Alet's face it, after his hilarious Testosterror, epileptic and supercharged satire of contemporary masculinism, it is a terrain on which we did not necessarily expect Luz. The acid chronicler of the new musical scene of the 2000s – which earned him the tenacious resentment of certain well-known figures of French song –, the troublemaker of Charlie Hebdo, become a global symbol of freedom of expression after its cover of the “next issue” (“All is forgiven”), accesses, with Two naked girls, Breathtaking comics, with a new artistic maturity.
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The naked girls in question make up a painting, the work of the German expressionist painter Otto Mueller. We follow its wanderings, from the first brush stroke given in 1919 by Otto, a mad lover of Gypsy culture, until its arrival at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, where it is still visible today.
In the meantime, the painting will go through several decades of sound and fury as Luz's round and generous drawing, treated with splendid direct colors for the occasion, translates… from the point of view of the work itself.
Because it is through the “eyes” of the painting, with many bold and acrobatic framings, that we first follow the bohemian life of the intransigent Mueller, then the profile of its various owners: the sensitive and jovial lawyer Ismar Littmann, driven to suicide by the first anti-Semitic repressions, the Nazi dignitaries and ideologues (we meet Hitler and Goebbels), who erected him as an emblem of the “degenerate” art loathed during the famous Munich exhibition in 1937, and Josef Haubrich, who donated his collection to the city of Cologne. Before the moving restitution of the painting to Ruth, Littmann's daughter, with a firm invitation to question ourselves about the fate of works torn from their original owner but also about the nature, as essential as it is derisory, of art. Because if the painting has survived, how many condemned people has it seen parade in silence, it which, with its peers, has nothing to oppose to the madness of men except its fragile beauty?
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
Among the members of the jury, if Coco tasted “the very sonorous rhythm” de Luz, Albert Algoud underlined how much “the designer’s vision of expressionism brilliantly matches his own line”, while Catherine Meurisse admired his words, “both elliptical and perfectly documented”.Two naked girls, a lucid, desperate and joyful act of resistance, in times where renunciation lurks.
“Two Naked Girls”, of Light (Albin Michel, 192 p., €24.90).
The finalists for the 2024 Wolinski Prize
“La Chiâle”, by Claire Braud (Dupuis, 216 pp., €29.95).
“Weird, gooey, nourishing. » This is how Jul described this strange and fascinating object. In La Chiâle, Claire Braud relates her depression through her double, Carilé, with the help of a joyous mess between dream and reality where we go, literally, from cock to donkey: the family tears between her father and her brother are treated “in cat mode against a backdrop of fin de siècle Japan”; the attacks of November 13 question the provincial Carilé in her love-hate relationship in Paris; and we visit, incredulously, a living room “internal security of States” where Carilé plays hostess, between two tanks and a simulation of carnage. But it is above all with a trip to Sri Lanka, following in the footsteps of a state massacre committed on an idyllic beach, that the story takes on a scale that won over the members of the jury. Claire Braud then offers to the survivors of this hell, with a salutary evocative power, a humanity and a voice which resonate in the depths of her pages. R. B.
“The Restless Monsieur Pessoa”, by Nicolas Barral (Dargaud, 136 p., 25 €).
Simao, a young journalist, must write the obituary of Pessoa whose death is imminent. Ignoring anything about the writer but not daring to approach him, he follows him to Lisbon. A thread punctuated by surprising encounters and enlightening flashbacks to Pessoa's youth. The investigation soon turns into an urban drift in this city whose mysteries, melancholic beauty and twilight colors are in harmony with the mysteries of the imagination of this intrepid character. Both on a scriptural and artistic level, the magnificent feat of Nicolas Barral is to have made this banal journalistic mission an exciting adventure where fiction and reality collide in a disturbing way. And it's a very nice idea to confront Pessoa with some of his many nicknames, his “heteronyms” come to reproach him, while he is about to die, “identity theft”. No need to have read a single line of Pessoa to delve into this story which, without heavy didacticism, constitutes the greatest incentive there is to discover an unclassifiable author for whom “Literature is proof that life is not enough”. Albert Algoud
“The David Zimmerman Case”, by Lucas and Arthur Harari (Blowgun, 360 p., €35).
It was a meeting that made fans of the two brothers, artists as virtuoso as they were atypical, fantasize. That of Lucas, gifted and cerebral designer (The Magnet, The Last Rose of Summer), and Arthur, filmmaker (Onoda), screenwriter (Anatomy of a fall) and actor (The Goldman Trial) celebrated and multi-awarded. The result exceeds all expectations with this monumental Cas David Zimmerman, where the two accomplices pushed the collaboration to the point of almost twinning. Charles Berberian was stunned by “the mastery of this drawer construction”, where the said David Zimmerman wakes up in the skin of the young woman with whom he spent the night, while his own body has disappeared, inhabited by this mysterious one-night lover. At least he believes so, because it is the beginning of a dizzying and disturbing investigation, where the drawing of Lucas Harari's geometric virtuosity, bathed in blue tints and patterns, rises to the height of great American masters like Charles Burns or Dan Clowes. A “beautifully bizarre” summit whose conclusion will leave you speechless. R. B.
“Extraterrestrial Foods”, by Stephen Vuillemin (Denoël Graphic, 144 p., €26).
“I think we have the Xavier Bouyssou from the 2024 vintage! » exclaimed Bastien Vivès in front of these Extraterrestrial foods, in reference to the UFO of the 2023 selection which made its way among the finalists for the Wolinski Prize. It must be said that Stephen Vuillemin's work, which has only a very distant connection with André Gide despite the nod to the chief “inquisitor” of French literature, has left no one indifferent to the within the jury. Stephen Vuillemin conceived his short, nightmarish stories as “recreational breaks” (!) on Instagram while he was making his first animated short film. His boards, with their graphic inventiveness as varied as they are limitless, are full of monstrous or ectoplasmic creatures, which lean towards the unbridled surrealism of the infernal trio of Panique (Topor, Arrabal and Jodorowsky). Special mention to the terrible recipes proposed by Vuillemin, including this “edible chainmail quail” made… from a pig’s anus that a mother eats without batting an eyelid to show her bohemian daughter that she too has “refined tastes”. Enjoy your food ! R. B.
“Madeleine, resistant”, volume 3. “Tomato Noodles”, by Dominique Bertail, J.-D. Morvan and Madeleine Riffaud (Dupuis, 128 p., €23.50).
Third volume of this true story, told by the person who lived it, Madeleine Riffaud, who died on November 6. Last image of the album: an improvised banquet between the post office and the 19th century town halle borough. It is August 1944, Paris is liberated. Madeleine asks her neighbor: “How many of us are there again?” » It's the 23rd, it's his birthday. Madeleine is 20 years old. This means that she enlisted at 17, and that she experienced everything: clandestinity, the death of loved ones, weapons, combat, escape, bastards. She killed and she was tortured. The Nazis did even worse, they tortured other partisans in front of her by forcing her to watch.
She never broke down, never spoke. His story, which could be an adventure novel or a screenplay, almost too rich in twists and turns for us to believe it, is, alas or so much the better, because it has survived, the strict truth, verified, authenticated and wonderfully presented. image by Bertail and Morvan. Recommended from 7 years old, and well over 77 years old. Jacques Dupont
With the compliments of the jury
Albert Algoud
Charles Berberian
Ugo Welcome
Romain Brethes (Le Point)
Coco
Philippe Druillet
Jacques Dupont (Le Point)
Jul
Catherine Meurisse
Christophe Ono-dit-Biot (Le Point)
Bastien Vivès
Natacha Wolinski
