the former designer of Charlie Hebdo publishes a new comic Two naked girls. He masterfully tells the story of a century through the trajectory of Otto Müller’s German expressionist painting.
In his latest and exciting comic, Two naked girls
Luz is following a painting by the expressionist artist Otto Müller, not a man or a woman. The reader takes his point of view from the day of creation, in 1919, in a forest near Berlin, when the artist wanted to represent his muse and companion, Maschka. Purchased by Jewish lawyer and collector Issar Littman, the painting saw its first owner commit suicide in the face of the rise of Nazism and the institution of state anti-Semitism, after which the new masters selected it for a famous exhibition of “degenerate art”. In Munich in 1937
Seized, looted, returned, sometimes hated, sometimes glorified, it allows us to hold up a mirror to current events in the form of eternal return, as new forms of censorship, authoritarianism, fascism constantly emerge. On December 4, the stunning investigation was awarded the Comic Book Critics and Journalists’ Association Grand Prix.
Ms. Figaro: Why did you decide to tell the story of the painting and this painting in particular? Luz: I wanted to make a book that told about me, but through the art of others. On the eve of the 10th anniversary of January 7, 2015, it was about the individual I used to be, and specifically my passion for German expressionist art and 1937. about an exhibition about degenerate art in Munich The German Expressionists, painting, but also theater or cinema, all these artists who are entangled with social and political condemnations and the freedom of art, have attracted me for a long time, and it is only in this story that I could fit in right to Otto Müller’s painting,Two naked girls I knew nothing about her and her story, and it was while reading Stephanie Baron’s excellent book,Perverted art. The fate of the avant-garde in Nazi Germany that I discovered it. I delved into the tripartite pages of this monumental book, a reconstructed exhibition staging, and noticed this. I am what we call a postage stamp designer, meaning I have a line that can be reduced to a cabochon Two naked girls.
And then when I come from the press, silhouette remains more important than color, and Otto Müller was an artist-designer…
How does this book speak to you? When you go to someone’s house, the first question they ask you is either you “How are you?” » This book is it. In 2015, after the attacks, we discussed such a project at Charlie Hebdo. “And you, how are you?” » Because that was the question we kept asking ourselves, all of us, a kind of commitment to compassion, if you will. This happened to us, how are you? Two naked girls asks this question, and I would say that the book has its counterpart in my bibliography.Catharsis whose logic is similar. We had this wide-eyed little character who was stunned. Almost ten years later, Two naked girls
causes the same surprise. We are talking about a picture, and so I wanted to adopt the point of view of a picture that sees the world pass before it without blinking an eye are This seemed obvious to me. if I want to talk not only about what I saw and experienced, but if I want to ask a question, the best way to answer is to put the reader in the question. We draw, and what do we feel when we see the world before us? What judgments and implications do we draw from it, and how does it change us?
This is the picture that the world sees passing in front of it without blinking an eye. He sees, he is forced to see, the world is changing, people passing by, society is developing.
Luz
Knowing that the picture cannot interfere…
Knowing that the picture cannot intervene, the reality of our helplessness strikes me, and I tried to create this experience for the reader to put himself in the place of this picture, which is also confused by the political events, confused by the passions that arouse them. or loving. The passion of Otto Müller and his wife, the passion that drives the Jewish collector Ismar Littmann to buy it before being condemned by the Nazis for libel, the hateful passion, and then the robbery-speculation passion, I would say. before it was finally returned to the Litman family, decades later… I wanted to put the reader at the heart of the true helplessness and the purity of emotions that we fall victim to. What do we do with the love we receive? from? If we can’t take sides, and if we can’t walk away, what do we do with what’s in front of us? Is this what got you started? Two naked girls
? We never know why we make books. You never really know. To tell a beautiful story, to create a catharsis. In fact, there is always a detail that makes the book something else, at the end. when it is no longer you who reads it, but the readers who catch it.Catharsis several people told me. “This is a love letter to your wife.” And that was it. That was obviously itTwo naked girls I understood alone. Because, after all, this book is nextCatharsis ThenToday man brother My adaptation of Albert Cohen’s story about how a 10-year-old goes crazy when he is hit with anti-Semitic hatred and the aftermath. Indelible which evokes what writing wasCharlie What was it like to live in such a newspaper for twenty-three years? I think that Two naked girls
concludes a kind of tetralogy of resilience. That this is the end point, a priori. I think so Two naked girls
concludes a kind of tetralogy of flexibility
Do you have a feeling of becoming a different designer, a different artist? I think the desire to move to a much longer story was there until 2015. Anyway, if you know a little bit about my history, you know that boards Catharsis arrived very quickly while I was still thereCharlie
. I was already doing comics, I was doing my sublimation work. I had already gone somewhere else. The paradox is that we try to make a historical work, a personal affair, and it ends up being a current affair. Maybe my curse is always in the news.
Source: Le Figaro
