Folon @75
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okVU6v8phzY]
Final credits by Folon for Antenne 2 from 1975 to 1984
Jean-Michel Folon (March 1, 1934, Uccle, Belgium – October 20, 2005, Monaco) was a Belgian artist, illustrator, painter, and sculptor. Folon was born in Brussels in 1934 where he studied architecture. In 1955 he settled in a gardener’s house in the outskirts of Paris. During five years he drew morning, noon and night. In 1985 he moved to Monaco where he worked in a big workshop surrounded by numerous artists.
Folon celebrated the hybrid businessman/white-collar worker as much as his fellow Belgian artist Magritte did (see Magritte’s The Son of Man[1], a bourgeois man in a suit and the same type of fellow in this[[2]] Folon sculpture where he is holding a briefcase).
![[1]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e5/Magritte_TheSonOfMan.jpg/225px-Magritte_TheSonOfMan.jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](http://www.jean-michel-folon.eu/friendsclub/images/folon/folon2008_left.jpg){kind=link}
Perhaps Folon was the last Belgian surrealist although his naive watercolor work is sui generis.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YpbKnr4iJE]
I think he’s underrated today but his work is still of influence. Most recently there was Bill Plympton‘s Idiots and Angels of which the author acknowledges the influence of Topor, Folon (the flying men) and of Crumb.