Book Review: Mirages: The Art of Laurent Durieux

One of the best artbooks from 2021

Laurent Durieux is an amazing artist from Brussels and this is an incredible artbook. This large format 276-page hardcover is published by Cernunnos Publishing. The book is thick and binding looks good. The paper used is non-glossy and is able to reproduce the colours really well.

Durieux is known for his movie poster reinterpretation with a style that's a mix of precision, old school ink hatching lines and storytelling. Each illustration has the power to make you pause to admire the technique, and then the storytelling pulls you in to make you think. Good art looks good. Great art makes you think, and he has many such artworks in this book.

The drawing technique showcased is what looks like classic pen or brush hatching lines created with colours. Those lines not only create textures but shapes. The look is very stylised, almost vector like. Durieux's use of colour schemes is also masterful.

And of course we have to talk about the movie poster reinterpretations. There are so many reimagined poster designs, such as for Jaws, Conan, Transformers, Back to the Future, The Dark Knight, Planet of the Apes and more. There's also this interesting look and feel when looking at pop culture movie posters created with a classic and yet drawing style. Even filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola is a collector of his posters and he wrote the foreword for this book.

This is a great artbook, and easily one of the best from 2021 that I've discovered three years late.

If you like this book, I highly recommend The Art of Mondo too, and these books on movie poster art.

Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.com.au | Amazon.co.jp

Links to the French edition:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.com.au | Amazon.co.jp

This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook.