HOLLYWOODLAND - 1936
ILLUSTRATION
This illustration was made for the 1st edition of "Nîmes s’illustre" festival in 2019.
I had carte blanche to illustrate the below quote from Carlo Rim - June 30th 1936.
"I ran into Cendrars, at Samuel's, at the Flammarion bookstore, boulevard des Italiens. We will stop at the Neapolitan.
Blaise, back from Hollywood, exhales his grip:
- Go there, but don't stay there. A land of apocalypse. If you take a walk on the Sunset, the cops tie you. More cars than inhabitants, so any pedestrian is a tramp, a suspect. Consider yourself happy that you are not being beaten up! This is the capital of suicide. I've seen the stats: they beat New York and Chicago. They explain to you: “Here we shoot ourselves because we are so happy. " Why not ? Hollywood is Luna Park, Nice at the carnival, Montparnasse at rush hour, a crazy thunderous setting, half Dali, half Barnum. The factory of dreams, you speak! They make dreams all day long, in concrete fortresses more inaccessible than the Great Pagoda in Beijing. A Frenchman who wants to enter a studio without a pass can always claim to be called Napoleon or Victor Hugo, he will be kicked out. And it all stinks of gasoline, make-up, hot dogs, goose fat crisps, grime and Chanel Number five! On the sets, a Prussian discipline, a cathedral silence. The genius who cares, it costs too much. It’s the most yes-man, creepiest one. We don't obey, we take off our panties. Soulless robots, drunk from breakfast, who smoke Havanas and drive Buicks, wondering if they will have to eat the week after!"
EXHIBITIONS
