Le Guilloux, 2003

File — Box: CFC Postcards Box 1

Identifier: CFC2018.0335

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Collection:

The Carlson Fable Collection is a gathering of primary fable materials at Reinert Alumni Memorial Library at Creighton University. It grew out of the personal collection of fable materials gathered by Rev. Gregory Carlson, S.J. and was given to the Creighton Libraries in 1996. There are more than 10,000 books and approximately 8,000 artifacts in the collection.

From plates to stamps, from cards to whiskey decanters, from toys to posters, you'll find just about anything you can imagine here. Please explore all that is to offer here in my fables Catalogue of Objects.

This is the largest online catalog of fable related objects on the internet. Many are from Aesop's Fables but you will find La Fontaine, Velazquez and Krylov also represented in this collection.

Dates

2003

Extent

5 Cards : Five cards presenting La Fontaine fables humorously, all designed and signed by André le Guilloux of Louvres. They appear to have been created for various groups or competitions, including "Les Fables de la Fontaine: victimes du progrès" and "Les Fables et le Progrès." Another contains the caption "En Hommage a Jean de la Fontaine." Another is simpler: "Fable de la Fontaine." Yet another appears to have been done for a series sponsored by Crédit Agricole of Strasbourg and to have been presented at the 2e Salon de l'Image et de l'Écrit, as was the series by Claude Coudray on "Le Coq et le Renard." ; Oversized: over 4" x just less than 6".

Language of Materials

French

Additional Description

Abstract

See my remarks on each card. These cards show a great deal of wit and imagination! I was surprised when the seller started to write on the back of each, and I asked him why he was doing that. He explained that he is the artist and that he was signing them for me!

The pig, as in the traditional fable, understands that he is travelling not to give up his wool or his milk but rather his life. Le Guilloux' addition here is the mocking hare getting a free bicycle ride and telling the pig that this day she will be in paradise.

Three features of this funny piece of art are worth noting. First, the frog is dreaming of being bigger than an ox: "I want to make myself bigger than an ox." Secondly, Le Guilloux is showing the very moment when the expanded frog blows a leak and starts to spew out the air that she has collected. Thirdly, the smaller (and younger?) frog is tapping his head. Might this gesture mean something like "You have bats in your belfry"?

A determined hare wearing roller skates passes an angry tortoise wearing four roller skates. The hare has a shoe skates, while the tortoise has the old kind that fit over the bottom of whatever we were wearing. Is part of the lesson here that the latest technology always wins?

This picture puts together elements of several fables. Notice that the crow is dropping his precious cheese; only this time, there is no taker for it! It looks as though the brand name of the cheese is "Le Vache qui rit"! Then the joke of the tortoise's overtaking of the hare is here "explained" by putting the tortoise onto a virtual water-ski.

Here the wolf tells the lamb that there are ticks around, full of fleas. Is part of the fun here the phrase "informe a tiques," which is very like "informatiques," the "science" of information. One will ask with some justification how the lamb got to be a frog.