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Jean Giraud, an enduring figure in European comics whose fantasy and
sci-fi work — which he signed with his alias, Moebius — deeply
influenced alien-world imagery throughout pop culture, has died. He was
73.
Giraud died late Friday night after a long battle with cancer,
according to a statement from his publishing house, Dargaud, which went
on to say the comics world had lost "one of its greatest masters."
In his native France,
where for decades comics have attracted an older readership, Giraud is
considered his country's most important figure in cartooning. His
signature creation is "Les Aventures de Blueberry," the Old West saga
that debuted in 1963 and followed a peripatetic U.S. Cavalry lieutenant
nicknamed Blueberry. The final edition was published in 2005.
Former French Culture Minister Jack Lang was quoted yesterday saying that
Giraud's legacy is a singular one. "Moebius has become a comic-book
icon," Lang said. "In the '70s and '80s he was the figurehead of this
unique art form in France."
In America, however, he is best known for his interstellar visions,
which reached these shores in the monthly R-rated pages of "Heavy
Metal," the English-language version of "Métal Hurlant," a magazine
Giraud helped launch in 1975. He made it a brand name with characters
such as Arzach, the silent figure who glides above alien canyons astride
a great, leathery bird, and the cosmically surreal story of "The
Airtight Garage."
The signature of Moebius became invested with a mystique and, like Federico Fellini in cinema, became shorthand for singular and strange visions in comics. The artist's famous fans included Fellini, George Lucas, James Cameron, Paulo Coelho, Stan Lee, Hayao Miyazaki and Ridley Scott.
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Source: LA Times
Scott brought in the artist to contribute to the look of the 1979 space-horror classic "Alien,"
and Steven Lisberger, the writer-director of "Tron," sought him out to
pin down the digital dreams of that pioneering 1982 Disney movie.
"It's one thing to be talented and work hard enough to put your spirit
and soul in your work, and it's a totally other thing to have a spirit
and soul that is so beautiful and wise that it deserves to be put into
art," Lisberger said Saturday. Giraud was "a very rare man, a true
master, and his life's work is a masterpiece."
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Giraud would go on to contribute art or design work on such 1980s films as "Willow," "Masters of the Universe" and "The Abyss" and on 1997's "The Fifth Element."
Still, he was a bit player in Hollywood and a superstar of the page and
canvas. The subtle paradox that tugs at the eye of his audience is that
everything portrayed — the landscapes, denizens, technologies and even
physics — is totally alien but also completely unified in presentation
and rendered with the confident precision of a surveyor who has walked
every inch of a property.
Another celebrated Moebius fan, Rick Carter, the production designer who won an Oscar for his art direction on the 2009 film "Avatar," said the effect is unsettling.
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"The inspiration I always felt from the art of Moebius was that I believed hetruly
saw the imagery he depicted and was actually not making it up," Carter
said Saturday. "His imagery appears as if it was sketched from a
real-life subconscious world/existence."
Even as Giraud's productivity narrowed in recent years, his stature in
the creative community seemed to grow as young illustrators, digital
artists and video game designers looked to his work as a key compass
point. In October 2010 the Fondation Cartier Pour L'Art Contemporain in
Paris launched a lavish five-month exhibit of Giraud's work that
included small, humble sketches and majestic wall-sized pieces.
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The artist visited Los Angeles while the exhibit was underway and, in an
interview with The Times, said he couldn't put a name to the restless
nature of his imagination or the persistent disdain for repeating his
past accomplishments.
"I have no explanation, but I am interested in being alive.… Art is the
big door, but real life is a lot of small doors that you must pass
through to create something new," he said.
"You don't always need to go far. If you are in the space station Mir
and you need to fix something, you go outside, but not too far. If you
travel too far you'll die. Outer space is not human, but you can visit.
You need to be a little bit out there but you need to stay close to
human."
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in May 1938 (the month before Superman arrived in a small rocket from another planet in the pages of "Action Comics" No. 1) in the Paris suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne.
Although he had little formal training, his cowboy adventure tales were
being published in Far West magazine by the time he was 18.
In his early 20s he became an apprentice of the Belgian artist Jije,
best known for his work on "Spirou et Fantasio" and the western
adventure that clearly informed "Blueberry."
The long journey from protege to titan left Giraud dizzy at times, and
last year he said the adulation was a mystery in and of itself.
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"They said that I changed their life," he told The Times. "'Your work is
why I became an artist.' Oh, it makes me happy. But you know at same
time I have an internal broom to clean it all up. It can be dangerous to
believe it. Someone wrote, 'Moebius is a legendary artist.' A legend —
now I am like a unicorn."
The artist's survivors include Isabelle Giraud, his wife and business partner.
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