Récits
Artist: Marius Margot
Designer: Izet Sheshivari
Softcover, 412 Pages
Format: 14.5 × 20 cm
First Edition 2019
ISBN 978-2-940409-86-0
Price CHF 28.00
Récits (meaning ‘stories’ in French) is both a book of paintings and a painting of a book, which also pretends to be a graphic novel. Borrowing from the form’s conventions, the artist Marius Margot shares his many styles and explorations into techniques whilst telling a post-apocalyptic, science-fiction-inspired narrative.
Evoking serials of classical literature, graphic novels and Japanese manga, Récits binds together a sequence of thin, differently coloured booklets. Within this structure, both very large format paintings and tiny details and sketches are reproduced and juxtaposed to recount intersecting stories, including those which allow the reader to unravel the influences of master painters upon Margot’s practice, such as Pietro de la Francesca, Hokusai and Edward Hopper. The reader is given glimpses into the dexterity of Margot’s work, into his abstractions, and sometimes into his very brushstrokes.
Accompanying this story-telling, a selection of sketches and drawings lend an insight into the artist’s exhaustive research processes, which use methods often borrowed from literature or music. Whilst these images are outside of the narrative thread of the book, they do function in some ways as a - somewhat biographical - narrative of their own.
Whilst being grounded in the reality of impressive and unrelenting artistic discipline, Récits invites the reader to plunge into an imaginary world, populated with strange and fantastical meetings between mythical creatures, classic works of literature, and manga culture - and to do so without inhibition.