#972 - Les Châteaux de Carlo, anthology

Les Châteaux de Carlo,

an original anthology

340+ ebook pages

Carlo may be the pseudonym of an artist or an illustrative collective of talented individuals guided by a single vision (Charleno?). Whether collaborative or solitary, the body of work is immense, diverse, audacious and original.

Possibly as many as 50 short French novels provided the narrative marrow of Carlo's vivid illustrations. Associated with at least two Paris publishers, Carlo delineates attractive, well-dressed characters, wiling away leisurely days and evenings, having fun with each other. Games and role-play occupy the handsome residents of Carlo's chateaux.

In his 1939 film, La Règle du Jeu (Rules of the Game), Jean Renoir exposed the opulent milieu of France's most comfortable citizens, who indulged in couture, palatial residences, and servants in secluded rural settings. Carlo's variation on that study replaces bird hunting and horse riding with indoor sports involving fetish attire and only occasional equestrian tack.

A light-hearted tone pervades the images. The line drawings were usually printed with the prose pages they illustrate. Pictures with colors and grays were usually sold separately as supplements to the books.

Carlo does lovely renditions of corsets, lacy lingerie, gloves and stockings. Most female characters wear high-heeled boots or shoes, but these are not the most significant part of his legacy. One of the best sequences in the anthology has a transvestite theme, but most depict some kind of discipline scenario involving dominant divas in boots. While allowing us a peek inside Carlo's wild imagination, the images describe scenes superbly.

Carlo's prodigious pioneer work influenced John Willie, Jim, Gene Bilbrew, Eric Stanton and Bill Ward. Some of the scenes drawn by these later masters re-cast Carlo's tableaux, character for character, pose for pose. An expert costumer, Carlo created sensual scenes draped with glamor, invention and cheer. Carlo's fantasy illustration serves as the archeology of modern fetish erotica.

The main part of the ebook consists of scans of original 1930s pages, done in the office of a collector in Hamburg, Germany. The pictures are presented in 20 groups, each relating to the volume illustrated. The title page and/or cover of the book precedes each of the sets. A few of these sets are supplemented by pictures from secondary sources, which also provided content for the images in the appendix. Each of the more than 340 pictures has been placed on a separate ebook page. Although the pages have not been optimized, I don't think there's a better way to see the art of Carlo, or a larger collection of his work, than Les Châteaux.

A list of the books in which the pictures in Les Châteaux de Carlo
were first published can be found here:

http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dfbnkw33_2dqndv3&revision=_latest

a free sample of Les Châteaux de Carlo can be found here:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/lup33wygcc.pdf

One ebook, delivered by download link.