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About A Few Collectors
About the Author Pierre Le-Tan was an internationally renowned French illustrator who designed whimsical and stylish covers for The New Yorker and images for other magazines including Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, as well as book covers for works by his friend Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. Le-Tan died in 2019 at age sixty-nine. A year and a half later, over four hundred objects that filled his Paris apartment, a high-ceilinged cabinet of curiosities on the Place du Palais-Bourbon, were auctioned off to passionate admirers of his taste. Product Description "Funny and whimsical. There are wonderful asides ... It is also poignant." ―The New York Times An utterly charming book by beloved Parisian artist Pierre Le-Tan, filled with dazzling illustrations and intriguing tales about often eccentric art collectors. Le-Tan, known for designing New Yorker magazine covers and collaborations with fashion houses, summons up memories of inveterate collectors in this lavishly illustrated volume. He evokes fascinating, sometimes troubled figures through insightful and curious portraits. With seventy of his distinctive pen and ink drawings―in vibrant color with meticulous cross-hatching―A Few Collectors opens a window onto the vast or minuscule world created by collectors out of a mix of extravagance and obstinacy. It recounts encounters in Paris, the Côte d’Azur, North Africa, London and New York, where Le-Tan’s subjects have amassed a range of treasures. Some involve famed figures like former Louvre Museum director Pierre Rosenberg. Others are insolvent aristocrats, princes of film and fashion, expatriate dandies, and flat-out obsessive eccentrics. Le-Tan devotes perhaps his finest chapter to himself. Review "In his droll, enchanting book 'A Few Collectors,' Le-Tan reflects on 20 obsessive subjects, including himself, and the extraordinary objects they acquired. His elegant profiles ... are subtly comic and rather mournful, illustrated in his distinctive style: fine ink cross-hatching and watercolors the pastel shades of French macaroons. The pictures are whimsical and enigmatic." —The Wall Street Journal “Splendidly written, engagingly illustrated memoir about … the eccentricity of those who acquire and a subjective pathology of collecting artful things … An ode to the oddities of collectors … I had forgotten how much I missed my old friend’s voice and was delighted to read Pierre’s perfect diction—soothing and reassuring—come through on the page.” —Steven Heller, former New York Times art director, in Print Magazine "These slices of lives illustrate something about the bizarre impulse toward relentless acquisition, even when it comes at a cost ... Funny and whimsical. There are wonderful asides that evoke [Pierre Le-Tan's] colorful social scene ... It is also poignant." —The New York Times "I found A Few Collectors, comprising 20 profiles lovingly written and illustrated by Pierre Le-Tan, a complete revelation ... The volume is one of the most charming and haunting I've ever read, a must-have for any collector, dealer or lover of art." —Ted Loos, Introspective Magazine "The reader of this jewel of a book will feel a range of emotions from amusement to sorrow ... Through vignettes of collectors he knew, Le-Tan poignantly limns what makes collecting so satisfying, but also so heartbreaking ... The book is garlanded by Le-Tan's own illustrations." —The New Criterion "Le-Tan was an admired illustrator, his drawings distinguished by delicate crosshatching and an unwavering line in India ink and watercolour ... This delightful book reveals he was also an indefatigable collector of collectors, and he pens portraits of those similarly and pathologically afflicted ... Le-Tan is the master of epigrammatic understatement." —The World of Interiors "Vietnamese French illustrator and author Pierre Le-Tan is utterly brilliant and charming. A Few Collectors reminds me of Paris France by Gertrude Stein: pithy, light of touch, conversational, disarmingly
