Babette, aka Babette Pautier, is a young and talented emerging photographer born in France and based in London. A graduate of the Arts Deco school in Paris, she has already published her work in several magazines such as Double and Intersection.

While there are many photographers out there who position their work on the thin border between fashion and art, few do it with a talent that equals Babette’s.

Her style mixes elegantly the glamourous with the painterly, ranging from neon-pop flashiness to dreamlike shadowy portraits with a distinctive film still quality. Portraits aside, her pictures of urban sceneries and eerie landscapes all bear the mark of a vision steeped as much in gothic horror as in innocent daydreaming.

Oh, and did we mention, even her website is uber cool and she’s designed it herself with little outside help. Check it out for your selves.

www.mydearelisa.com

Celebrating all things design and fantastic, we wish to bring your attention to the work of 19th century designer William Morris whose work and ideas have had an enormous influence on the course of modern design and decorative arts, inspiring directly for instance the Art Nouveau movement in France and Belgium. William Morris remains in fact one of the most influential English designers. He was also an artist, a writer, a poet and a translator. In 1861, he founded his own design company which produced innovative and alternative works, some of which can still be purchased today.

Along with some of his artist friends of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he was one of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts movement, a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain, and a writer of poetry and fiction who inspired the creation of the fantasy genre. While he worked for some time as an architect, his most famous creations are his wallpaper and patterned fabrics designs.

Inspired by the writings of the art critic John Ruskin who preached a return to the inspiration found in nature and the medieval ethos of authenticity and craftsmanship, the Pre-Raphaelites refused the hierarchy of artistic mediums, embracing in one movement painting and the decorative arts. Morris can also be considered one of the founding figures of book art, a genre which he helped revive through the legacy of the legendary Kelmscott Press which he founded in 1891.

Finally, the work of Morris also presents an interesting tension between his aesthetic aspirations and political convictions. On the one hand, Morris and his daughter May were amongst Britain’s first socialists, working directly with Eleanor Marx and Engels to begin the socialist movement. Morris, like all his pre-raphaelite friends, also had a violent dislike of the prevalent bourgeois tastes in Victorian England. Yet, on the other hand, even Morris who believed that art should be affordable and hand-made cannot have ignored that, ultimately, his creations were luxurious objects that only could be purchased by the most affluent members of the Victorian upper classes.
Socialism vs the social reality of luxury design part 1…

William Morris article in Wikipedia

Illustrative is a international forum for contemporary illustrative art, allowing established and emerging artists from the UK, France, Germany and other European countries to showcase their works. Its home base is Berlin, where Illustrative is held every year in September for three weeks followed by a further Illustrative in Paris.

Showcasing a variety of themes, styles and techniques, the show captures the status quo and the newest developments in illustrative arts. Each edition of the event is composed of a main exhibition and a series of thematic sections dedicated to specific topics and approaches (book art, fashion illustration, animation, set design, young talents, etc) . In addition to the exhibition, a series of events, discussions and lectures are held around contemporary illustration and associated areas.

Here is some cool stuff from the some of the emerging artists featured in the ” Young Talents ” section in the last Paris edition :

( From Cedric Quissola )

( From Didier Blondeau )

www.illustrative.de