As skilled with a pencil as with a pen — or a mouse and a keyboard — Clément de Gaulejac is one of those artists who express themselves in many ways. He is through drawing and words. Since the publication in 2022 of his doctoral thesis in the form of a very accessible essay, he has not ceased to manifest himself. His sixth “outing” in a few months is called Reasonable grounds. Ten years of political posters (Écosociété editions).
The book offers an opportunity to review our very recent history in an accelerated way from the angle of political resistance. And in a mocking tone, from the cases of police intimidation—the “Pepper is for steak” poster—to the “Drop me with the GHGs”, by Bernard Drainville.
“A lot of things started for a while are coming to an end. You know what I mean ?, it’s my doctorate started in 2010”, says the artist about the essay where he compares and distinguishes visual and verbal expressions. In an hour of discussion over coffee, he agreed to return to his winding journey, between creativity and activism.
It was his drawings that pushed him towards contemporary Quebec art. It was at the beginning of the 2000s and the French-born had just settled in Montreal, during a creation residency. In Quebec, where society seemed to him less hierarchical and horizons more open — “there was a bohemian Montreal that allowed people to live with few means” — he encountered love, became a father, found himself an artistic family.
During Printemps érable, its political colors hatched and since then, as the pages ofReasonable grounds, he campaigned for many causes, both with a party (Québec solidaire) and the Extinction Rebellion Québec movement. “What interests me is pointing out the authoritarian excesses of democratic governments, pointing out the double discourse of greenbashing. I do not want anymore [être] recovered by the class to which I oppose”, says the one who considers to have drawn everything on the environmental crisis.
This child of left-wing intellectuals, who grew up with comics in his eyes, has long sought his way. “I come from a generation where doing political art was extremely frowned upon, [comme] of Stalinist art. Today it is the reverse. An art that would not be conscious, not politicized, is an art of [privilégiés] “, he notes, relieved. Anarchist at heart, spirit of protest — “I don’t do what is expected of me” — Clément de Gaulejac has carved out an unclassifiable figure for himself. A designer who writes? Why not.
“In the end, books, that’s always what I wanted to do,” says the fiftieth, filled with his life as a Montrealer. His curriculum already includes nine titles, including three published by Le Quartanier published between 2011 and 2017. Small differences. The old ones, the modern ones and all the othersavailable since February, revisits the history of art from the perspective of its craftsmen and shadow artists.
“It has always been obvious to me that language and design are two things that go together. I work on language. Drawing is my additional alphabet. »
Like a caricaturist, Clément de Gaulejac accompanies his drawings with short, sensible phrases, with an otherwise caustic, highly relevant humour. If press cartoons fascinate him — he has already published illustrations in The duty —, the daily caricature frightens him. ” Whether The duty had offered to replace Garnotte, I would not have said no. At the same time, I appreciate my freedom to be able to draw whenever I want. My drawings are carriers of legitimate anger and not dictated by the agenda of politicians. »
Reasons to react
From Jean Charest and Line Beauchamp to François Legault and his ministers Guilbault, Bonnardel and now Drainville, via the Coderre, Harper and Trump who animated the public debate, Clément de Gaulejac’s posters cover a wide area. First broadcast on social networks, then on the web under the title “l’eau tepid”, they express the artist’s need to react quickly to “stupidity”.
The committed fiber began in the spring of 2012, during the major student demonstration against rising tuition fees. When he discovered the posters of the École de la Montagne rouge, he suffered an “aesthetic shock”, which he summed up with these words: “Oh, my God, that’s what I always wanted to do! “. And that’s part of what he’s been doing ever since, driven by the idea that art “brings intelligence back to our side.”
In his eyes, his role is not to be useful, but to position himself against hegemony. “The poster is a pebble in the shoe”. In other words, it “does not aim to convince, but to give arguments, to make people laugh, to feel that we are not alone”.
Amused tributes
Far from the political field, but not from that of humour, Clément de Gaulejac also practices drawing turned towards art, its codes, its history, its setbacks as well as its glories. The book small differences, considered a work of art in itself, pays homage “to the many hands that shape the history of art”, writes Marie-Ève Beaupré, curator responsible for the collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, who acts as editor. Accompanied by descriptive phrases, the thirty-eight drawings reproduce real moments from the past as they fantasize many others.
“It’s a form of autobiography. These drawings contain criticism, but are above all inhabited by the idea of showing what art is. These are my references, the situations I have experienced, the tributes, but amused tributes. »
He who considers humor as a space to “deploy collective intelligence” admires the “lyrical outbursts” of Sempé, the designer of Petit Nicolas. “He manages to do this incredible thing of being very biting, without pity for the bombast of our aspirations,” he says.
Between the artist who exhibits (The masters of the world are people, on view until May at the Regional Museum of Rimouski) and the activist who fights, Clément de Gaulejac seems to adapt to his double life. The author of the booklet Clear line and blurred contours (Grantham Foundation, 2022) certainly doubts, but also advances by relying on paradoxes. Adept of the concept of the clear line (Hergé-type drawing) and therefore of precision, he also appreciates the impurity of forms and language. Contradiction, he believes, keeps thinking active.
His two-way touch is also expressed in public art, since 2022. Two rain boots, his first sculpture — a fountain — stands on a pedestal in front of the Maisonneuve library. “It’s a kind of watered sprinkler, echoing the unbolting of statues,” he explains. As if the statue was still there, but not really. His absence becomes permanent. »
In books, posters or sculptures, Clément de Gaulejac hopes to continue to participate in public debate.