This article is part of a regular series of conversations with the Review’s contributors; read past ones here and sign up for our e-mail newsletter to get them delivered to your inbox each week.
I’ve admired the work of Iris de Moüy, a Parisian illustrator, for years now, and have been looking for a chance to commission her. Her art is loose and free, her minimal lines are often bold, strong, and black, and her figures are simple and gamin, but never too sweet.
De Moüy frequently depicts nature, childhood, relationships, and horses, themes that seemed fitting for a summer issue of the Review, so I e-mailed her to ask if she’d take on the fully illustrated cover of our Fiction Issue, and she agreed. She called her painting of a figure reclining on the back of a horse Roaming the Hills.
De Moüy and I wrote back and forth several times for this interview, as her city was preparing for the Olympics.
Leanne Shapton: Your figures and faces are wonderful, but why do you think you make so many paintings and drawings of horses? Are you an equestrian?
Iris de Moüy: Horses have a strong symbolic power. They can express a wide array of emotions. You can make them wild, protective, magic, clumsy… Also, I know horses quite well, which allows me to draw them easily. I spent my childhood jumping every kind of obstacle with horses, although I don’t ride anymore.
What did you grow up looking at and reading?
I grew up looking at Matisse, Picasso, Le Douanier Rousseau, and Louise Bourgeois in Paris museums. Then, as an adolescent, I focused more on bodily matters and fell in love with contemporary dance. I adore choreographers like Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Pina Bausch, and Maya Deren. When I was a girl, I read Roald Dahl, Mikhail Bulgakov, J.D. Salinger, and Lewis Carroll, to name just a few.
What are you reading these days?
Books and notebooks are my favorite companions.
I am currently reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando for the first time. I recently finished Toni Morrison’s story “Recitatif,” with an introduction by Zadie Smith, and Paris je t’aime, a collection of Colette’s notes and thoughts about life in Paris. I pick books (mostly classics) that might help me to understand questions I’m dealing with.
What are some of those bigger questions? How does Orlando address them?
I am reading Orlando because of the philosopher Paul B. Preciado. I had heard him talk about his documentary Orlando, My Political Biography and his theories on gender. Both Woolf’s novel and Preciado’s work are worth thinking about, especially when you live with teenagers and when you have always wanted to move forward with feminist ideas and behavior.
You’ve made children’s books, designed children’s clothing in a collaboration with Monoprix, and made ads and catalogs for the Animals Observatory. What do you like about this kind of work?
I made kids’ stuff when my children were young. It was my way of spending as much time as I could playing with them and creating things at the same time. I must admit that I have turned them into small art directors, editors, models, set designers… Now they’re teenagers and I have lost this natural connection to kiddy land.
How did you learn to draw?
I believe that the best way to learn to draw is to look at the world with an endless curiosity.
What is Paris like these days? Do you follow any Olympic sports?
Paris is beautiful, vibrant, heteroclite, messy, and of course a bit naughty and dirty.
I have never been interested in watching sports or the Olympics, but it is certainly a great source of inspiration for artists. I am thinking of Yusaku Kamekura’s iconic Tokyo 1964 Olympics logo or Zidane: A Twenty-First Century Portrait, a documentary about the French soccer player by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno.
Before Brexit I had been living in London and enjoying it a lot, but after the UK left the EU I had to come back to Paris. It was really upsetting, so the question was: How can I get a fresh view of my city and love it again? Colette has been a great help.
