And let it move!
The reproduction of movement has long been an object of fascination among visual artists. It is not for nothing that dance has been a recurring figure since the very beginnings of the history of painting. This is the challenge that French author Dominique Osuch has set herself. And that of exposing the life and, above all, the work of the prodigy dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky was a major one: transmitting the invention of modern ballet, in texts and drawings.
In Nijinsky. The burnt angel, Osuch tells us about the tragic destiny of the dancer at the beginning of the 20th century, but also about his significant encounters. Like the one with Diaghilev, the founder of the Ballets Russes, for example. Or with Stravinsky, for the creation of the Rite of Springwhich will cause a scandal because it was so avant-garde, to the point where the police had to intervene during the performance.
We can affirm that Dominique Osuch knew how to take up, with flexibility and love, the challenge she had set herself. A great success.
Francois Lemay
Nijinsky
★★★★
Dominique Osuch, Futuropolis, Paris, 2022, 264 pages
Once upon a time… in Brighton
After cutting her teeth working on autobiographical comic strips, British author Katriona Chapman is now embarking on pure fiction for her second album, the first translated into French, entitled Breakwater.
At the heart of this story? An old neighborhood cinema with its remains of old art deco decorations, located in Brighton, in the south-east of England.
We follow Chris, a lonely girl, who has been working in the cinema for several years and who meets a new colleague who, without knowing it, will change her life.
Everything is told in halftones, carried by a somewhat heavy charcoal drawing, but which evokes a cinema with documentary accents.
And, without ever offering us close-ups or long literary flights, Chapman has this gift of making us feel the emotions, even with a bold line seen from afar, in all simplicity. This is a very nice discovery!
Francois Lemay
Breakwater
★★★1/2
Katriona Chapman, Futuropolis, Paris, 2022, 168 pages
The ingenuous dilemma
To kill or not to kill the filthy Nazi beast? This is where Spirou is, after six years of war where the ingenuous groom witnessed the horrors that set him free. Lost illusions, missing friends, growing awareness of the concentration camps, we had to act, get involved. To the end of humanity? Fantasio, a whimsical zazou always ready to do battle with the Boche, is about to blow up a train. Spirou prevents him. Tough debate. The mined bridge explodes: Spip the squirrel has sat on the detonator. Thus begins the last chapter of this great story that Émile Bravo has been leading since 2018, reinventing without distorting it a Spirou from before Franquin’s celebrated Spirou, very Tintin in aesthetics. The liberation of Belgium puts him face to face with the fanatics of the Purge, with the turn-around collaborators, with his own ideals. He will learn the fate of the artistic couple who helped him so much and will also know what happened to his beloved Kassandra. The ending is as remarkably accurate as it is heartbreaking… and funny. The Spirou spirit has survived.
Sylvain Cormier
Spirou – Hope despite everything “Fourth part”
★★★★★
Emile Bravo, Dupuis, Marcinelle, 2022, 48 pages
The agitator from within
Questions: Damian Bradfield, the screenwriter who offers us his apocalyptic dystopia here, is he a whistleblower or a propagator? Who is this guy who warns us of the digital peril we are blindly stepping into? Who describes to us a world entirely governed by the multinational Amazin (with an i)? A co-founder of WeTransfer, that’s who. And our whistleblower is still working on it. For a good cause, he says. Host of podcastauthor of Trust Manifesto, the interior agitator found in the manner of David Sanchez, Spanish illustrator, the ideal graphic intermediary: minimal drawing with precise line, plans of an obsessive fixity. In half a dozen staged examples, like a shoe saleswoman who follows her customer everywhere (a sort of embodied algorithm), shop bots who shop for groceries, a resister-collector of obsolete formats who are hunted down because they are unhygienic, a guided tour of the ruins of Silicon Valley, the conclusion awaits us at the exit: all that is familiar.
Sylvain Cormier
Dream Data
★★★
Damian Bradfield and David Sanchez, translated by Benoît Mitaine, Almost Moon “Cold Moon”, Melesse, 2022, 80 pages