Amazon pre-publication listing.

Lastly, for those who can’t get to the show or grab the book(s), I have a nice new Leyendecker web link as well. An anonymous benefactor who goes by the name of Mr. Door Tree has kindly posted some Leyendecker goodies to his Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog, including the image above, Cuchulain in Battle, from The Century Magazine, 1906, which is also in the Society of Illustrators show and catalog.

Addendum: Unfortunately, as of 8’28/08, the Leyendecker post on Golden Age Comic Book Stories has been taken down, and I don’t know another source for these images. I’ll leave the link in case they reappear.

Addendum II The new book J.C. Leyendecker by Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler has been published. While I haven’t gotten my copy yet, reports are that they have done a terrific job, investing years of research and filling the book with hundreds of carefully prepared images.

Guy Billout seems fascinated with patterns, whether of hedgerow mazes, the multiple columns of colonnades, tiled floors or repeated structures; particularly those patterns that lead us to one conclusion, only to be presented with another.

Billout is a French illustrator who deals in quiet irony. His images are still and contemplative, even when portraying dramatic events like a ship being turned upside down under the crest of an enormous wave, lightning strikes being reeled in by a man on a roof with a boat hook or the prehistoric filling of the Mediterranean Sea as viewed by modern tourists at Gibraltar.

He invites you into a seemingly normal scene, in which he quietly but firmly pulls the rug out from under your expectations as you notice the details.

Lighthouse lights bend to surmount cliffs, or provide a walkway for the operator, a couple warm themselves by a fireplace, which on closer inspection contains the fire of a city being bombed, people walk on parts of an image, the sky line or horizon line, a white dune is climbed on one side by a desert traveller, on the other by an arctic hunter, bridges stop and resume in mid-crossing or are constructed by rolling out girders like duct tape in midair.

Billout has been a long time contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and other major publications, as well as doing a variety of commercial work. He is a faculty member of the Parsons Illustration Department and his books include The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea, Bus 24 and a new collection, Something’s Not Quite Right

At times his reminds me of Magritte, twisting our preconceptions of how the world is arranged, sometimes of the juxtaposition of multiple worlds by magic realists like Rob Gonsalves; at other times he can bring to mind the over the edge humorous rearrangements of reality by Saul Steinberg or B. Kliban.

Like all of those artists, Billout excels at that aspect of art that brings us to a refreshingly different point of view on the world. He lays out a a geometric grid of stillness to quite our minds, and then drops a pebble of irony into the pool, allowing it to gently ripple through our unconscious mind until it dawns on us that, indeed, something’s not quite right here; but not quite right in a most delightful way.

It’s unfortunate that most of the images available are somewhat small, because the devil, as they say, is in the details.