The LOUIS VUITTON TRAVEL BOOK series is an invitation to real and virtual voyages, enriched by intellectual stimulation and poignant moments. In its pages, the illustrations of renowned artists and promising young talents tell the stories of the cities and countries they have visited.
The creative worlds on show are highly diverse: during their travels, these artists from various corners of the world were free to choose their mode of expression and communicated their views of other places through drawing, painting, collage, illustration, cartoons or manga.

This spring, I am very happy that two of my favorite cities will finally be featured:
LOS ANGELES and SEOUL.

LOUIS VUITTON TRAVEL BOOK LOS ANGELES by JAVIER MARISCAL

Javier Mariscal, a graphic designer, illustrator, designer, filmmaker, painter, sculptor
and ceramist, is an artist who loves to challenge and who is fond of California. His love affair with Los Angeles began when he and his friend, film director Fernando Trueba, was nominated for the 2012 Oscars for «Chico and Rita», an animated feature film which won numerous international awards.

This is his fifth trip to Los Angeles. Unaffected and curious about everything, he makes friends, immediately getting their portraits down. He sketches figures and faithfully reproduces shapes and attitudes in seconds. Objects and landscapes get the same treatment, either with a sketch on his notebook, or a painting on the iPad.

Los Angeles reminds him of Valencia. The glaring white light that floods the clear blue sky is just the same as the sky above his native city. But what most excites him in L.A. are the neon lights, slogans, shop signs, billboards and logos that swamp the city. What Mariscal takes away from this is a wealth of astonishing typography. His visual universe is brought to life in the streets of Los Angeles — right before his eyes.

LOUIS VUITTON TRAVEL BOOK SEOUL by ICINORI

Icinori is a studio of designers, visual artists, screen printers and publishers dealing in art books, prints, animated books and concertina books. But first and foremost, Icinori is a truly astonishing pair, one soul with two heads, four hands and twenty fingers, belonging to the French-Spanish-Japanese Mayumi Otero and French Raphaël Urwiller, two graduates from the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Strasbourg, which is where they met. They founded Icinori in 2007 when they were still students.

During their many trips to Seoul — they notched up no less than four long stays between 2014 and 2017 — the Icinori pair had the chance to observe the impressive alertness and brisk energy of its people, simple and determined, disciplined and hard-working, epicurean and creative. The two have cleverly succeeded in capturing the beating heart of the capital, immersing themselves in its customs and performing arts, its layers of history and chinks in everyday life. Icinori draws the many details that make up the life of the city: residents’ rhythms, the movement of the street, traders, shopping as religion in Myeong-dong, cosmetic surgery salons, street food — such as the enticing odeng, mandu, «tornado potato,» gimbap and hotteok cakes. Here we have people dancing to K-pop. In the early morning metro, the air is already heavy with the sour scent of kimchi.

«Seoul is an organic city, with astonishing creative energy and visually very elegant, as seen in the powerful design, the signage, the sophisticated signs and typologies of the shapes — circles, triangles and other geometric figures. Good taste is everywhere, sometimes a bit crazy, but universal. It’s a mix of the baroque and the modern. A miracle of the ephemeral and the elegant.»

In book stores from May 2, 2019 for €45.00 each.
160 pages / hardcover
ISBN: 978-2-36983-179-2 (Los Angeles)
ISBN: 978-2-36983-180-8 (Seoul)

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Louis Vuitton