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With Our Love to Charlie Hebdo
I woke up this morning to the news of the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo Magazine office in Paris. Twelve people were killed and eleven wounded, including two of my French cartoonist friends, Tignous and Wolinski. Cartoonists around the world are grieving.
Americans treat editorial cartoons as a trivial daily joke in the newspaper – in France, editorial cartoons and loved and respected. The Louvre has a branch museum devoted to cartoons; imagine if the Smithsonian had a cartoon museum, that’s the way cartoons are revered in France.
“Charlie Hebdo” is a silly name; it is a weekly magazine filled with editorial cartoons, easily found on news stands everywhere in France. “Hebdo” means “weekly” in French, and “Charlie” comes from France’s love for the comic strip “Peanuts” and Charlie Brown – therefore “Charlie Hebdo.” The top cartoonists in France vie to be on the pages of Charlie Hebdo.
There are cartoon festivals all over France – the best one for political cartoonists is in the small town of St Just le Martel; I’ve been attending for years, along with other cartoonists I syndicate. The townspeople pitch in to throw a festival for the editorial cartoonists every year; villagers put cartoonists up in their homes, and they award a live cow to the “Humor Vache” cartoonist of the year. One greatly respected winner of the cow was Georges Wolinski, a brilliant cartoonist with a masterful loose, swishy, wordy style, highly respected by the French. We were fellow cow winners, having a beer together last October; it is hard to imagine that he is gone.
The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists are a diverse group of charming characters; they are the heart of the French cartooning community. There are not a lot of editorial cartoonists. We get to know each other; the murders are a blow that strikes close to all of us.
The Charlie Hebdo artists were energized and incensed by the Danish Muhammad cartoon fracas a few years ago. French cartoonists have a macho attitude, seeing themselves on the front lines of a free speech debate. One Charlie Hebdo issue, touted as “edited by the Profit Muhammad” had all blank pages. One Charlie Hebdo cover featured a drawing, by French cartoonist “Luz” of the magazine’s publisher/cartoonist “Charb” having a sloppy kiss with a Muslim Man, under the headline “L’Amour plus for que la haine” or “love is stronger than hate.” Charb was among those killed in the terror attack.
Terrorists have no sense of humor. Cartoons loom large in the Arab world, typically on the front pages of Arab language newspapers. It is no wonder that our cartoons seem to bother the terrorists more than our words. Sitting behind a beer with Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, the talk often turns to Islamic extremeists and their assaults on press freedoms. No one can doubt that editorial cartoonists are leading the fight for press freedoms now.
Today we are are grieving, but as we move forward, I hope that our cartoons won’t be chilled by these murders and that the cartooning community will step up to this challenge with even more brilliant and insightful work – I’m sure the French cartoonists will do that; they are my heroes.
I just got back from our Cagle Cartoons junket to the cartoon festival in St Just France. I’m way behind on my cartoons, but I knocked this one out from a snapshot that I took in an obscure corner of the Louvre.
This is a painting by 18th century Neo-classical painter Louis-Jacque Durameau about the death of Marie Antoinette. It struck me as a multi-panel cartoon with a big Nobel Peace Prize medal for Barack Obama. I almost put labels on the frames, “Then,” “… and Now” but I decided less is more. This painting is really funny – and all the more so because it takes itself so seriously.
The photo below is our group having dinner in Paris. From left to right is cartoonist Adam Zyglis, cartoonist Nate Beeler , me, cartoonist Steve Sack, cartoonist Monte Wolverton, Janelle Beamer, the charming fiancé of charming, conservative cartoonist Rick McKee, Nate’s wife Eve and Adam’s wife Jessica.
Here’s another group shot, around the cow statue at the editorial cartoon exhibition in St Just le Martel, deep in the heart of France near Limoges. Left to right is Nate, Eve, me, my wife, Peg, Justine the cow, Adam, Jessica, Janelle, Rick and Monte. Steve Sack was with us too; looks like he went missing in this one.
The grand prize winner of the festival (the winner of the cow, the “Humor Vache”) was Venezuelan cartoonist Rayma Suprani. The prize is an actual cow. Rayma also got a little porcelain cow.
I’ve long been impressed with Rayma. She drew for the El Universal newspaper in Caracas where she was a brave critic of the Hugo Chavez regime. The government took over her newspaper and she lost her job. Rayma may be moving to the USA next; I look forward to seeing what she draws here.
I won the grand prize cow at the festival last year, and I drew the poster for this year’s salon. As part of the winner from last year thing, the brilliant French caricaturist, Moines, drew my portrait. That’s me, giant me, and Moines at the right. Moines draws on a special kind of scratchboard and he carved each of my whiskers into the board with an X-acto knife. Makes me wanna pinch those cheeks. Moines complains that he’s down to his last couple of sheets of this paper, which isn’t made anymore. Shame.
I had great fun at the European editorial cartoonists convention in St Just le Martel France the last two years and I’m going again this year. It is a public event in the small French town, and any fans who would like to visit with the scores of attending editorial cartoonists are welcome to come. The cartoonists often sit at drawing tables and are happy to chat and do drawings for visitors.
St Just le Martel is the patron saint of a little French town near Limoges; his bones are housed at an ancient little church in town. The story goes that little St Just was walking along one day when God asked him to throw his hammer (martel); when the hammer landed, water squirted out of the ground. God told little St Just to build a church on the spot, founding the little town. That’s an adult St. Just (right) breaking his dinnerplate halo with his martel, in an image that the town seems to have adopted as a logo (I don’t know who the artist was on this one). That’s the church that houses his bones at the left.
The tiny town opens itself up to editorial cartoonist from around the world every year at the end of September. The townsfolks put the cartoonists up in their homes and get together to prepare giant meals for the cartoonists and what looks like the whole town through the “Salon.” And the little town has built a big, nice cartoon museum (below). It is hard to imagine any little town in America doing something like this (although it looks like Kenosha, Wisconsin and Marceline, Missouri may be headed in that direction).
There is a contingent of Australian cartoonists attending this year, along with six American cartoonists that are coming with me: Steve Sack, Rick McKee, Adam Zyglis, Monte Wolverton and Nate Beeler. We’re doing exhibitions of American Views of Putin and Ferguson Missouri; I expect the Australian cartoonists will have an exhibition of Aussie cartoons.
I did the poster for this year’s Salon (right, click here to see the sketch and a large version of the poster). The Salon/festival runs over two weekends from September 27th through October 5th. The first weekend they give their “Humor Tendre” (tender humor) award to someone like a children’s book illustrator who draws nice, sweet cartoons; the award consists of a live sheep. The week between the weekends can be a bit slow, but some cartoonists hang out for the week between the two weekends.
The second weekend, when most of the editorial cartoonists attend, they give the “Humor Vache” (cow humor, or harsh humor) award to a more satirical, caustic cartoonist. I won the cow last year, which is why I did the poster this year; there seems to be a tradition of the cow winner doing the poster for the following year. See me with my charming prize, Josette the cow, at last year’s event here.
St Just le Martel is way out in the French boondocks, cow country, and they are proud of their cows. The cow has become a symbol for the Salon/festival – the Limoges cow is always brown, like Josette. Here are some more posters from recent Salons …
I’m going to the big, euro-editorial-cartoonists convention in St. Just France again this year, along with four Cagle Cartoons star cartoonists, Nate Beeler, Adam Zyglis, Rick McKee and Steve Sack.
We’re putting together a show at the St. Just cartoon museum on American Views of Vladimir Putin and I’ve been scouring my own archives for my favorite, recent Putin cartoons, some are posted below, there will be a lot more in the show.
Putin is a wonderful cartoon character. I like how Putin looks bored in every meeting. Putin is funny for being macho and taking off his shirt. Like Bill Clinton, who had his pants down, showing his underwear enblazoned with little hearts almost all of the new Putin cartoons have him shirtless. Putin has been a big cartoon character recently, with his annexation of Crimea, the downing of the Malaysian Airlines jet, economic sanctions, the Winter Olympics, and Putin’s support for Syria’s Assad regime. Putin pokes his spooky nose into lots of current events.
I researched traditional Ukrainian dress for the cartoon below, with a standard, shirtless, caveman Putin.
I like this Ukrainian chick as my symbol for Ukraine. I used her again in the cartoon below, with shirtless Putin robbing her of her Crimea purse, with hapless Obama standing by.
I draw digestion/cross-section cartoons every so often. Here’s shirtless Putin below, digesting little countries and pooping out a stinky, new Soviet Union!
Maybe I should draw Putin with no pants too. I drew this cartoon when Miley Cyrus did her TV “twerking,” which was much bigger news than the antics Putin was pulling at the time. Twerking amuses me. I wonder if the media covers all the twerking news in Russia, as they do here.
Obama was eager to invade Syria, to help out those ISIS rebels, before Putin pulled the rug out from under Obama, with a plan for Syria to destroy their chemical weapons. This is one of there rare occasions where I like what Putin does. The news was all about Putin “putting Obama in a box.”
Here’s Putin pulling the old-Syria-switcheroo on Obama like the Alien movies.
Here’s my most recent Putin cartoon, featuring Putin with his Ukrainian rebel puppet.
My cartoonist daughter, Susie, just sent me some new Photoshop brushes that she’s urging me to use. I may be getting away from these sponge/stamp textures soon. I really need to improve my color. I know. I’m on the case.
Here is the last poster for the festival.
Winning the grand prix/humor vache (cow) at the St just festival comes with the obligation/honor of drawing the festival poster for the next year’s festival. I thought I would share the rough sketch that was just approved – I’ll start to work on the finish now.
This is based on an old painting of Marie Antoinette, that had such a huge derriere, that I thought it could, ambiguously, hide the body of a cow. In recent years the St Just festival poster has always featured a cow. They have cow statues on the roof of the cartoon museum there, in the middle of French cow country. And they have a recent tradition of dressing a cow statue at the entrance to the museum, to match the dress of the cow in the poster.
Last year, the cow was a ballerina – an easy costume. I thought I would put the volunteer seamstresses in St Just to the test this year, with a much more ambitious project.
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