Special
Mihail Chemiakin – Ventre de Paris, 1977 Lithograph
Mihail Chemiakin – Ventre de Paris, 1977
Lithograph on Paper, Signed and Numbered
Dedicated to Émile Zola
This striking 1977 lithograph by Mihail Chemiakin serves as the title page or conceptual frontispiece for his important series Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris), inspired by Émile Zola’s novel of the same name. Executed in Chemiakin’s distinct metamorphic style, this work explores the physical and metaphorical labor behind the French food industry, particularly the men who handled and transported immense sides of beef—an iconic element of the bustling Les Halles marketplace.
In the central panel, a lone butcher in robe and cap strides past a bloodless backdrop, his form stylized yet solemn, flanked by surreal, almost grotesque visual transformations. The surrounding vignettes reinterpret workers and cuts of meat into fantastical hybrids, melding flesh, cloth, and motion into distorted anthropomorphisms. These side panels are not only visually rich but thematically potent, showing Chemiakin's philosophical approach to the body's transformation under labor, tradition, and consumption.
Printed in Paris and signed in pencil by the artist, this rare lithograph is both a standalone composition and an introductory keystone to the Ventre de Paris suite. A profound homage to Zola’s realism and to the often invisible human toil behind culinary culture.
