The Goude Touch: A Ten Year Campaign for Galeries Lafayette

Jean-Paul Goude is one of the world’s most brilliant and unorthodox image-makers.

This book assembles a collection of advertising artwork he created over a ten-year period for Galeries Lafayette – Paris’s most celebrated department store.

Around 200 works, including over 100 working documents, are on show here: drawings, sketches and final images that sparkle with creative vigour. Selected and arranged by Goude himself, they present a gallery of artworks that have not only defined a brand, but have redefined advertising and brand photography as we 
know them.

Sexy, irreverent and often very funny, this book sizzles with Goude’s frequently risqué sense of humour. He is the enfant terrible behind some of the wittiest billboards in Paris, in perfect control of his medium and with an intuitive sense of chic. Goude has created a modern classic of commercial art. In an inspired moment, Galeries Lafayette gave Goude a rare degree of creative freedom, and Goude responded with some of the best work he has ever made.

Patrick Mauriès sets Goude’s work in context – alongside the great artists associated with advertising, fashion and publicity, such as René Gruau for Dior – and as a vital asset in the history of France’s greatest store.

This book is a celebration of Goude’s creative zest and perfectionism, and his unique affinity for making fresh and engaging commercial artworks. It will inform and instruct all those concerned about the art of image-making, whether design professionals or simply those prepared to be delighted and entertained by chic, witty images that work.