Artist Jean-Claude Mézières occupies a central place in the French comics. Central precisely - no more, no less.Tämä artikkeli on alkukieleltään ranskalainen. Englanninkielisen käännöksen on alunperin tehnyt Nicolai Langfeldt tanskankielisestä käännöksestä, minä olen itse hieman korjaillut kirjoitus- ja sanavirheitä. Virheetöntä englantia tämä ei kuitenkaan suinkaan ole, joten jos kieli sujuu, niin suosittelen edellä mainittua ranskalaista versiota. Jatkossa englanninnos kehittynee, kunhan minulla on aikaa siihen paneutua, mutta ajan mittaan joka tapauksessa tulee saataville myös suomalainen käännös. Langfeldtin käännös ja tästä puuttuvat kuvat [kuvatekstit hakasulkeissa] löytyvät myös verkosta. Ks. linkeistä Langfeldtin sivu.
By Pierre Christin
Apparently everything seems to be simple.
Artist Jean-Claude Mézières occupies a central place in the French comics. Central precisely - no more, no less.
One can for example say that his style is on the more conservative side of the avant-garde that revolutionised the genre during the years 1960-1970, the innovations are many and obvious in Jean-Claude's work, but he always respects the tradition.
If you take this point of view a bit further you can also say that he is a border dweller, in the same way that those workers who live in Tournai in Belgium or Rocroi in France and every day travel from one country to another because of their work. But watch out: it has nothing to do with what was later to be called "La ligne claire" (the clean line) that was invented by the false Belgians that needed a story telling technique that they could twist to their advantage. When Jean-Claude debuted in Pilote in 1966 he was first and foremost a Frenchman looking for an original way to express himself graphically but with a solid respect for the previous epoch's great masters, in the same way that everyday French painters in the 19th century acknowledged their debt to the older Flemish school. (In the picture Valérian meets with J-C Mézières (left) and Pierre Christin.)
Central is his place also because Jean-Claude's work never has invited extremes of neither praise nor criticism. It has never been at the forefront of fashion, neither has it ever been clearly mainstream. It has certainly never been forgotten or detested either and especially these "mézièresian" drawings, in their intense modesty, have never been surpassed and now in the 80's they are right in the middle of the heart of comics.
One can also claim that his drawings belong into the indisputably clear domain: no unnecessary details, striving to give the drawings archetypal simplicity - too simple maybe for those who are easily blinded by volatile trends.
And yet - the technical virtuosity in these refined drawings deny any naïveté, all innocence! Jean-Claude keeps well away from the overloading of a Druillet, from the festoons, arabesques, the overwhelming decorations that so many drawers hide behind, from the elegant clarity and unreal perfectionism that is Moebius'es gift and that has evolved to a foolish worship in his imitators. Without going to any extremes what Jean-Claude offers - discreet but undeniable - is a new way to relate to a drawing.
[kuva: A clear domain, the outside of a luxury space-cruiser.]
What he does - without breaking down the framework that his predecessors put up - is to introduce unique new elements in his stories, which always have ties to the past of comics or other forms of art. Total knowledge of the techniques of comics, a taste for cinematographic and art historic quotes, knowledge of the language of architecture, passion for the forms of nature, living as well as dead, and a gift for social analysis resting on a visual base: these are presumably inseparable elements that make Jean-Claude's drawings - even when not at their best - something consistent and definitive. Something that cannot be copied (even though many have tried and with very different motives at that).
Briefly stated, everything is simple because it is the simplicity of clarity. And to such a degree that for the hasty reader the drawing is almost visible - and is that not the highest goal for a drawing - to be invisible, because it's function is to illustrate, not to exhibit itself.
But still, it's not that simple. Because beyond the seeming transparency of Jean-Claude Mézières style, it is rational choices as well as dark desires, compelling engagements and occult mysteries that is the inner power of the stories.
The basic myth of his pictorial world is the myth of the Wild West. It is not by chance that even in outer space his settlers, his hunters, his soldiers - even his robots - are equipped with American physiognomies. But careful! The myths he use for support are rich, complete, at once full of fantasies, nurtured by reality, enlarged by Hollywood, and brought into focus by direct observation, dream based and in the end political.
The Wild West we know - and this goes for Jean-Claude too - is the Wild West of the free man in a virgin nature waiting to be taken, at the time one could smell both human and animal sweat of labour, a time when optimism seethed through body and soul when one beheld the sky above, before starting at the days work. But also a time when women and weak were pushed aside, Indians suppressed or exterminated, nature destroyed, a time of execution squads in Salt Lake City, Mormons hypocrisy, and the war always threatening with it's missiles in silos out in the desert.
That means that in choosing the Wild West as point of departure in his exploration of the world, at a important time in his youth, before he became a comic artist, Jean-Claude has got a practical and theoretical knowledge both necessary and sufficient to tell of the rest of the universe.
Without exhaustive enumeration I can mention some of the elements of this knowledge. Pioneer spirit confronted with barren earth: Jean-Claude's creative process builds upon bio technical studies of the hard task rather than the cheerful artists hocus-pocus, and every drawing, considered, and in the fullness of time drawn, and redrawn ten times, looked after and cared for like a English Country Garden.
The powerful feelings for the endless space, neither hostile nor inviting, but meant to be inhabited: The endless domain of matter, that is neither larger nor smaller that the creatures that lives within it, good or evil, but that in any case is taken seriously in the reproduction of the fictitious ethnographic details.
Acknowledging of the alien to the degree of making it divine: The plants and creatures of space, distant planets non-human inhabitants are handled with the utmost respect of their differences and you can save the trouble of looking for prejudice, at once pitiful and scary, that is evident in so many science fiction stories.
[kuva: A joke drawing of Mézières at his drawing desk, some aliens hiding behind his door
OK! You can come out now... the photographer has left...]
And finally the firm belief in certain values based on his own personal experience: The abomination of war and hate of military systems, the despise of systems that suppress the individual, the sympathy for the humble, lack of trust in the government, the shy awe of femininity (synonymous with the beauty you rarely see, and also the courage and true decisiveness that are equally rarely seen) and the undeniable disliking of all worship of virility (brutality, noise, speed, metal, hunt, and always, always aggression).
All this he conveys in his very own way. At once slow and invisible, unrelenting and courteous. (Translator's note: hmm, does that make sense?). There is something of an ascetic in Jean-Claude Mézières, yes, even a recluse, and it is not by chance that the places he work look like the refuge of a mystic, that has always felt drawn towards the desert.
Yes, maybe it's all very simple in the case of Jean-Claude Mézières, drawer. But one has surely understood that this simplicity has nothing to do with being a simpleton. It's the result of the kindness and freedom in a person that is in the middle of life, and in the middle of an art from that fascinates him. When it comes to comics, they are definitively not the centre of the universe, but they are one of the things that make the world go around. And the just drawing, that is perhaps more a drawing of a just human, is not without significance when it comes to making the world go around in a slightly less crooked way.
[kuva: Valentin: Ah, here we are Linda, it has a big cavity in a molar...]
Takaisin Valerian-sivulle