On January 7, 2015, in the premises of Charlie Hebdoaround 11:30 a.m., eight members of the satirical newspaper's editorial staff were assassinated by the Kouachi brothers. Among them, the press cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Jean Cabut, known as Cabu. To commemorate this attack, the Le recherche editions midi pay tribute to the cartoonists and publish two new editions of their albums : Crazy in love by Wolinski and Still so stupid by Cabu are to be released on 2 January 2025.
Nothing and no one escaped the pencil stroke of Wolinski and Cabu. Their playground ? French society, its vices and its failings represented under the grimacing features of politicians, religious figures, “service idiots” and sometimes themselves. A fun way to deal with serious topics – untouchable for some – for which they paid with their lives.
Three hundred caricatures of Cabu are compiled in an album with 50 new drawings including three previously unpublished. Prefaced by Riss, the current director of the satirical newspaper, Still so stupid pays homage to the genius of caricature. The father of Grand Duduche and Beauf continues to mark generations of designers with the accuracy of his lines and his words.
Cabu used caricature as an outlet : “The press cartoon was a vengeful drawing, a drawing which made it possible to settle scores with those who irritated and revolted him (…) A good caricature is one which reveals the true personality of the subject, his defects, his pettiness , his baseness When he managed to convey this, Cabu had the feeling of having avenged the reader. says Riss at the beginning of the book.
A vengeful drawing certainly, but a profoundly non-violent man, very discreet and fond of pastries. He was above all a drawing enthusiast with a personal outlook and concerned by the state of the world. The person who was able to draw “blindly” in his notebook in his pocket recorded every week the events that caught his attention.
From there were born a number of caricatures and mythical gags grouped together in this album : the rednecks, the racists, the obsessed, the blessed asses, everyone has the right to their chapter. Back to fifty years of eventful political life, debates on immigration or sexual scandals with drawings that are ultimately still relevant today.
Women, many women, often naked and thirsty for sexuality. Here are the scenes that Georges Wolinski liked to imagine and then draw. “Men are scraps and women are masterpieces”, he writes in his album Crazy in love which testifies to this infinite cult devoted to women and their bodies.
A ladies' man ? Rather the man of only one wife, his own, Maryse, whom he loved above all to represent at his side in intimate scenes. Now deceased, she prefaced this work and praised the caricatures of her husband which she considered “never ridiculous”.
Behind the daring humor and explicit drawings, we detect a man who is the opposite of his caricatures, in love and deeply melancholy : a tragic life marked by the assassination of his father when the designer was only 2 years old years old, a mother separated from him for health reasons for most of his childhood and a first wife who died tragically in a car accident.
Wolinski navigates between the lightness of naked women and a melancholy anchored within him to produce an explosive cocktail of trashy and committed humor. A humor of which only he knew the recipe and which condemned him to death. On his tomb, as on that of his father before him, we can read the inscription : “Murdered”.
“Always so stupid” by Cabu, published by Le recherche midi, 304 pages, 19,90 euros.
“Fou d’amour” by Wolinski, published by Le Cherche Midi, 112 pages, 21 euros.
