Above: poster for Playtime (Jacques Tati, France, 1967) by Vincent Mahé.
The art print movie poster phenomenon that exploded in the last decade —in which posters were produced as collectibles for fans rather than commercial ephemera created by a distributor to promote a film’s release—has been notable for two things: first an extraordinary, beyond-belief artistry (illustration, once viewed as a dying art, seems to have never been healthier) and, second, a rather restricted frame of reference. Filmmakers like Kubrick, Scorsese, Malick, and Tarantino are very well represented while a whole host of world-class auteurs rarely seem to merit a single limited edition Mondo print run. Where are the art prints for Ozu or Antonioni, one wonders? One wonderful exception in recent years was a series of prints devoted to Jacques Tati released from 2015 to 2019 by the Nautlilus Art Prints studio in Brussels, Belgium.
The posters, covering all five of Tati’s major features, were illustrated by two Belgian artists, David Merveille and Laurent Durieux, one French artist, Vincent Mahé, and one American, Tom Whalen, all among the greatest in their field. Merveille is well versed in Tati's world having illustrated a number of Tati books for children as well as the superb covers for the Criterion Jacques Tati set. Whalen is a Mondo star who usually makes gorgeous art posters for Disney, Pixar, and Marvel films, while Durieux has made his name with exquisitely detailed prints for the films of Alfred Hitchcock, among many others. Mahé, who illustrated the Nautilus posters for both Trafic and PlayTime, specializes in architecture, having illustrated the 2015 graphic novel “750 Years in Paris” which documents the evolution of a single Parisian building from the Middle Ages to the present. That same year he also illustrated a commemorative cover for Télérama for the 50th anniversary of the passing of Le Corbusier. Making him the ideal artist to render Tati’s grid-like vision of Paris for Playtime.
So here, in one place, are all the Nautilus prints for the films of the great Jacques Tati.
Above: poster for Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, France, 1958) by Tom Whalen.
Above: poster for Jour de Fête (Jacques Tati, France, 1949) by David Merveille.
Above: poster for M. Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, France, 1953) by David Merveille.
Above: poster for Trafic (Jacques Tati, France, 1971) by Vincent Mahé.
Above: poster for the fictional Tati homage François à l’Americaine by Laurent Durieux.
You can see more of Nautlilus Art Prints at their website.