In two separate books published by Cherche Midi, the drawings of two journalists killed by the Kouachi brothers follow one another. A duty to remember, 10 years after an attack which marked France and the world.
Defend freedom of expression loud and clear. Without any fear, any apprehension. Even ten years after the attack which cost the lives of 12 people, including five major cartoonists for the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Cabu, Wolinski, Charb, Honoré, Tignous.
While the sad anniversary of this terrible date, January 7, anchored in the minds of the French, which marked an unprecedented terrorist turning point, is celebrated today, the whole country remembers the faces of the victims. Those also of Ahmed Merabet, police officer who tried to intercept the attackers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, the two terrorists, but also Frédéric Boisseau, Franck Brinsolaro, Michel Renaud, Elsa Cayat and Bernard Maris.
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Two books to remember
Despite the threats that persist against Charlie Hebdo journalists – the latest attack in 2020, when a young Pakistani attempted to assassinate two people in front of the former premises – freedom of tone has never been buried. Whether in the “historic” issue published this Tuesday, the front page of which shows a reader of the said issue, sitting on a rifle. “Charlie Hebdo, indestructible”. Inside, 40 caricatures to “laugh at God”.
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But also in bookstores, where the drawings of Cabu and Wolinski still stand out as weapons of resistance. On January 2, two books retracing their art were published by Cherche Midi. For the first, it is a new edition of “Cabu, aussi aussi Cons”, a collection of 300 drawings, including 50 new ones. For the second, same format: “Wolinski, crazy in love”. Inside, the drawings that made him famous as a “mad woman”.
Cabu prefaced by Riss
In the book dedicated to Cabu of 304 pages, only four of them are intended for the text: the preface. For this new edition, it is Riss, the designer who succeeded Charb at the head of Charlie Hebdo, who signed it. “Cabu drew everything, caricatured everything. Cabu was the reference for all caricaturists,” he salutes.
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The book is divided into 13 chapters, all referring to the characters that the designer has caricatured: rednecks, racists, politicians, showbiz but also religion. There we find drawings by Chirac, Mitterrand, De Gaule, then the Pope, imams, rabbis.
“With a simple stroke, like a cut in the surrounding stupidity, he gave shape to a kind of truth and posterity through caricature,” writes Riss, comparing his “stroke of the pencil” to a “stroke of genius.” The 300 drawings, including three completely new ones, “all demonstrate freedom of expression,” insists the publishing house. “A freedom that cost him his life on January 7, 2015.”
Wolinski, “crazy in love” with an incisive line
Georges Wolinski was “crazy about women”. At least that's what his wife, Maryse, author of the preface, writes. A “crazy for love, crazy for women, for whom nothing was more beautiful in nature than the female body,” she wrote.
In the 112 pages of the book, Wolinski's drawings, in black and white, follow one another. Inside, the allusions – sometimes very frank – to sex, the sexuality of French people and men. “We find an incisive line and the humor which allowed him to conceal his delicacy as a perpetual lover,” salutes the publishing house.
Maryse clarifies. “He loved everything about women: their breasts, their hips, their buttocks, their hair, their heels, their voice…”. Before concluding. “This man, one day in July 1971, married me in a small village in Normandy […] and made me spend the most beautiful night of love, in a field, under the light of the stars”
Ten years later, these books contribute to the duty of memory. Remember, so as never to forget. Also remember, so as not to let the art of caricature fade away. An art which, since 2015, has been weakening.
