After the success of his books on Sydney, Melbourne, London, and New York, James Gulliver Hancock has turned to Paris. A residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts gave the Australian illustrator the chance to observe the French capital without acting like a tourist. “I didn’t want to just wander around taking photos and eating chocolate croissants wishing I’d grown up hanging out in cafés with Jean-Paul Sartre or Picasso,” he said. “Drawing each experience of place I have in a city […] makes me stop and look and really take it all in.”
His meanderings lead him from the Place des Vosges to the Fondation Louis Vuitton designed by architect Frank Gehry, as well as to the Moulin de la Galette and the American bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Must-see monuments are featured alongside little-known façades; the artist’s fluid, seemingly childlike lines take us from the Louvre pyramid to the bottle-green storefront of Maison Aurouze, “inventor of the mousetrap” and “rat extermination specialist since 1872” at 8 Rue des Halles in the first arrondissement.
All the Buildings in Paris: That I’ve Drawn So Far by James Gulliver Hancock, Rizzoli Universe Promotional Books, 2021. 64 pages, 9.98 dollars.
