The Belle Époque Today: The Art of Chad Crowe

What started as a habit of drawing birds in top hats has eventually led to a collection of characters from the Belle Époque, when Paris was the epicenter for art, entertainment, and debauchery. Toulouse-Lautrec, the most celebrated drunken and lecherous dwarf in all of art history, is the most likely inspiration for these drawings. 

                                                              --Chad Crowe

Painter, illustrator, cartoonist and self-proclaimed designer of “giant parade floats”, the appropriately-named Chad Crowe offers up a “a questionable cast of deranged hookbills, lustful parakeets, and a bearded barbet with an Oedipus complex” in his new book, Birds of the Belle Époque.

This delightful romp affords us an entertaining glance into the private world of some very fascinating birds—all of whom are imbued with a palpable sense of aristocratic ennui and an utterly engaging theatricality. Crowe’s brilliant artwork allows each scene to unfold in a series of undulating lines, architectural planes and flirtatious winks at the predominant styles of the Art Nouveau and Belle Époque. At once bizarre and amusing, Crowe’s book is so much a late Victorian curio—taxidermy under a glass dome, complete with preserved beetles and wired foliage of hair and beads. Lift the dome and take a whiff. You know you want to.