In “Everything is true”, Philippe Geluck, father of the famous Cat, tells his story through 150 personal and professional anecdotes. In forty-five years of career, the actor, columnist, designer and sculptor has collected numerous stories that are as funny as they are touching.
“I held Eric Zemmour in my arms”, “Céline Dion was my neighbor” or “I stroked an elephant”. Philippe Geluck affirms, the 150 anecdotes in his latest work are all true. The Belgian artist evokes a somewhat “plic-ploc” compilation of moments from his life and that of his loved ones, collected following more or less drunken evenings.
From laughter to tears
At the end of the 1990s, Philippe Geluck was a columnist for the television show “Vivement Dimanche autre”, hosted by Michel Drucker. The guests are well-known and sometimes intimidating, which in no way prevents Geluck from clowning around. His intervention consists of reading a letter to the guest, asking him “stupid questions”, and ending up offering him a signed drawing of the Cat.
This exercise gives rise to sparkling and provocative interviews from the Belgian artist, notably when he declares to Nicolas Sarkozy that his past as a turbulent teenager is a tremendous hope for young delinquents, given that he is now a minister of the Interior.
The anecdotes are also more personal. In “All naked and all tanned”, Philippe Geluck confides his loneliness, one rainy day, to being the only nudist in the supermarket of a naturist village. Turning the pages, we oscillate between fits of laughter and tears, notably in “I saved a life”, in which a woman confides to the Belgian cartoonist that reading the Chat albums brought light back into her daily life, following a very painful breakup.
The Cat is never far away
To make reading “Everything is true” more digestible and more joyful, Philippe Geluck has embellished it with press cartoons. He sketches current events that have marked him such as the Madoff affair, the Beijing Olympics, the release of Ingrid Betancourt.
If the line is caustic, there is always a certain tenderness and benevolence in the background. And like the Cat and Philippe Geluck, it’s a long love story that lasts (24 albums and six best-ofs since its creation in 1983), his alter ego is never far away.
“Everything is true” is an unclassifiable work, totally accepted by its author: “In each of my albums, I try to bring variety. This is the complete opposite of the publishing houses who ask me to make books with a single theme: sport, wine, chocolate”, declared the Belgian artist in the Vertigo show on November 15. “I refuse because I like this kind of flower bouquet made up of a thousand different flowers,” he concludes with a smile.
Sarah Clement
Philippe Geluck, “Everything is true”, Casterman, October 2024.
“Le Chat à Genève”, exhibition and sale at the Breitenmoser art gallery in Geneva, from November 1 to December 20, 2024.
