FOREST - 1960 Illustration art inscribed to Forry Ackerman
Artist: Jean Claude Forest (All)
10 Comments - 3,289 Views - 10 Likes
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Published version
Ackerman's study
Artwork Details
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DescriptionInk and white paint over graphite on Bristol board with an image area of 11.5" x 15.5".As the fiftysomething-and-over crowd among you remember, Jean-Claude Forest (1930-1998) was the illustrator that created Barbarella, the very first French "adult" graphic novel (published by Le Terrain Vague in 1964), four years before Roger Vadim adapted it into a cheesy movie starring Jane Fonda. Forest, who had been a professional cartoonist since the late 1940s, produced tons of illustration art for various French periodicals. One of his main accounts was V-Magazine, a girlie title (delightfully tame by today's standards) for which he would contribute spot illos adorning suspense or SF short stories. This drawing appeared in the Summer ’60 issue of V Sélections (one of the various titles that V Magazine adopted over its 25-odd-year history) with a piece titled “La pionnière” by one Robert Anton. As several people before me have noticed the young lady in the foreground, although a typical Forest girl, shares the looks of the space-travelling Barbarella whose adventures were serialized in V Magazine later, in 1962-1964. The story does not end here. Probably in the late 1960s Forest gave this drawing to Famous Monsters’ historic editor Forrest J. Ackerman, inscribing it to his name. Ackerman went on to do two things with it. In a gesture that is completely sacrilegious by today’s collecting standards he attached along the bottom of the drawing a 5-inch-long strip of red “label maker” tape that read CREATOR OF BARBARELLA (as if he might have forgotten…). He subsequently displayed the artwork over his desk below a small King Kong poster and above a still of Elsa Lanchester as the Bride of Frankenstein. The Forest piece remained there for decades and can be seen in various photographs and footage showing Ackerman’s study (in his Los Feliz home, not in the original Ackermansion). Ackerman’s health and legal problems caused him to sell his collection piece by piece from the late ‘90s onwards. I don’t know exactly when the Forest drawing left Ackerman’s home but I know for a fact it turned up on eBay some time in the very early 2000s. I saw it at the time, bid on it, but was finally outbid by a buyer who shelled out 1K for it—an extravagant sum for me in those days. I was really upset I had lost that auction and thought I would never see again the pretty Forest lady from the Ackermansion. Early in 2015 it turned up again on eBay, more than a decade after I last saw it, with an ask price of… 35K. I wrote the seller, pointing out that if the highest price paid in a public auction for a key Barbarella page was indeed close to 25K, what he was offering was a pre-Barbarella cheesecake illo that typically sold for a maximum 3K--when it sold at all, given the low number of Forest art collectors. The seller did not respond well to my message nor to my 3K offer. He proceeded to keep the eBay listing at 35K and shut it down to non-US eBay customers such as moi… Six months later, by September 2015, I managed to access his most recent listings (there are ways to circumvent eBay’s blockades) and found out that the Forest piece was still unsold although its price had by then dropped to 20K—still a tad too much—no, way too much yet !!!! A couple of days later I was out of my mind with enthusiasm when I found out that the drawing would be offered in the Fall 2015 Heritage auction. This was my now-or-never opportunity to finally acquire the Jean-Claude Forest piece I had looked forward to owning for more than ten years. And I did win it. For a little more than my original offer to the previous owner but much less than his successive eBay ask prices. Thank you, Sir, whoever you are. No hard feelings. But I told you that 35K was wildly unrealistic for this drawing ! I love comic art collecting ! Social/Sharing |
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Comments on this Artwork
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Mark Yanko
Member Since 2009
Posted on 12/28/2015
That's a great story! You, sir, are an inspiration to the rest of us collectors, each of us trying hard to attain our own impossible dream pieces. Bravo and congratulations! It's a great piece.
Oystein Sorensen 
Member Since 2005
Posted on 12/28/2015
Very cool - both the piece and the background story.
Davide G.
Member Since 2009
Posted on 12/28/2015
Good things come to those who wait :) Congrats and thanks for sharing both piece and story!
DC's Showcase
Member Since 2006
Posted on 12/28/2015
A tales of two Forests, way to score! (and having seen this piece in the so-called flesh, it really IS striking in person).
Timothy Finney
Member Since 2006
Posted on 12/29/2015
I tip my cup to "the tale of two Forrests" and congratulate you on the completion of your long and arduous quest.
William Lawson
Member Since 2015
Posted on 3/27/2018
Can't see the forest's for the tree's...so to speak.
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