Here’s an interesting cover for Mario Ropp’s Celle des deux qui vivait, which means “which of the two lived.” If we had to guess, we’d say it was the driver. Following standard practice for French crime authors, Ropp was actually a pseudonym for someone named Marie-Anne Devillers who wrote for twenty-seven years under various names, including Dominique Dorn, Maia Walbert, Maia de Villers, and Michèle Vaudois. The art here is by Michel Gourdon and it certainly qualifies as one of his quirkier efforts. See more Gourdon here and here. 

We hope you didn’t think we were being rough on Michel Gourdon yesterday. We certainly don’t qualify as art experts. We were just saying maybe he missed the mark on that particular book cover. He did fine on hundreds of others. Today, we have an example of his work at its best. Inside this May 1959 issue of La Vie Parisienne Gourdon not only offers up a top-notch illustration, but accompanies it with a poem he authored entitled “Jalousie,” or Jealousy. It’s an interesting theme for a painter of pin-ups to tackle, but since we are no more poetry experts than we are art experts, we won’t pretend to critique the merits of the verse. You want to know how it goes? E-mail us and we’ll send it to you. Also in this issue you get art from fellow illustrators Jacques Leclerc, R. Caron, and E. Klein. In addition, this is another chopped up magazine with loose clippings from another issue, we believe from June 1959. We’ve included a few of those pages as well. 

French artist Michel Gourdon was an accomplished illustrator, but if he could be said to have produced an unsuccessful effort, this would be it. Looking at the image, we understand this is supposed to be a head butt to the gut, but it looks more like an impending lip lock to the cock. Can you imagine Gourdon unveiling this for his colleagues at Fleuve Noir? Michel goes, “Et, voila!” And a roomful of people all give the same wtf reaction, except for one editor who just hangs his head, and the publisher, who finally goes, “Michel, mon dieu, est c’un blowjob!” Anyway, we picked this up in Bordeaux last week while pulp digging, and as you might imagine, it sort of leapt out of the bin at us. Our pleasure was orgasmic, and we hope you like it too. We have yet more Bordeaux stuff upcoming, so stay tuned. 

French illustrator Michel Gourdon died back in mid-March, but we didn’t have time to get together a proper post of his work. We’ve corrected that today, with a selection of ten pieces from this great artist. Gourdon, who was brother to the legendary Alain Gourdon (better known as Aslan), painted thousands of pin-ups, advertisements, movie posters, and especially book covers during his career. A small selection of the latter appears below, and you can see three more here.

Three Fleuve Noir covers painted by French artist Michel Gourdon, circa 1970s. These books were a steal at 1€ each.